When Numier wrote in saying he had polio and I gave him some things to work on in his golf swing, it brought up another good blog question from Alan. He said that he also had polio when he was very young. He mentions that his right arm is approximately 3 inches shorter than his left.
As I was reading that I was saying to myself, 'Hmm, I think that is probably the first thing I will suggest is that he should be playing left-handed. That way, his upper arm will be his right arm, which will be the shorter one which should be at the top.
Then later on he does tell me that he does play left-handed. He has played a lot of other sports, he is physically active, he has never seen himself as having any kind of handicap or set back because of his polio. He has done a lot of things extremely well and he is trying to get naturally better at golf as he can and, in fact, he just bought a new set of golf clubs.
His basic question is that, he changed his grip to the split grip and he says that it helps him much better with the fact of the difference of the arm length. His left arm now can get more stretched out as compared to his shorter right arm. So I think that is really good. He says his backswing has always been limited but with the Peak Performance Golf Swing it is about perfect. I was thinking of that thought and I said, initially when he said he could not lift his arms above his shoulders, I'm saying that is good as you are right there at three-quarters. He definitely says that that is part of the situation and why the Peak Performance Swing is working for him.
He said he has always been able to play pretty well with the short irons but his downfall is longer irons and the driver. The 3-wood is okay. Here we go again. The 3-wood is okay, but the driver is bad. I think the issue here with the long irons and the driver is, he bought a set of golf clubs and he got long irons. He bought a brand that is very highly well known for its hybrids.
I have to give a really good shout out again to Robert Mead. He just came back and gave Alan some really good tips saying that, 'Most of us now are not playing with long irons, we are using a bunch of hybrids'. He actually stated that he uses a 15, 18 and 21 degree hybrid. That again was the suggestion that was coming up. So Robert hits the nail on the head again and does a great job of giving some good answers here to people in the blogs. So thanks again, Robert, and again I am going to reiterate what Robert says.
Get rid of your long irons. You probably don't need anything longer than a 6-iron and go to hybrids. The concept of a hybrid, it is a shorter shaft with a mini wooded head that hits the ball higher, more easily higher and consequently straighter. So, (a) get to the hybrids; (b) the issue with the driver Alan, is very likely that it is probably too long. If it is over 45 inches long I would say you want to consider cutting it down to at least 44.
The main point that I would recommend is check around, find a good club fitter in your area, go see him about checking out your driver, and making sure that you can take some swing speeds and find out exactly what your shaft length needs to be, and what the length needs to be. If it is too long when he re-shafts it he can get it much more correct with the right length and the right flex. Because the odds are it is probably both issues. The flex is off and the length is too long for you. I come to that conclusion because the 3-wood is okay, and 3-wood is probably at least 2 inches less than your driver. At least one inch off the driver has to help. Take care, keep striving, keep going at it Alan.
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