I recently had the pleasure of giving a lesson to a first-time student named Rick Baldwin, a lefty who has been been playing golf for 20 years but has only been with the Surge Swing for about six months. Like many people I meet, Rick thought he was pretty close to doing things correctly, but since his game had gone backwards in the previous 2-3 weeks, he wanted my opinion on his form. In truth, while Rick was indeed headed in the right direction with his swing, there were key areas where he was not. He has a very good Forward Up Swing which was helping save him from some pretty serious problems in his setup and backswing.
As I finished observing him hit a few shots I asked him if he had had an equipment change recently. Why, yes, he said, I bought a new set of woods and irons about a month ago. I pulled out my 43" driver, which I have had Lynn Griffin custom fit to my personal specifications. Now, Rick and I are pretty close to being the same height and so if he had a properly fit driver it would be close to the same length as mine. Yet, when we compared his new brand-name driver to mine, it was a good 4" longer, putting it at nearly 47" in length which was absolutely a major contributor to why he was blocking/slicing his tee shots. But it wasn't the only cause.
It turns out that Rick was improperly aligned. His feet were closed, which, for a lefty, means that they were aimed way left of the target, and yet his shoulders were open. This created a real problem for him as it did not allow him to correctly roll his rear arm slightly skyward while keeping the palm of his rear hand perpendicular. In fact, he rolled his rear hand way forward which further exacerbated the problem. If you don't get into the Master Setup Position where your rear arm is turned up and is slightly below the level of the forward arm, your ability to raise the club high enough will be severely restricted. When this happens, most people tend to flip the club back so they can complete the lift which allows them to rotate too much and this takes them deep into the Sacred Burial Ground.
So the solution for Rick's problems were pretty straightforward. First, I had him choke down nearly 4" on his driver. Next we worked on getting his alignment corrected to where he was lined up parallel right of his target (remember, he's a lefty!). We also made sure that every part of his body- his toes, knees, hips, shoulders and eyes--were now square to his target line. We then fixed his grip so that his rear hand returned to a position that was the mirror of his forward hand, making sure that both were perpendicular to the ground. All of these changes enabled him to get into the Master Setup Position and pretty soon he was cracking drives straight at his target.
One final word of caution, though. As with many things in the golf swing, too much of a good thing is usually bad so don't over do your Master Setup Position or you may end up pulling your shoulders out of a square alignment.
Keep it vertical!
The Surge
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Comments
Thanks, Surge!
Thanks, Surge! This video exactly describes my usual troubles. I tend to end up aimed right with my feet and left with my body and get a strong right arm to compensate. Then I fix by getting myself back into the Master Setup Position, but end up right of my target because I didn't get my feet fixed. ;-) If only I could get all the parts fixed at the same time.
Thanks Surge
Whenever I come on here it's to say thanks for all the tireless work you do. I am currently a 7.8 handicap index, with an average of 79.1 my last 20 games. Shooting well and getting better(by better I mean consistent) I finally did something today that I have never done before, I shot -1 on the back nine with 3 birdies. Overall I was plus 1 for the round. Another first for me is I hit 15 of 18 greens today. What can I say? Thanks Don for all you do.
Greg C
Co-organizer for www.bcgolfpages.com/meetup
Thanks Surge
I'm LH & this is the problem I have had for a long time, misalignment of my shoulders. I think the key is the position of my
left arm. It was higher than right. As you always say Set up setup..Thanks again!
Too much of a good thing
I have made a discovery that has given me the longest & straightest shots I've ever had with my irons & woods. The problem I had was due to over doing Surges advice,which I seem to have a habit of, by taking a good thing & over doing it. In this case it was wide knees outward pressure. I had got to the point where my legs & knees remained locked in place, which made it hard to bump, & gave me a arms only swing. I found that letting my front knee come in a couple of inches at the top of the back swing has made a big difference in getting me through the ball on, on, on. This simple little move seems to synchronize my knees & make them work together. I am now hitting my 3 wood so well I am seriously considering taking the driver out of the bag.
The best example of knee flex I can give is to view the video of D.J through the bag, viewed from down the line. All I need to do now is not over do it.
Too little of a good thing.
I've been making too little hip turn. The result was a very consistent coming over the top move and too many pulls and slices. I needed some way to get a repeatable and adequate hip turn. Last week I made an adaptation of Surge's " ring the bell" visualization, which has been a great swing key for me in the past, to achieve a very repeatable and controlled hip turn.
Instead of visualizing a bell to be rung with the index finger I moved the bell down to the level of the right back pants pocket. It may seem like a silly visualization to picture the right butt ringing a bell but the results have been amazing. I know that I'm not slipping back into a rotational swing because all of the postions of the Surge swing are good for the BUS and FUS and every club in the bag is producing shots that are very straight or have a slight draw with more distance.
This change has also helped me to get a higher lifting of the arms in the BUS with better left arm extension , than I could ever get before, with less effort. My previous efforts to restrict the hip turn may have been causing me to " get in my own way " with the arm swing.
Thanks to outward knee pressure acting as a governor to limit the turn, and constant knee flex, my feeling now is that this move straight back with the right butt cheek is something that is not likely to be overdone. It is the best key that I've found yet to trigger the BUS and worth a try if this has been a problem for you.
having a lazy right eye ,Problems with proper aiming target
Been using ppgs for about 3 years now with great success, only problem am having now is when i aim left of target thats exactly were i hit the ball.
could this be part of that i don't use both eyes to focus at my target . have had this since birth and have compensated with no peripheral vision.Thanks
Mike from Alberta Canada
lazy eye right at you
I have some eye issues and understand that focusing on the target that isn't where I see it really does not matter.
The focus should be getting parallel to the aim line and swinging on-on-on, square and solid down it. The feed back from the shots moving to one side or the other should be enough to dial in hitting it at the intended target.