Dan Whittaker lesson review.

So about my lesson the other day with Dan Whittaker. Well to start with I was initially a wee bit concerned that a 4 hour lesson would be over kill, perhaps not good value for money, I mean what if I did not get along with the guy?

In hindsight I need not have worried. It was worth every penny and I could have spent another few hours there with Dan quite happily. Although I was tired afterwards, that was as much mental tiredness as physical because there was a lot to take in.

The day started with me warming up and Dan filming a few swings from different angles and we talked about my game. I was hitting the ball OK so was quite interested to see what he would say. We then went up to the teaching studio and got to work. I was very happy to see that everything we did was recorded and that I was to be given a copy of the lesson to study afterwards. This is a critical thing because there is no way you could remember everything over the two hours we spent working to understand my swing,what needed to change, why and how.

The first thing was my grip. It was full of holes and not functioning as a unit, Dan correctly predicted the wear on gloves that I get, he also recommended thicker grips to suit my hands. Essentially I had to both strengthen my grip and make it one unit. As with everything Dan shows you real examples of what he wants to see via video or pictures of his students doing it. Not some pro who you can't really relate to, but real blokes who have taken lessons right there in the studio before you.

We then went onto my swing. The good news is that I do a lot of things already pretty good and not a whole lot had to change. Dan is quick to praise what's good not just pick apart the bad.

My set up and posture was hurting me badly, slightly twisting my spine angle. Because of that my right hip went high on the back swing with my straight right leg and I lost posture, pushing my upper body to much over the ball. Then in the down swing I don't transition, instead I spin out my hips, leaving weight on my right side and causing me get narrow and have to scoop the ball through impact. Seeing it clearly in slow mo was a bit of a ego killer!

Dan explained why I shank short shots, why I sometimes hit fat or thin's and why my shot shape was unpredictable.

And what do I do well? Apparently I set the club great on the back swing, on plane, layed off with width and in perfect synch with arms in front of my body at the top.

The changes I needed to make were in mainly in set-up, leg/hip work and then the big one was foot work and transitioning to my left side. When I made these changes something magical happened. I got a solid strike with visible extension through the ball and my scoop vanished.

Obviously this is a work in progress and a lot of practice is needed to make real changes, but wow just getting a bit to my left side gave me a wonderful solid, natural draw that penetrated instead of just launching airborne like before. the most amazing thing is that it feels like you actually controlled the shot rather than before when I never knew what result to expect off the club face. It's hard to explain but it feels great to think you have some real control over the ball flight.

Dan gave me a lot of drills to do to help ingrain the changes I need and the results I have already glimpsed just motivate me to do the drills and put in the work. I still have a good way to go with my swing, I'm still spinning out and leaving my arms behind, especially on short shots which can equal the dreaded shank. But I feel at last I have the knowledge and the road map to get to where I want my swing to be. And the best thing is it's not a million miles away!

A lot of stuff from Dan can be found on the Gotham Golf blog (click his name in the list of tags towards the bottom right of the blog) and on Golfwrx's instruction forum where he goes by the name  DFW1500.

I'm including a short clip from my lesson file here to give you a taste of what it is like.

Watershed lesson

Wow, what a day.

I'm really on cloud nine, because today I hit the golf ball in a totally different way, a solid compressing strike resulting in a driving penetrating, natural draw that both felt and looked class. Night and day when comparing it to my old scoopy high flying ball flight.

How did this miracle happen?

Well I had a 4 hour lesson with a great teaching pro

Not only did he explain what I was doing in my old swing, but he explained what I had to change and why along with how to change it and why! In fact the lesson was also night versus day compared to any of my other lessons from the past. I now have a 1 hour video file with my personal analysis, drills and examples on it to review at my leisure. For the first time I feel that I understand my own swing a little bit, understand why I shanked, why I had the high ball flight and what was causing me issues. Most importantly I have a clear path to work towards what is IMO a great way to hit the ball.

Damn, if I can hit it like today even half the time I will have a permanent grin on my face, not only was the strike so solid, but so in control and repeatable. I feel like I could go out and nail shot after shot almost exactly where I want it to go. Is this what single figure golfers feel like? I hope so :)

I'm still getting my head around all that has happened today, but as a taster, this is a slow mo of a 7iron after the instruction.

Swing and the short game

Best quote by a teaching pro I have ever read is this;

    'The best approach to improvement is to combine your swing practice with your short game work. 'The vast majority of swing work can be done with a sand wedge. You use the same swing motion with a wedge as all clubs, just with a different set up. If you cannot flight a sand wedge properly with consistent divots, trajectory and solidness then what makes you think you can hit a five iron better? Learn to work on things in your golf swing with a sand wedge. Become proficient at adjusting the set up to hit a knock down, then hit a floater, then a cut spinner, then a knock down draw, etc. If you can do it with a sand wedge you can do it with a driver.'



This philosophy is now what I'm basing my practice time on. Today was all about 40-60 yard pitch shots with a 54 degree wedge. For perhaps the first time ever I started coming into the ball from the inside and shallow. I just finally 'got it' and as a result I spent a happy 2 and a half hours just hitting magical spinning pitch shots. Controlling everything with my body turn and hips. Not even one came off the shank. and indeed I started to open my stance as the ball was pushing out slightly to the right instead of  the left :D

In another development I have contacted the new golf pro I mentioned in my last post and arranged to spend 4 hours with him on Friday. This will be a very expensive investment in my swing, but I'm content that it will be money better spent long term than getting new equipment. I'm very interested to work with him and intrigued to see what I bring away from such a long time under personal instruction.

New lesson, (swing video).

So I had my lesson yesterday, I was there an hour and a half early, not through design but because of my work schedule getting done early. So I had a lot of time to kill and hit balls to keep active.

By the time Mark got to me I was actually a bit fatigued, but I was still hitting the ball ok. We talked about my game and what I was working on, then I showed him my swing and with it the fade. I hit a 7 iron, then a 5 iron which I absolutely flushed; don’t you always find it the way, that you swing much better when a pro is watching you? Then finally I miss hit one a bit thin and pushy so he saw my bad shot too. I told him about my divots all pointing left.

Then he said something quite interesting, ‘normally I can tell after a swing or two which side a players going to miss, either they slice it or hook it. With you I can’t tell, you’re liable to miss both way’

We talked about my release and my getting my weight through to connect with ball first, he said that particularly on getting the ball first and not leaning back with weight on the right side, I had made progress and was half there but with a bit more work to be done.

Then he had me try and diagnose what I thought the problem was. It came down to path and release. He then was very honest and said, ‘look, what I’m going to have you change will probably mess up your game big time until you ingrain the change, it will feel very alien to you, is that ok?’ Then we went up to the video studio to see my swing.

My swing in the video net was a miss hit but he said it was fine and that it showed the issue clearly regardless, so we sat down and reviewed the video.

Basically I have a very flat swing, a bit like Matt Kuchar, on the down the line view you could clearly see the top of my right shoulder above my left arm, I swing around my body rather than back and through. The follow through is also way flat, mirroring the plane of my back swing. The problem with this is that while the club is already so inside at the top, I somehow manage to follow the flat plane around my body rather than releasing my hands and the club down the line like Kuchar does.

Mark pointed out that I would find no video of a pro swinging through that flat and said that it must lead to inconsistency and lack of balance, which it does. He said he was impressed that I hit the ball so well with that swing plane and that my hand eye co-ordination must be pretty good to compensate.

The fix he suggested was unexpected; he wants me to go on the explanar swing plane trainer. He showed me how to set it up for me and we took a few swings on it, it showed up one aspect perfectly, in my follow through I was holding the club off and therefore not following the plane of the explanar, Mark showed me that I was essentially hitting cover drives instead of releasing the club head. That is why this year I’m fading, where as last year I was pulling. I have stopped releasing the club head.

He invited me to use the machine as often as I wished and could, to ingrain the feeling of the correct swing plane. Unfortunately with the machine being 50 minutes’ drive away it’s going to be difficult to get to it often. Added to that is the fact that he and the machine are leaving at the end of the month.

Now I’m not sure whether to implement his changes or wait for the new pro to be installed so I can at least get constancy of message in the future.

Divots

After doing an hour of emails this morning at work I escaped for an hour of practice at the local municipal pitch n put course. I also went last night after work and got in an hours play in the twilight (first time this year that it’s been light long enough). These are my first visits up there since last summer; it’s still shut officially as the season runs April to October. However the gate is wide open and dog walkers are making good use of the site so I had no hesitation in using the course.

There is also no question of me damaging the place, it is not looked after even at the best of times, there are holes dug in the greens, bald patches of sand on the greens where the sun killed the surface last summer, in fact it’s a right sad mess but it provides an almost ideal practice area. You are able to hit off grass into a target green and with so many tee and green options you can vary distance and targets at will, in fact play any short game shot you can imagine. Once the summer comes they let the rough grow to shin high, then practice becomes less useful as you spend more time searching for balls in the grass than hitting them, but at the moment it beats the driving range by a country mile!

I took a pitching wedge and 20 balls and set up for a hundred yard pitch shot into one of the greens. I was working on my swing as I have done over the winter, keeping the flex in my right leg, setting the club on plane at the top keeping the connection of my arms/body, then getting my weight through the ball and releasing the club so I take a divot after the ball.

I was doing it very well and had the satisfaction of seeing almost all my divots starting where the ball had been and extending forward. I only hit maybe two slightly fat.

Actually I was so intent on this, that I wasn't really paying attention to where the balls were going only briefly remarking that I was seeing a lot of fade for a pitching wedge and that they were going high and not that far. Eventually I got more interested in the ball flight and to my dismay found that they were all short high fades. I then finally had that eureka moment when I looked at my divots again.

Now this is the first time in months I have been able to hit off grass and take a divot. While they were all showing ball first contact, they were also all heading badly left. I tried hitting deliberately in to out, but nope, divots still pointing left! In fact no matter what I tried I could not move my swing path L.

I have to face the fact that somehow in changing my swing over the winter I have ingrained a very significant out to in move that I never noticed while hitting on mats. Without seeing any video it’s almost a dead cert that I'm coming over the top badly. By thinking back over my range sessions I'm seeing a fade with most of my clubs now, so I have to assume that my swing is OTT and out to in with all my irons.

Time for another lesson to sort out my swing path!

I think I’m going to go back to the expensive video pro based at the local academy, he coaches a European tour player so he must know his business. There is a wait to get to see him but he has done good things to my swing in the past and I need to see what I’m doing wrong on screen.

Until I have had my lesson I’m not going to worry about it and just keep doing what I have been doing. I mean it’s not all bad, I am hitting the ball more solid than ever, hopefully the last piece of my swing puzzle will be fixing the OTT move and getting my path back on line.

lesson 1

(April 2008)

A Tuesday evening saw my first ever lesson and third ever time at the range. The assistant pro had me waft at a few balls and then checked my grip. that was fine apparently, all good.

Next he said keep your left arm straight when you swing back, so I did.

Thwack... Joy I hit it and it actually went straight.

That was pretty much it, 15 minuets one or two pieces of advice and him watching me waft at the ball. £12.50 please and thanks very much!

In hindsight it was not the greatest first lesson but I was too happy to know that or care. One or two good looking shots had been the result of the lesson and I was further bitten by the golf bug.

Now I was itching to get my hands on some clubs.