Today's tip is the natural follow-on from the one we covered yesterday on how to grasp your club correctly to set the proper amount of forward shaft lean at address. The question is from a Surgite named Tom, who is just getting into the game.
"I am a relatively new golfer and try to follow your three quarter turn vertical swing. On my set-up I am always struggling with how far away from the ball I should be.I know this changes with each club but where should hands be in relationship to your body?"
Tom, as you will soon discover if you become a regular on this blog, there is an incredible body of past video lessons in our library that is easily searched for help on just about any conceivable subject as it relates to the Peak Performance Golf Swing. You've asked a question that relates to setup and you may have heard me say this before, but I believe that The Setup Determines The Motion. In other words, if you setup correctly, you are creating the ideal environment for your body to be able to complete the swing in an optimal fashion.
The beauty of what I teach with regard to setting up the proper distance from the ball is that it is the same for every club in your bag. How can that be, you might ask, since each club is of a different length? The answer is in an aspect of club design called Lie Angle. Take your longest iron, your pitching wedge and your driver. Set them all on the ground with the club face square to the target line and the bottom of the forward edge parallel to the ground. What do you see? Your pitching wedge will be the most upright of the three clubs, with your long iron much flatter and your driver even flatter. So while the length of the clubs change, how we walk in to the ball does not have to change because of these differences in lie angle.
So here is what you should do. Approach the ball and first set your forward hand on the club as we discussed yesterday, followed by your top hand. Then flexing your rear knee to an athletically ready angle, place the club head behind the ball, square to the target, with the bottom edge of the club on the ground. Then bring your forward leg into position so that both feet are along the toe line, parallel left of the target line. Then, after getting your body square and into an atheletically ready posture, simply let your hands drop so that your arms are essentially hanging straight down. Remember that the thumb of your top (rear) hand should be lined up below the area between your chin and your nose. If you do this routinely, you will always be the correct distance from the ball regardless of the club you have in your hand. It really is that simple!
Keep it vertical!
The Surge
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If you missed our announcement yesterday...
Some of you may not have read our announcements about yesterday's conversion to a whole new technical infrastructure that will improve conent delivery in the short run while allowing us to develop leading edge services going forward. I intend to repeat this message with every new daily for the next few weeks to catch people who may have been away from the blog for a while. So if you've read this already...move on! :)
TJ
"If things look a bit different today, that's because they really are! Thanks to a tremendous development effort, nearly a year in the making, we have replaced our antiquated technical infrastructure with leading edge technology that will not only improve how we deliver content to you at present, but also pave the way for future developments that will surprise and delight all of our worldwide audience.
Special thanks go out to Brady Owens, Scott Weiss and Josh Rhame, our stalwart technical team, who put in thousands of hours of work, including nights and weekends, to complete this project.
One of the first things you will note is that the commenting software has changed. We no longer use Disqus and have substituted what we believe is a better commenting module; one based on tried and true open-sourced software that will provide all of us with an easy-to-use and STABLE system for many years to come. Because of this software change, you will need to be logged in to your Swing Surgeon account in order to make a comment. If you don't have a free Swing Surgeon account, just click on the Login/Register button located in the website's header area and give us a minimal amount of information. Then every time you want to leave a comment on the blog, login to your account before doing so.
You will also notice some additional capabilities with this new commenting module. You will be able to give your post a title, edit your comments, and even publish an avatar if you so choose. If you want to edit your account settings, first login to the website and then click on the My Account tab where you will be able to make a whole host of changes to your account, including your user name and password."
Tom Jans
Director of Marketing
Setup Distance From The Ball
Excellent - thank you, thank you, thank you. I need basics 'cause my rememberer is sometimes slow to retrieve data. I don't remember the 'butt to the right hip for forward shaft lean' tip before but I like it! Is this the same with fairway woods and driver? Love the new site and the video seems sharper. Thanks for all your help Surge!
Distance From The Ball Video
Very clear and helpful discussion of setup routine. The driver explication was particularly useful to me.
Setup Distance From The Ball
Had to comment on Surge's physical fitness. His lats are quite visible thru his shirt! Nice job!
Great video lesson reminder.
Great video lesson reminder.
Played Sunday after Saturday hip adjustment at the chiropractor. Hip felt pretty good but I was afraid to go full bore. Shot 80 not disappointed I struggled getting to my left side did not want to force the issue.
Hip feels great today so we will see what happens this weekend .
Golfing life update.
First off, I'd like to think Don,Tom,Brady,Scott & Josh for the new look of the site. I like it immensely and know after the normal break-in period for all things new it's really going to rock. I look forward to many days ahead of getting my daily dose of Surge. I'm looking forward to all the regular gang,and newbies as well, getting their avatars back up.
Now as to the topic of my subject line, nice feature as well, If I might add.
As most of you know I suffered a back injury a couple of weeks back,when I went outside at dusk to tend to the wife's baby dwarf goats. I immediately began my course of PT exercises hoping to alleviate major problems. When the injury occurred I had hope that I had only irritated one of 3 bad discs that I have lived with for years,however, I don't think that is the case. I am scheduled to see my spine doctor this coming Friday for tests,evaluations and the like. Typically, when I have slipped one of my old 3 I can get it back into place with my PT and a little rest in a couple of days if not sooner. This latest injury is not allowing me that luxury. I don't know what course of action that we'll be taking but I haven't hurt this bad in a long time. I've had to resort to sleeping in the recliner/sofa because I can't lie flat in the bed. I'm having some nice pain,and I have a pretty high threshold, sitting here in the comp chair writing this post.
So my dear friends,when you play this week and should you hit an errant shot, think of me by muttering "Booger" before you invoke rule #5.
I'll keep you all updated on my Doctor's findings. Perhaps I can play again sooner than I think.
Sorry to hear of your injury.
Sorry to hear of your injury. Hopefully It will not be to serious. My wife went through 2 back surgeries in two years. Luckily she has not had a problem in about 15 years.
Our thoughts and prayers are with you.
Thanks,Roger, much
Thanks,Roger, much appreciated!
Get better.
Boog, I hope you DO get better and find relief soon. Back pain from life and work issues is absolutely miserable.
My friend in Rock Hill just went through surgery on his back yesterday and I will call shortly to see his prognosis. He had surgery 22 years ago and he said if this one lasts 22 years, he won't have to worry about it again.
I still haven't figured out how to get my name rather than my e-mail addy to show. I e-mailed support so am waiting patiently.
Mike
Thanks, Mike, I've done
Thanks, Mike, I've done pretty good with mine over the years.I originally injured mine way back in '77. I hope the Doctor can help me out in short order.
Damn
Hope the doctors can give you some help. How's the family doing?
Thanks, Robert, I hope so
Thanks, Robert, I hope so "also", which is Josh's little catch phrase word and he and the rest of the family are doing well.
Hope you heal soon Booger.....
Hi Boog, Sorry to hear about your back. Hope it gets better soon. As they say, gettin' older's not easy. My Mom fought a lower back problem for years and finally did have to have surgery. It did help her a lot. That is in no way an endorsement or suggestion.
Actually I have no problem with the aging process, it's just the increase of injuries that seem to be out of no where that bother me. I have been really into health and taking care of myself for years. Excercise, stretching ect. Not fanatic but I eat healthier on a consistent basis more than most.
I started having some serious pain in my left shoulder a few months ago. It got bad enough where I finally got an MRI. Sure enough a torn rotor cuff. A partial tear of the supraspinatus. Ice, heat, less golf and some therapy has helped. The pain is not as bad now. Mean time I have continued my very physical job. I told my wife that at least my right shoulder is fine. That was three weeks ago. Now my right is jacked too. Ice, heat and worst of all, NO GOLF now for a month. As my Mom would say, "this too shall pass". Not looking for sympathy. Just figure it is my turn after decades of great health and an injury free life. I truely think it will all pass and I'll be golfing again and actually not have to take time off from work.
Cindy and I did just take a two week vacation to Oregon and rest has helped.
Back to work Saturday. Oh boy.
Sorry to hear of your
Sorry to hear of your ailments,Robert,hope you mend soon yourself. Happy that you and Cindy had a nice relaxing vacation in Oregon. Torn rotor cuff is no day in the park,had one of those about 7 years back. Thanks for the kind words,my friend.
Booger
Boog, I had my share of "boogers" today and had to invoke rule #5 more times than I'd like. Most of them were due to, you guessed it, Surge's tip today. I'm distance challenged and whenever I need that little extra the left knee goes awandering and the whole stack of building blocks pretty much collapses from there.
Because of my Scots/Irish stubborn streak I'm going back out tomorrow determined to fix it. If you hear a few loud "boogers" tomorrow it will be because I'm going to use a bit of a different take on your suggestion. I'm taking the positive approach and using "booger" when I hit the shot the way it should be hit...just my way of giving you credit. ;0)) I'm not sure you'll be able to hear me all the way down in Al, but I'll give it my best shot.
If I made you smile just once, then my job here is done. Positive thoughts sent your way to getting back out and whacking that little white ball that drives us all a bit nuts. Hang in there, pal.
TEST
Test post and Avatar check
New Site and comments
Looks like Disqus is dead for the site now. I will have to learn to follow the blog through the site, rather than the old Disqus Rss Feed pages. Progress marches on. Too early for me to make any rational decisions, being that I tend to hate change due to the comfort with the old ways, but, I am sure I will adjust and adapt as time marches onward. Otherwise, the format does look good, and I say congrats on a successful change over.
Disqus
I won't bore you with all the details but there were some enormous changes in DISQUS in the last year - they actually changed their entire business model. We made the decision to get off of DISQUS cause of those reasons added to the fact that the comment system on this website is more robust than the last one. I'm planning adding more bells and whistles to it in the future.
I could actually build a comments dashboard here on the site. I'll look into it and maybe contact a few of you to beta test it when I get it built.
How were you viewing the RSS feed from Disqus
Terry,
Were you using a 3rd party RSS reader to keep track of the comments or were you just following it on our home page? We are going to use RSS technology to display the last 10 comments like we did on the old site but the code got a bit buggy on Sunday night.
If any of you out there follow public RSS feeds through an RSS reader, would you follow ours if we can make it public? Enquiring minds want to know!
Tom J.
RSS
Some of us followed the comments on RSS.
RSS Feed is live and kicking for the comments now.
https://www.swingsurgeon.com/daily-video-tips/comments/feed.xml
RSS FEEDS
Yes, I prefer to follow the blog on a site which will list the latest or most recent comments, however 10 seems like a low number for those who cannot monitor every day. I had my old RSS Feeds in IE and FireFox set to display the last 500 comments. Rarely had to use the full measure, but there were many times when 50 or so comments had been displayed/posted since my last visit. It is/was nice to have all 50 In Order In One location.
I have also posted on yesterdays blog a couple comments in regards to the absence of the ability to change my username and the use of my full email address being presently used by the site with no means for me to change it. I also sent in a couple comments to support on the same subject.
RSS is coming
The RSS feeds will return. We have been working on them and adding more actually but I couldn't do any serious testing till we got this site 100% built out.
There will be an RSS feed for the blog posts itself and an RSS feed for the comments. Additionally I'm going to be adding some per-user RSS feeds too. So you can follow a particular via RSS.
The Blog and full comments stream will come first of course!
RSS Feed is live for comments!
https://www.swingsurgeon.com/daily-video-tips/comments/feed.xml
Thanks for your help
I have experienced some difficulty with the new site, however, at present I do believe they are in the past. I just wanted to thank the support staff for their help with my computer inefficencies, and I'm looking forward to Surge's dailies.
user name
can anybody explain how to update user name instead of email address
Click "My Account" -> "Edit"
Click "My Account" -> "Edit" Your username is in the field "Username". You can change it - the box will immediately tell you if the name is taken or not. Then type in your current password and scroll to the bottom of the page and click save.
user name
Brady
I do not have that username option on may edit page. Not sure if everyone else is missing it also
usernames
Brady, Please check ALL of my past comments to you over the past two days. I have also sent two comments/inquires to Support. The edit function is not working the same for all. In my edit there is no way to change the username. There is not even a space titled username, only email address. You are using my full email address as a username and you should not be doing that. I have no way to change it through My Account/Edit. There are others who you are also using their full email addresses as their usernames, SOMETHING IS WRONG SOMEWHERE!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is My Account Edit page, Nowhere does it mention Username
Current password
Enter your current password to change the E-mail address or Password. Request new password.
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Hey TMedley,
Hey TMedley,
Be patient with us cause we have around 200 support tickets to answer right now and I'm squashing minor bugs in a priority of how they affect the site. You will get an answer, just please be patient. The accounts were copied from the other site so this has been your username on Swingsurgeon.com since 1 Jan 2011!
WS
WS indeed.
It's fixed. You can now
It's fixed. You can now change you username.
Actually Steve, it has been
Actually Steve, it has been that way for over a year and a half. The original person that was working on the site that we let go very quickly did that cause the way in which we moved away from ppgs.com/Maven Marketing we did not have user accounts. But it's fixed now. You can change your own username. It was a permission setting not allowing it to happen.
Whatever
Good business.
Yep
That was cause you were using DISQUS. That is a separate system outside of this website. The original blogs on the site used your usernames unless you added a "Display Name". But yes, everyone email address was showing when the site originally was opened up in 1 Jan and you made a comment on the blog. DISQUS wasn't turned on till sometime in April... if memory serves me well - I actually did that.
FYI. I changed your username
FYI. I changed your username but feel free to change it again if you like.
Revised site
Initially I was not able to log on and after a note to 'support' Debbie re set things up for me. In any case I am just now able to start viewing comments and see my account and products. So far okay. I am going to be slow judging it yet.
Surges determination to once again making it a nearly daily lesson site again is to be applauded as are all the efforts and hard work of his team. I'm certainly a loyal follower and Trahan advocate so I have every confidence things will smooth out. This is about the 4th transformation Don's site has undergone. All have ultimately been improvements. Though personally I miss the days of the very beginning nearly 4 years ago when we had only easily followed written comments. Small beginnings but hugely successful. Technology moves forward and so has this site several times over. We'll all adjust and 'get with the program' soon enough.
Robert Meade