scott80109

I was fortunate enough to attend a clinic with Mike Malaska last weekend. In 5 minutes, he taught me something that completely changed my golf swing - how the hips should work. I've worked with other instructors, read books and magazines, watched a million YouTube videos. They all say similar things...."Fire the hips". "Rotate the hips". "Get your hips towards the target". Following that advice just caused more swing flaws, like sliding too much, rotating my hips too early, rotating incorrectly by focusing on my trail side hip/leg. All of that was wrong. Mike basically did with me what he does to Eric Cogorno in the video below. He stood behind me, and moved my hips for me. It was a completely different feeling. Using the straight-line force from pushing my left heel into the ground moved my left hip back and up. To be honest, I had never before felt that in my golf swing. It was more like a baseball swing, where you plant your front foot, and push back. And that's what Mike teaches...that the golf swing should be using the same movement patterns that you use in other sports like baseball and tennis. From my first swing, I hit the ball better. Solid. Effortless. Repeatable. With every club in the bag. That one move fixed my issues with swing plane, over the top, and swing path. I still have some work to do with club face control, but my misses seem to be a lot tighter now. I hope this lasts, because I'm hitting the ball better than I ever have in my 20 years of playing golf. I'm looking forward to taking it out to the course, and hopefully seeing it translate to some lower scores. Watch this video, and see if you are moving your hips like this. It could be a game changer for you, as well. He also gave me a good drill that isn't discussed in the video. He had me tee up a ball, pre-set my impact position by pushing my hip back with my heel and holding it there while hitting shots with my 7 iron.

I like having both. I use ShotScope to track everything, so having the GPS watch on my hand is good for a quick yardage. A lot of the course I play have pretty severe elevation changes, so the laser helps with that, and for getting exact distances to various targets. I also use The Grint app on my phone on occasion. It helps to see an overlay of the hole, and to be able to choose what club to hit to get the yardage I want for the next shot. It all just depends on the pace of play. If we're moving along and not waiting to hit shots, then I'll just use GPS. If it's a 5 hour round, I'll use the other stuff to kill time while waiting to hit.

What models were you hitting? I'm just wondering if the distance difference was due to lofts. The Apex 7i is 30.5*. The MP-20 MB is 34*, and the other MP-20 models are 32*. I'm in the market for some news irons, so I'm curious what others are learning. I hit the Apex irons at a demo day over the summer. I just didn't care for the feel. Could have been the shafts, though. They were pretty limited on shaft options. I'm going in for a fitting in a couple of weeks, and will be looking at Mizunos. I hit some MP-18s the other day, and they felt fantastic. I haven't had Mizunos since the MP-60s, and I am missing them. Might have to give the Apex another shot when I find the correct shaft.

I bought a cheap one off Amazon. The ball is great, but the lanyard sucks. Might have to pick up the real thing from Tour Striker.

What is your favorite training aid, and what swing flaw did you get it to help with? I have struggled forever with over swinging, and tried everything to correct it. It has been such a struggle that even a lob wedge could get past parallel. I finally found something that has helped tremendously - the Gabe Golf swing trainer. It is a 7 iron with ball bearings in the shaft. You swing it to the top, and pause while the balls loudly slide down, then swing through. It has changed my swing dramatically. Better top position and better tempo. It really helped break my swing into 2 distinct part - the backswing, and the downswing. The pause gives me time to get to the proper top position, then clear my mind and only focus on the downswing. It's like the freezer drill where you freeze at the top, and I suppose that would work if you had a mirror. But with hearing the balls drop, it allows me to focus on the feel more than a visual. It's pretty amazing that after a few hundred swings with it, I can hit it farther and straighter from a paused position than I can from a normal swing. It added about 5-10 yards to my 7i carry, which was already at 185. I might have to adopt the Hideki pause in my normal swing! Anyway, I just wanted to share that with anyone suffering from the same problem, and find out from others if they have any similar stories with training aids that helped them transform their swing.

I have had mine for about a month, and have mixed feelings about it. For pitches and short wedge shots, I love it. It really forces you to rotate correctly. I was pretty excited after going through the first 4 or 5 protocols. Unfortunately, once I progressed to trying to make a full swing, I didn't find it helpful at all. It seems pretty much impossible for me to make solid contact swinging full speed with it attached. My scores actually started going up after using the Planemate. I'm sure it's not the fault of the training aid, but the fault of my bad swing. I tend to swing all of my clubs long...to parallel like the driver...and it makes it difficult with the band attached. My next purchase was a Smart Ball a couple of weeks ago. Now THAT really helped my game a lot by helping me to swing a little shorter, more compact, and in sync. I used the Smart Ball for 2 days, then shot my best round of the season (a 76). Maybe I'll get the Planemate back out and try it with the Smart Ball.

Looks like an alignment stick cover.