Case Study: Dennis

Showcasing real students with real change. Below you will find out exactly how my students went on to become more powerful and consistent ball strikers.

Dennis came to me as a complete beginner golfer who had kind of started playing golf on his own..  He came to me not wanting to learn bad habits.  The before video you see here is actually after a few lessons in where we got some general fundamentals in; grip stance, posture.  The after video is after several lessons and when Dennis was showing all time consistencies and power in his golf swing.  Read more to find out exactly how he achieved better swing proficiency.

I chose Dennis because he represent a large portion of the golfers who come to me.  The chances that you're also making a variation of this type of move is probably 75% according to the thousands of lessons I've taught.  I also chose Dennis because he actually put in the time to make these changes and trusted me. He is now a much more consistent and powerful ball-striker in very short period of time. Considering his lessons were only 30 min/week, I consider him to have made substantial progress in this video examples. 

Problem
Dennis' problem was basically what I call "Spinning" in the backswing.  Another good way to visual is to sit in a rotating chair and start spinning around in it.  Or also stand up and just turn your shoulders side to side.  If you are doing that in your backswing, then you are most likely doing in on your downswing.  See there's a big buzzword in golf right now and it's called, "Rotation." Many golfer are misinterpreting it and becoming worse and even injuring yourself. See, this is what Dennis was thinking subconsciously as evident in the first video. You can see how he keeps his forward bend all the way through the backswing and downswing; his hips and shoulder are turning too flat and he's more inclined to be on his toes.

Fix
If I had to explain everything little thing we did to fix Dennis' swing, I would need three pages. In order to get to the point, I will explain the things we worked on as succinct as possible. Therefore you can apply it to your own swing.

1st.  We created some side bend mobility with drill where I would have Dennis stand straight up and have his hips sway from side to side.  Then we had him do this in a normal golf posture to see how it kept his head more steadier. To him, it felt like he was really swaying, but because there was already some hip depth, at address, it didn't appear excessive as you can see.

2nd.  We worked on how the lead shoulder, arm, hip and knee had to tilt downward on its proper angles to promote and early swinging of the lead side down and laterally. In return this resulted in an early pressure more to the trail side (leg/hip). If you're unfamiliar with pressure shifts, please refer to my other posts.  

​3rd.  We worked on how this early pressure shift is used to re-route the trail hip back and around to the target side in the transition. 

4th.  We worked on posting up the lead leg and getting the arms to race of the chest to a fully extended left side on the follow through.  The key here is that everything prior to the follow trough was done correctly to inspire him to want to put on the brakes with his lead leg and get the swinging of the shoulders, and arms to accelerate through the ball into a nice balance finish.  When he did this all correctly you can see the result in the video of how much more powerful he seems to swing.  

This can be a very complicated subject to try to teach using words.  Hopefully reading this article along with watching my videos will help you.  Remember if you start hitting a few with a ton more power, you know where you got it from !

Cheers!