Yesterday was a good day on the lesson tee. Sunday afternoon I drove to Mt Pleasant, SC to D.J.'s house to be there a day early so we could get an early start on the lesson tee on Monday. We were preparing for him leaving to play the John Deere Classic this week and then hop on over to Turnberry, Scotland for the British Open.
D.J. took last week off, having to skip the AT&T National Tournament hosted by Tiger. He hated to miss it, but he had a good excuse. The remodeling was completed on his new house and he was moving in. My timing was perfect. I showed up when all the moving was done and had dinner with D.J. and Tup.
My plan for the lesson was to work on four things. The first was to check out his new irons. He just changed heads, going back to a head design he used in his senior year in college that his company still uses, and he changed to a new shaft brand. I wanted to make sure the shafts were the right flex so I brought two sets of his old irons he used in college for him to test against his new set. I was concerned that his new irons might be too stiff. The test went well. D.J. said the shafts felt the same and the shots with all three looked the same, so I was confident he has a good set of irons in the bag.
The second point to check was his golf swing. He has not been hitting it particularly well the past seven weeks. I knew his T – Finish was a little wide and needed tightening up. The third point was, with the British Open in two weeks, I wanted to work on hitting knock down shots to keep the ball out of the wind. Wind would likely blow hard at Turnberry, which is on the ocean. I also wanted to talk about other playing nuances of links golf on hard fast courses, hitting the knock down and run shots versus playing here on plush courses, where golf is primarily an air game.
When we talked and discuss his stats, we knew he was missing a lot of shots with all his clubs, but especially irons, to the right. Every time we talked, he would say the swing felt pretty good and he was 'real close' to hitting it real good. I reminded him that he has been saying the swing is 'real close' for months. And real close means he doesn't have it, so it is time to get serious and get the swing right.
I did not make it to the US Open, but received a report from Trahan, who was there, that it looked like his irons and woods were wide open at address. This would certainly cause all the shots to the right, as the ball goes in the direction the face is pointing at the moment of impact. I told Tup that I had seen the open face, even with his woods, at the Tour Championship and worked with DJ on squaring up the face, but it appears that it has drifted back open. Tup passed on the message and D.J. worked hard on squaring the face last week at The Travelers Championship. He actually had his clubface square, which meant I could cross that off the to-do list.
Next on the list was to fix the finish which I knew was a little wide to the left. Watching him hit a few 9 irons confirmed it was still a problem. The key was to watch more shots and see if there was an underlying setup problem or backswing issue causing the finish to wide left, with the hands finishing around the outside edge of his left shoulder rather than close to his left ear. I had him move up to hitting a 7 iron, then a 5 iron and a 3 iron and the wide left was consistent. We move up to his 3 wood, then the driver, and the wide left finish was still there. I saw a few pulls to the lef, which was easily corrected when I dropped a club across his toe line and showed him he was aiming 20 yards right. It was with the 3 wood and the driver that a setup issue jumped out at me, especially in light of his remarks complaining about hitting a lot of weak and short cut shots. I said that his ball looked way too forward as it was out from the ball of his left foot and would account for the little slide forward I was seeing in his transition. I told him to move it back at least 2 ball widths to be out from the heel. Naturally he said it looked and felt weird but he did it. I said it looked good, just at or even behind his left heel He proceeded to rip one with his patented soft draw. He hit a few more, all with a soft draw and all with better penetration and trajectory and much longer. It is amazing what a square face and staying behind the ball can do for your swing.
After hitting around 10 or 15 more drives and getting psyched up and confident, he just looked at me and asked, 'Could the ball position be off with my irons also.' I told him I was fairly confident it was forward and am now sure of it because of the woods being so far forward. We went back to a wedge, moved the ball back to the center of his stance and his impact was solid and clean, with a shallow divot, and his flight was just what the doctor (in this case, 'Surgeon') ordered. We worked the clubs all the way up to the 3 iron and his ball striking was back to normal. His trajectory was higher and penetrating and the soft draw was back. Best of all he also could easily cut it at will. And with being behind the ball at impact, he was standing up AFAP (pop-tarting) smooth and speedy to his T ' Finish, with the hands tight to his left ear without me even mentioning it yet. I did point it out and prefaced he needed to focus on keeping it there.
I noticed one last setup issue I had to address. Now that he was swinging and hitting it well, I felt it was a good time to address his grip, in particular his right hand. I saw his right hand looking a little too much on top of his left thumb and thus looking weak, which also is a cause of weak right ball flight. I asked him to walk me through the feeling of his grip pressure points in his right hand. He knows the keys to the PPGS setup and swing as well or better than any of my certified instructors, He has been hearing and doing the PPGS all his life. As soon as I asked the pressure question, he gripped and looked up at me and said in a sort of question, 'I'm pressing down with the right hand, right?' I confirmed that is what I saw and that he needed to be sure that grip pressure is firm and the fingers squeeze upward. It is critical that the right thumb, forefinger and upper part of the hand be firm, but they can NEVER push downward on the left thumb. That activates the upper forearm muscles which is bad news, because that interferes with the lower arm muscles which are the lifter muscles, as I call them.
We then went out and played 9 holes and he hit it super and had his length back with all his clubs. He actually hit a drive right on nine and just about shocked me when he placed his driver by his toes stepped back and checked his alignment. He announced that it was a good swing that hit it exactly where he was aimed. I concurred he was correct on the aim right. I added that he needed to do more of the alignment check when playing, to know that good shots to the wrong place were because of alignment and not poor swings.
I was very pleased with this session. We fixed every point I had on my to-do list and more, with the adjustment to the ball position, which really was the key factor to getting back solid ball striking, and his ball flight and distance, and adjusting the grip pressure points in his right hand. And we fine tuned his knock down shots and pitch and run up shots. His confidence was really high, as were his expectations.
We headed back to his new house and he took me for my first ride ever on his boat. Trahan passed on the ride as he needed to stay and do some work with our programmer on the PPGS website. We went out into Charleston Harbor and under the new super bridge and all the way out to Sullivan's Island. On the way back, with the tide coming in, we passed two super cargo ships heading out to sea with their decks loaded up with trailers. Passing them in DJ's 25 foot boat was like looking up at a skyscraper. When we docked I helped him clean off the boat, dock it on the lift and get it out of the water, and covered as it would be high and dry for around a month while he is off competing.
With the boat ride and docking done, we had one more re-cap of the day's lessons. With a hand shake and hug for him and Tup, I was in my car, heading home to Inman, SC and would be there in 220 miles and 3 hours.
This wasn't a good day on the lesson tee'¦It was 'GREAT' day on the Lesson Tee. The best part of the day ended up being the private, non-golf time we had on the boat ride. A father and his son out on the water just riding and talking and getting hit in the face with spray from hitting the waves '¦ it just doesn't get any better. Unless D.J. wins The Open!
The Surge!