In my ongoing pursuit to drop my handicap I’ve been utilising all of the awesome teaching facilities that we have here at Peter Field Golf Shop. If you’ve not read my previous blog about my last session with Lewis, then check it out here to read about the start of my journey on tech.
As I’m sure any fellow golfers who’ve made changes to their swing can attest to, swing changes don’t always come easy. During the process of having my lessons on tech I’ve been able to get a much better understanding of my swing and where the improvements and misses come from. Over the process the trend has steadily been in the right direction and my swing path is greatly improved, now often sitting around 4 degrees left of targets as opposed to the 7 or 8 that I rocked up to my first sessions with. During my last sessions in a bid to further improve that path we made a change to my position at the top, getting my hands higher to create greater stretch and more room for me to drop the club in behind me, allowing my path to move more towards the right and add speed in the process. However old tendencies have started to creep back in, I’ve found myself getting steeper into the ball from this position and I had also started swinging across to the left again which had negatively affected my strike, which had crept towards the heel, which had been so good up to that point.
So, I jumped back in the tech bay with Lewis to have a look at where I was going wrong…
My suspicions were correct, Lewis confirmed on the launch monitor that my path and attack angle were once more sneaking into slice territory, and he could quite quickly see what the cause was. To try and find my position at the top (higher hands in order to put weight on my right foot) I was actually putting more weight on my left foot, which put me in a position where it was difficult to transition with the club behind me and very easy to come into the ball with a steep attack angle and a poor swing path, this was the focus of the lesson. The feeling that Lewis wanted to promote in my takeaway was a. the feeling of putting more weight onto my right foot and b. the feeling that my torso was leaning less to the left.
Before: Torso leaning to left, causing too much weight on left foot and poor transition
In order to change this the drill that Lewis gave me was to rock from one foot to the other, letting the club swing with me, and then as I rock onto my right, start my takeaway. This made me use my momentum in order to get more weight onto my right and avoid me tilting my torso to the left.
After: Flatter backswing, allowing me to move more weight onto my right and transition from a better position
This visibly flattened my position at the top and allowed my hands to once again drop behind my body so I can swing the club with a path more to the right of target. This is most likely a position that we will most likely revisit in future sessions but is better for promoting the necessary weight transfer in my backswing. To further aid this we widened my stance by an inch or two and moved me back from the ball, all of this allows me more space at impact so I’m not as cramped, all allowing better turn through the ball.
While this may visibly look different and seem like a large change it’s still moving towards the same fundamental goal that we’ve been working towards, which is essentially a shallower downswing and all the benefits that come with that. All made possible by using the tech, the pressure plates allowing us to analyse my weight transfer and stance width and the launch monitor allowing us to see what the results were with my delivery numbers.
If I could offer advice to every golfer who is thinking about lessons, as you can tell I would highly recommend utilising our fantastic technology. However, what is often overlooked is the quality of the delivery. Together, me and Lewis have built a roadmap on how we would like to progress my game over the winter months, giving us both ownership over progress.
This consistent and high-quality approach gives us both direction, clarity and the best possible chance of improvement.
If this sounds useful to you and you were on the fence before as to the role of tech in lessons, I can’t recommend it enough. Make sure you book in a lesson here, or phone the shop on 01603740979.
