Golf School Day Two: Importance of the Short Game

Reporting on Day 2 of the Peak Performance Golf School at the PGA Golf Learning Center in Port St. Lucie, Florida. Unfortunately, today we didn't have the school the way we wanted to in that there was torrential rain, coming down as hard as in a hurricane. We were forced indoors as they actually closed the range.
Indoors we had a pretty good session for most of the morning all the way until about 12:30. We went into a simulator lab where we hit into a screen and‚  it shows you the ball flight and determines what launch angle it was and how far it flow. We had a great session in terms of being able to, first and foremost, have the students hit balls and check their swing out from yesterday.

I'm happy to report that they all really retained well the setup points we worked on and the swing points. We were able to do a little fine tuning and really got them hitting the ball well, at least according to the launch monitor, where they were flying down and landing right in the middle of the fairway based on this line the monitor had on the fairway. Launch angles were good, flight patterns were good, and they were striking the ball very solid off of a hitting mat.

I know that many players don't think that hitting off a mat is good. But I like hitting off a mat because you can really see that you're going to nip the ball, or pinch it off that mat because you're not going to hit down hard on the mat. As you know, I believe you'/re supposed to nip it or or tear the grass out of the ground. All of the students were hitting super strikes off that mat.They all agreed that hitting off the mat was not bad at all. In some cases, if you hit off the mat enough you will actually start seeing scuff marks left on the ball in the color of the mat. That tells you really quickly the lie angle of the club if they're correct or not.
That was a good session. The one biggest change I made with one of the students was that he had a tendency to lift his arms a little too far and have his arms collapse in towards his body where his right (rear arm) was collapsing into a V. In the Peak Performance Golf Swing, the position of the right arm, to give you maximum width, should never go past being a right angle.

If you put your hand up to take an oath, your right arm, from should to the elbow and up to the hand would be a right angle. That's the position you should be at the top of your backswing. If you have reasonable correct arm length, meaning one is not shorter than the other, you keep your right arm at a right angle and your left (lead) arm would be relatively straight. If you actually locked it out, like a lot of people do, your right arm would be pushed past a right angle. It's better to be a little bit more than a right angle, but never less
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So the student had his right arm breaking down to a V, which means his right below was close to his body. When we got it out to a right angle, he had more width of arc, his club shaft was farther from his head, which is width of arc. But we don't want to get it where the right arm locks out because that's too far and your right arm locked is not in dynamic balance.

After that we went into a question and answer, anything from the day before they wanted to discuss anything they wanted to go over, anything new they wanted to ask. One of them said, “Could you address, even though we're in here on a mat which is flat, side hill lies?”

So we discussed how to hit up hill, downhill and, most importantly, side hill, with the ball above or below your feet, and how you can just get into the accordion effect where when you lower your shoulders and your knees at the same time, you perfectly squeeze your hips out to have perfect dynamic balance. On a down hill lie, you'd be standing up and been more from the shoulders and the knees going down, like a quarterback getting a snap, you'll find that you're still in dynamic balance and you can swing from there and stay in balance and actually go to a good finish.

But bending down, more from the shoulders with less knee bend to reach the ball below your feet, you'll be out of balance. Your upper body will be bent over too much and you'll certainly fall into the ball. So, do what I call the accordion effect, again, like a baseball player in field, bending down to put his hands on his knees in the ready position, waiting for the pitcher to pitch and the player to hit. Shoulder and knees go down together and squeeze the hips out for perfect dynamic balance. They just loved that because it hit them how good it is to get in the perfectly dynamically balanced setup, whether you're hitting a teed ball to a wedge, on flat ground, on uphill lies, downhill lies or whatever.

A big question was, “How do I hit downhill lies?” Downhill lies to a downhill green is not too bad. But downhill lies to an uphill green, even with a wedge, is a very difficult shot. One of the students had a couple of holes where he had that situation. The key is what? If you can't hit the ball down to the bottom of the hill, then you need to stay at the top of the hill where the lies are flat. In many cases, a severe downhill lie is a pretty close to impossible shot. A sever uphill isn't too bad. You will hit the ball and shoot it up pretty high, but you can hit it reasonably. So you are into playing the course properly.

If you can't certainly get to the bottom, then you better lay up on the top. Two hundred yars from a flat lie at the top of the hill is better than 150 yards from a severe downhill lie. They all agreed that was absolutely what you have to start thinking about. That's how you play the course correctly.

Lastly, we talked about a number of issues, like about how to play a course, club fitting, short game, putting. We actually got into another room at the hotel later and worked on their putting strokes on the carpet. We got a good day in. We covered and “re-covered” everything we talked about and a bunch of new subject. So, over all, despite the fact the torrential rain never stopped, we really covered a lot, had a great day and great experience and good conversation about playing golf, how to address playing in tournaments, and most importantly, doing your stats, keeping track of what you're doing and working on the things you need to do.

They all admitted they came to the school because they wanted more than anything, swing instruction to get their swing better, but were most impressed with what they learned about the short game and felt, without a doubt, they will hit the ball better with the swing help, but more importantly, their scores are going to go down because of the short game. They all admitted did come here with that thought, but now know that it's that important. All admitted they didn't do enough short game practice.

You have to practice what is good. But you have to practice more of that which is not good. They realized that's how they were going to get better and shoot lower scores.

The Surge!