In these two lessons, Doug has compared me with an LPGA star that has great leg and hip clearing movements because that is where all the power should come from. I’ve always been more hand-sy when coming down, and usually my arm initiates the downswing as opposed to using your legs and hips. In fact, by using my arms, it has a tendency to cause a greater outside in swing which is what I’ve been trying to fix.
The reason I put both the videos together is because I want you to understand where the back and leading leg should be during the swing and rotation. A tip here that is probably not in the video, is to visualize and imagine after you get to the top of your backswing, that someone is pulling your belt forward so that your hip and legs move first before your hands do. Of course, it has to all sync up… so when you are practicing this, it’ll feel very awkward at first, but after days of practicing for me (please record yourself for self-analysis!) I’ve been able to get my drives straighter (less outside-in), and gained some distance back on all my clubs. In fact, I’ve always had trouble with hybrids, but thinking about clearing the hips has given some confidence to strike the hybrids more consistently.
In these videos, another method of being more consistent and build power is to build width in your swing. So what is width? The way I understand it is how far your arms can extend away from your body. So basically what I am doing is forcing my leading arm not to bend at the top (which sometimes I do), but inorder to help it, my back arm supports my backswing by pushing it outwards in a way so that my leading arm is always extended. Again, this will feel awkward at first, but I’ve gotten a better rotation and consistency from this.
After practicing these methods, I took it out on the course yesterday on the Deer Creek South course (Sapphire / Emerald), and shot 81 (+8 on the front nine, and +2 on the back nine) which you can see on my RCGA profile. Anyhow, enough talking, here are the videos:
Title: 2/8 – 2010 Fall Golf Training – The Back Leg
Description: 2010 11 04 Lesson at Etobicoke Golf Town. Back Leg.
Title: 3/8 – 2010 Fall Golf Training – The Leading Leg
Description: 2010 11 07 Lesson at Etobicoke Golf Town. The Leading Leg and Building more Width
