Eye Opening Lesson

r0wly86

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Had my first lesson with Ian Clark last night at World of Golf. First time seeing that level of coach, normally lessons I have are with the local pro (not saying they are bad just that I have never seen a PGA Fellow level coach).

His set up is really good, private walled off section of the upper tier, two bays with trackman and video analysis software. He also only does 1 hour minimum lessons, normally with the club pro I go for the 30 minute option but now think 1 hour is much better as we could really get down into the bones of things before getting a fix, rather than in 30 minutes where you have to try and fix the fault much quicker or risk running out of time.

I have always considered myself to be good at self diagnosing problems and that I had a good feel for my swing. It turns out that after many years I have introduced 4/5 fault into my swing in order to fix other faults. When my rhythm is good then I can hit the ball well, but as soon as something doesn't quite click then I have big problems as I have all the other faults still in my swing going out of kilter.

Things wrong with my swing. Strong grip, both left and right hand too far over. This is causing me to flatten my wrist early rather than cocking my wrists for want of a better word. My back swing starts off far too much on the inside meaning I have to go up at the top of my swing. This inside swing and strong grip cause a hook so I have the ball back in my stance to try and avoid hooking. Conversely my down swing is far too steep, because I have a flat backswing I cannot shallow is any more with my down swing so I come in steep. I then have to flip my wrists in order for the ball to go anywhere near where I want it to.

Half way down my downswing, Ian said I had no right to hit the ball from that position and I am having to make so many corrections in my swing in order to get a good contacts that it's just not reliable.

What I should be doing is having a steeper backswing and a shallower downswing, so the complete opposite of what I am doing, oops. The power of the video analysis is huge for me, being able to see for myself what I am doing and then compare it to a "model" swing gave me a much greater understanding of what I should be doing and what it should feel like. By the end of the lessons my swing was SO much different and very close to what it should be doing, the contacts weren't quite there but starting to get there, some range work and keep doing the wall drill and I'll get there quite quickly.

What my old swing was costing me is startling, I was hitting my 6 iron, my swing speed was 2mph quicker than the tour average but my ball speed was 20mph slower. All the faults were costing me about 20 yards of carry because I couldn't transfer the swing speed into ball speed and the flipping at contact meant I was launching too high.

My eyes were truly opened about my swing. I just can't fathom how I can put a round together when I look at my old swing now
 
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Hope it works out for you and great write up, we need videos:thup::D:D:D:D:D

Be interesting to hear how you progress, going to be a tough task from the sounds of the changes required from your current swing, big changes required? Best of luck.

Son had a decent swing and in an attempt to get to under 5 this year, has changed many things over autumn/winter with lessons(video and numbers based), but the harsh truth was, it didn't improve his dispersion and gave him the shanks, so was much worse off, even though they were happy that he had made the changes. Over the last couple of months, I had to stop paying for lessons and get him to improve his dynamic lie(weirdly not considered important in the lessons) ourselves and now seems to be turning the corner with much better dispersion and no longer shanking and back to playing good golf.
 

r0wly86

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[video=youtube_share;0hTQZQiFemE]https://youtu.be/0hTQZQiFemE[/video]

There's audio of Ian talking through the differences but you don't need to listen to see how different the swings are.

It will take some time the range to groove it along with the drill but I am a quick learner so happy to crack on with it
 

Ndw7

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That difference is amazing. You must have walked from there so pleased! Good luck with the changes
 

r0wly86

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That difference is amazing. You must have walked from there so pleased! Good luck with the changes

I'll be pleased once it's bedded in. Still feels a little awkward but any change like that will. But I did leave amazed how much my swing changed in 1 hour, feel happy that this may finally get my scores down to where I know I should be
 
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