First Lesson w/ New Instructor

TR1PTIK · August 26, 2019

A little backstory to begin... I've taken probably a dozen or more lessons over the years from the Head PGA Professional at my club which is a muni course. The last lesson I had with him was in November of last year. At the beginning of this year, it was announced that he would be the Parks and Rec Director for the city (something I was rooting for him to get). Naturally, the new role came with additional responsibilities and he made the wise decision to enlist some help in the form of a Certified PGA Instructor.

This past Friday, I had the pleasure of working with the new instructor (his name is Taylor) for the first time. It went really well.

First off, I was pleased to hear that he had no desire to change my swing (significantly). While I'm always open to any changes that make me a better golfer, I have put a considerable amount of time into making a better golf swing and his comments confirmed that the work has paid off. He did however note a mild cupping of the left wrist and a slightly open club face at the top. This was quickly and easily remedied by setting the wrists early in the takeaway akin to how DJ does it.

From there, we began to work on my impact position. Through impact, I tend to keep the left arm tucked into my side and use a lot of face rotation which actually causes me to release a bit early. I've known this was an issue for quite some time and it has been the most difficult thing to change. Without having to really make any changes other than being more thoughtful about how (and when) I released the club, we began to see progress in this area too. I had a brief Q&A with him about how to work on this at home in the living room and clarify exactly what I should be looking for when I do my drills.

Next, I asked him to look at my short game technique as this is an area where I've really struggled off and on. It quickly became apparent that I was once again rotating the club quite a bit through impact as though I were hitting a stock shot. This has always made distance and trajectory difficult to control, but again with a brief discussion and a subtle change in technique at impact, I was hitting the ball crisply with a controlled distance and feeling sole of the club work through the ground like it's supposed to.

I continued to ask him a few questions as we wrapped up and in 45 minutes to 1 hour, we were done! While I still have lots of work to put in for any of the changes to actually take effect, I feel like we covered quite a bit of ground in a short amount of time. I'm really excited to take my game to the next level with these changes!

If any of my fellow spies are within driving distance of Carthage, MO, I'd highly recommend you schedule a lesson with Taylor and see what he can do for you! https://www.carthagegolfcourse.com/golf-instruction/

Edited August 26, 2019 by TR1PTIK