Orignal post on 8/30/2017
Hey everybody! It's been a long while since I've posted on here. I'm always trying to make sure that the things I post are meaningful even though they maybe few and far in between :)
So a little while ago I decided to reach out to Kevin Kisner on twitter. For those of you who don't know, Kevin Kisner is on the PGA tour but was struggling player on the WEB.COM tour a few years prior. He decided he really needed to change things to consistently perform on the PGA tour. He has since teamed up with a swing coach and friend named John Tillery who has helped him to reach the 24th position in the World Golf Rankings and 11th in the FedEx Cup standings at the time of writing this article.
I reached out to Kevin on twitter because I was intrigued by the fact that he attributed so much of his improvement with his work with John Tillery. I found out about John after doing extensive research on "Boditrak." Boditrak is a great swing instrument that measures the Center of Pressure forces in the golf swing. Ground force mapping has been one of the most overlooked parts of the golf swing until recently. I was reaching out to Kevin because I wanted to discuss further the swing tip articles he's written for Golf.com and PGAtour.com. I specifically wanted to address what he was talking about when he said, "Right palm thrusting away from he target." This language was unfamiliar to me and after picking his brain a little more, it was affirmed that my previous notion of that thrusting is analogous to the downward pressure that the right palm and arm should have on the downswing. this motion is in tandem with the force that the left leg and left foot (heel) exert no the ground on the downswing as well.
(look at the tweet response from Kevin above and you'll see he give a drill for this)
What does this mean to the normal golfer trying to improve? It means that the swing works purely downward. The idea that you twist you body back and forth is what has caused centuries of bad instruction and millions of incompetent golfers. To put it another way, imagine a ferris wheel as opposed to a merry-go-round. Imagine the difference in the downward force! The second you think of a golf swing as a merry-go-round you're screwed. Your body has to work purely downward and you will begin to feel what a real golf swing should feel like.