My chiropractor has been a student of mine for a long time; he's an excellent golfer and his handicap ranges between 1 and 3. And even though we are about the same height, he can usually smoke me off the tee by 20-30 yards. Recently he asked if I could give him a check up before he played in his Club Championship because he was starting to hit his irons a little fat and he was either blocking his drives to the right or hitting pulls.
We started with his wedges and then worked our way up through his bag, hitting a few shots with each club and then moving on. I was looking for changes that would confirm my preliminary diagnosis. And somewhere around his 7-iron, he started taking more of a divot than either of us would want. By the time we got to his driver, his accuracy was pretty much gone.
As it turned out, he was doing two things wrong that were disrupting his normally flawless swing. First, he was turning way past 70 degrees and then he was letting his club go way deep into the SBG, almost to parallel. So it was back to basics!
What's the #1 premise behind the Peak Performance Golf Swing? "The setup determines the motion." In his case, I could see that both the wide turn and the hands and club not staying over the toe line were caused by the same posture flaw. He was standing too vertical, which made it difficult, if not impossible, for him to maintain dynamic balance all the way through the swing. As a result, he had to turn more to avoid losing his balance and the momentum this generated caused his arms and hands to go wide too. I had him adjust his spine angle so that he had a little more forward lean to his stance. This pushed the center of his hips back over his ankles and his knees slightly forward to a point over the balls of his feet. This is critical if you want to make a good vertical swing.
As soon as he made these simple adjustments he was back to smoking his drives the way he always does. And when we went back to check his iron shots, the improvement was even more noticeable.
So remember, the setup really does determine the motion! Proper grip, posture, stance and alignment are neccessary if you want to consistently keep it in the fairway.
Keep it vertical!
The Surge
If you can't view the YouTube video above try CLICKING HERE. You must allow popups from this site for the link to work.