Ten Week Golf Transformation for My Brother Adam Waters

Today we began the journey of my bother Adam Waters. Adam had some interest in golf when he was younger but never took it too seriously as he was mainly focused on cricket and tennis.

Adam's ultimate goal is to break 100 after 10 weeks. This is a fairly tall goal after not playing for more than 20 years but Adam is very committed with him prioritising practice, on course play and lesson time each week. The recommended minimum requirement for getting better is two small buckets (40 balls per bucket) each week along with a lesson each week. If you can add a game as well then this will speed up the process.

Adam is quite an athletic guy and has always had good hand eye co-ordination. What my goal will be is to use athleticism whilst making small understandable changes to his swing. The key is to give the client a couple of things to work on during the lesson and then allowing them to continue to master them during practice.

These couple of things will actually be major influences of the swing. Sometimes this can be a grip change, changing swing path or head movement for eg. The key is identify what is causing the major fault and and then communicating this to the student in an understandable way along with them adopting a drill that targets that issue directly.

In Adam's initial lesson I want to keep it as simple as possible and just want him to be able to use more of his athleticism whilst hitting shots. In this first lesson I identified that his left shoulder was a little too far forward of his left hip at set-up, as well his posture is a little too upright with excessive knee bend.

In terms of his actual swing I noticed that he wasn't turning as well as he could with his body and that the head tended to stay down too long through the hitting area. (Due mainly from cricket and swing concepts).

What I then instructed Adam to do was adjust his set-up so his left shoulder was in line with his left hip, spine tilted at 45 degrees with little knee bend, and finally turning his hips more and allowing his head to follow the ball through impact.

Following the ball through impact and not staying down was the biggest eye opener for Adam, as like many golfer thinks they should keep their head down. This is in fact detrimental to the swing as it restricts the body from moving through the ball. The body needs to move through the ball with the head so that maximum power can be unleashed.. The more you keep your head down, the more the ball tends to go hard left as the hands get too involved and 'flip' left. When the head is released, the balls will go straighter as the body swings through with the arms.

I'm really looking forward to the next lesson with Adam and am excited to see where the journey takes him!!