My friend Harold had called me a few times trying to get together for a lesson at The Golf Club at Star Fort. He was hitting some awful golf shots. He said he was driving the ball pretty well but his irons were ugly. He was hitting everything from chunky pull hooks to toe high weak and short bleeders to the right. He said he was making double bogies galore from good drives in the fairway and actually ended one round on the 7th hole. Harold was desperate and in need of some Surgery. So after the fitting and my lesson with Billy, it was Harold’s turn.

Just as he had said, Harold hit a really good drive right down the middle off the first tee. And just as he had said about his iron play, the awful shots he described were not an exaggeration as I witnessed with his second shot. His 7 iron to the first hole was a low pull hook that missed the green way left and short. He turned to me and said with a mix of despair and hope, that shots like that have been killing him for weeks. Fixing Howard was easy and painless.

”The setup determines the motion” was the cure for his problem. His setup was awful. He sucked the club inside and with a shut clubface. His loss of balance after impact and failing to get to a T – Finish was added proof. Normally, Harold’s big problem, like most golfers, was aiming right, as that was the focus of our last get together. This time his setup problem was his weight distribution. Harold had his feet way to under his hips, which put the weight way back on his heels. This works for making a rotational swing where the arms are swinging around the body. But Harold is a vertical swinger who keeps his arms and club in front of his body and lifts his arms and club to swing to ¾ with the club standing straight up at 12:00 o’clock at the top of the backswing.

The problem a vertical swinger encounters when they setup with their feet to under their hips and weight on their heels is that they cannot take the club straight back into the mitt and lift it straight up the tree. No matter how much they concentrate, and try, they can’t do it. They can’t because if they do, they will immediately fall backwards. So, the “Balance Mechanism” in the brain (“Balance Buddy” as I call it) has one job and that is to keep you standing up even if you foolishly get into poor posture and still try to swing.

The Balance Buddy, to keep you standing, makes you suck the club inside, likely over rotating and your backswing is deep into the Sacred Burial Ground. From there it is one compensation after another, all the way to the finish, in an effort to keep you standing. The only problem is that the Balance Buddy does not care about the swing and shot results. It cares only about its sole task of keeping you standing up. Harold’s Balance Buddy was working overtime and succeeding in keeping him standing which was good. What were not good were his golf shots. The good news was that the cure was simple, easy and quick.

I showed Harold his feet were too under his hips and thus his weight was on his heels by having him address a ball as he had been doing. Once in this setup, I took my 4 iron and I placed it against his right hip at the seam in his pant leg, which is right behind the pocket. With the club hanging straight down to the ground, the shaft was around 2 inches behind his heel which is proof positive his weight was way back on his heels.

With a proper athletically ready setup the weight is centered over the arches. The shaft will hang down beside the right ankle. This posture check is simple, fast and easy and can be done by players themselves. Just get into your address position, and while maintaining your address, take your club in your right hand and reach around and touch it to your hip at the back of your pocket at the seam. Then look down and see what part of your foot the shaft is touching or beside of. Another easy “can’t miss” test for a player is just feel your feet when you waggle. If you can pick up your toes to where the ball of your foot comes off the ground…your weight is on your heels. Weight over the arches and you can’t lift the ball of the foot off the ground. And guess what, you can’t lift your heels either because your weight is centered.

So, I got Howard back into an athletically ready posture, with his weight centered over his arches. A shaft check from the hip proved it was hanging at his ankle. With the same club he just pull hooked left of the first green, he hit it solid and straight, right on the center of the green, just like smooth swinging Old Howard or is Howard of Old?

The Surge!

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