We have a question from Inner Circle member Gary S. He says, “I have really been trying to learn this swing. It does make me hit the ball straighter and more consistent. The big problem I am having is distance. Before I started using this swing I could hit an 8 iron around 140 yds. Now I have to hit a six iron for the same distance. My drives now go about 180 yds. This is creating a big problem in the fact that I over swing and things go down hill from there. I do enjoy the fact that the other day when playing with a foursome I was the only one down the middle but it wasn't very far. I am considering going back to my old swing but that too is not working because I have gotten accustomed to the PP Swing and now have a mixture of both.
'Any help would be appreciated and I really like the pp swing but need help with distance.'
Gary got an answer from MSKLAR92 and he said, “What ever you are doing, and I'm not sure what that is, you have lost clubhead speed AT THE BALL. Why? probably because all your club head speed is at the top of the downswing rather than the bottom of the downswing. This often happens because you are trying to generate speed with your hands and wrists at the onset of the downswing rather than maintaining the arm and wrist angles established at the setup throughout the swing. Hope this helps.”
P.K., Gary S. Your answer you got from MSKLAR92 is somewhat correct. You could be releasing the club a little too early at the top. I'm not going to go with that one because if that was the case, you'd be having a lot of inconsistencies, like solidness of contact, meaning you might be thinning it, you might be chunking it and you'd be hitting pulls and/or blocks.
But you're hitting the ball straight. That tells me from the top to impact you're maintaining your angles, you're releasing to impact, you're squaring the club at impact to hit the ball straight. What I'm guessing the problem is because your other swing was very likely rotational where you got your power by turning your body. The faster you could turn your body in the forward swing and the body pull your arms, the more power.
What's happened now is that in the Peak Performance Golf Swing, which is defined as a limited turn, 3/4 backswing, you have slowed your body down, which is necessary, but you're not swinging your arms fast enough.
The suggestion I would make is, being an Inner Circle member, you need to get in and start looking at some of the videos of DJ and I swinging. Notice how we hold the body, but we swing the arms faster. Remember, swing a golf club is like swinging a rock on the end of a string. The faster the rock goes, the quieter the hand becomes. The hand moves less so it can manage the force of the rock swing faster on the end of the string.
You need to swing the rock faster. You need to swing your arms faster. You hold the body quieter, which is why we have the wide knees with the outward pressure and we swing the arms faster.
It's just like throwing a ball. I can throw it 30 feet, but I can throw it soft and slow or I can speed up my arm and the ball goes faster. I don't turn my body more or move my body faster, I just snap my arm more, like cracking a whip.
Go and look at the driver video that DJ and I did. At the end of that video I had him hit a swing at 70% speed for the driver, then at 80%, then at 90% and 95%. You'll see that his body doesn't move or turn any more, but just looking at it with the naked eye, you can see his arms moving faster.
Ultimately, as he gets faster, you will also see that as the arms swing down and through faster to the finish, that the recoil and relax is also faster. The action reaction has to be there.
The key is that you're probably doing everything well, you just need to start swinging your arms faster through impact and up to the T-Finish.
The Surge!