A couple weeks ago Nick Momrik introduced me to GolfTec, a data-heavy golf teaching company. Last week I took my first lesson (technically a swing evaluation) and it was great. I’ve been wanting to take some golf lessons for a while but hesitated because I didn’t want to just randomly pick an instructor. GolfTec appealed to me because of how committed they are to using analytics. Also, you get a ton of materials from your lessons to go over at home…as you’re about to see.
First, the “before” swing with a 6 iron:
This is a pretty accurate representation of the swing I’ve had most of my life. To start, we walked through how I stacked up against the ideal measurements in several parts of the swing.
My setup was pretty good, but my head was too far forward in my stance — this was an intentional compensation covering up (or not) some other problems — and my takeaway was controlled too much by my arms. Most of my swing evaluation focused on correcting these two problems, and the impact those fixes had on the rest of my swing.
The first fix, getting my head behind the ball at address was a relatively easy fix, though still feels a bit awkward as I get used to the new position.
The next fix, turning my shoulders to start my backswing rather than leading with my arms, was a bit tougher. It was a classic case of having a poor ability to actually feel what you were doing. A combination of the video/data feedback and a helpful drill (holding a ball between my forearms, which you can see in the video) worked wonders.
These two fixes in the early part of my swing had some really awesome effects all the way at the top of my backswing and even in my downswing through impact.
At the beginning of the lesson my swing was controlled mostly by my hands and arms, as it’s always been, and was very steep at impact. Working on my setup and takeaway got my body in control, and moved my swing to a much flatter (better) plane. My instructor gave me a pretty surprising and fun drill to feel the effects of the flatter swing plane: hitting two balls at once with a lob wedge.
Here you can see my “after” swing, this time with a driver. The club is on a much better plane, my impact and release are a lot more controlled, and a short trip to the driving range the following day suggested that the progress so far is really great. I have another lesson tomorrow and 5 more hours of lessons that I plan to use over the next month or so. I highly recommend GolfTec if you’re thinking about taking any golf lessons; they have lots of locations all around the country, and probably at least one near every major city.
Again, thanks to Nick for recommending GolfTec to me.