Matt 4-L
New
I made the six hour drive down from Michigan to Louisville for my two hour lesson with Brian. I arrived a couple hours early and found some lunch and some time to stretch out my legs and back. My first impression of Brian, as I watched him finish up his previous lesson, he was definitely a range pro, he looked as if he had spent a lot of time in the New Orleans sun. One of the first things I noticed was that he was not wearing sunglasses, nothing I hate more than taking a lesson from a pro who doesn’t remove his sunglasses so you can see their eyes when they are talking to you, but enough of my pet peeves.
We shook hands and asked me about my game and he pulled a seven iron and told me to start hitting some balls, I hit several balls and put up decent numbers on the trackman. One of my issues is not being consistent so he said lets take some slow video and see why you are unable to be consistent with that move. Brian took some video and looked it over and noticed right off the lack of hip and upper body rotation through impact, which I was aware off from some lessons I took last year from a top rated pro in Michigan. The only problem is even though the Michigan pro came to the same conclusion as why I was being inconsistent he couldn’t fix me in three one hour lessons. First in my setup he had me stand just a tad taller, nothing major there but on the backswing he made a major change, at least it felt like it to me and that was the dreaded early hip turn. Now if anybody knows about my golf journey, which is basically I learning about the golf swing and teaching it to myself and one thing I have hung onto is the very little hip turn in the backswing. But coming all this way to get a lesson from Brian I have decided to sell out to what ever he wants me to do. At first it felt like I was moving all over the place and swaying like crazy, Brian assured me I wasn’t and grabbed the camera and told me to take another swing, I obliged him and then he showed it to me and I was shocked, it looked very orthodox. That was all he did for my backswing was have me turn my hips early, a more internal type of rotation and that fixed my tendency to have a flat shoulder turn because of my holding my hips back and put me in what he called a “text book” type of position at the top. This happened in the first ten minutes of the lesson.
We then worked on getting my body more open at impact, I believe it’s a bit of physical limitation because I don’t have lots of mobility in my hips, I can not stand with my left foot perpendicular to the target and have my hips face the target with out my foot slipping or turn out a bit, I need to work on stretching that out, if anyone has an exercise specifically for that, I am all ears (Floyd). Anyway I cheated my foot out a smidge to help facilitate the move and started getting it.
The next thing we worked on was my path and I was swinging a bit out to right field and Brian had me do the famous drill where you miss the ball in front of you and hit one way up in front left and try to hit a cut, the one he says only one guy has done on the first swing. To my credit I did hit the second ball on the first swing but didn’t hit the cut shot. So as you all know that is basically a drill to teach you carry and it worked great and soon I was hitting little hold shots that fell off to the right and I started to leave the face a little open.
Finally the last piece of the puzzle was my follow through, I was coming out of impact to upright and Brian wanted me to stay back and put the club on approximately a 45° angle from the ground, ala Hogan at Merion. He said the only thing non tour like in my swing was the release, I was still doing my hold on don’t go left follow through. We worked on it for a bit and then hit some drivers to look at the numbers and I already had a positive angle of attack and put some of the best trackman numbers down.
We went over to the chipping green and he had a look at my front edge and mid sole chip and messed around on there for awhile then called it an afternoon.
My impressions of my lesson were very positive and will likely schedule another in the future. What really impressed me the most about the lesson was his plan, he didn’t state it but I could tell he knew exactly the way he was going to get me to do what he wanted, no head scratching at all going on. I know the couple of things I need to work on and only I can do that part but I now have a pattern that I can feel confident in and only time will tell and my tournament scores. Matt.
We shook hands and asked me about my game and he pulled a seven iron and told me to start hitting some balls, I hit several balls and put up decent numbers on the trackman. One of my issues is not being consistent so he said lets take some slow video and see why you are unable to be consistent with that move. Brian took some video and looked it over and noticed right off the lack of hip and upper body rotation through impact, which I was aware off from some lessons I took last year from a top rated pro in Michigan. The only problem is even though the Michigan pro came to the same conclusion as why I was being inconsistent he couldn’t fix me in three one hour lessons. First in my setup he had me stand just a tad taller, nothing major there but on the backswing he made a major change, at least it felt like it to me and that was the dreaded early hip turn. Now if anybody knows about my golf journey, which is basically I learning about the golf swing and teaching it to myself and one thing I have hung onto is the very little hip turn in the backswing. But coming all this way to get a lesson from Brian I have decided to sell out to what ever he wants me to do. At first it felt like I was moving all over the place and swaying like crazy, Brian assured me I wasn’t and grabbed the camera and told me to take another swing, I obliged him and then he showed it to me and I was shocked, it looked very orthodox. That was all he did for my backswing was have me turn my hips early, a more internal type of rotation and that fixed my tendency to have a flat shoulder turn because of my holding my hips back and put me in what he called a “text book” type of position at the top. This happened in the first ten minutes of the lesson.
We then worked on getting my body more open at impact, I believe it’s a bit of physical limitation because I don’t have lots of mobility in my hips, I can not stand with my left foot perpendicular to the target and have my hips face the target with out my foot slipping or turn out a bit, I need to work on stretching that out, if anyone has an exercise specifically for that, I am all ears (Floyd). Anyway I cheated my foot out a smidge to help facilitate the move and started getting it.
The next thing we worked on was my path and I was swinging a bit out to right field and Brian had me do the famous drill where you miss the ball in front of you and hit one way up in front left and try to hit a cut, the one he says only one guy has done on the first swing. To my credit I did hit the second ball on the first swing but didn’t hit the cut shot. So as you all know that is basically a drill to teach you carry and it worked great and soon I was hitting little hold shots that fell off to the right and I started to leave the face a little open.
Finally the last piece of the puzzle was my follow through, I was coming out of impact to upright and Brian wanted me to stay back and put the club on approximately a 45° angle from the ground, ala Hogan at Merion. He said the only thing non tour like in my swing was the release, I was still doing my hold on don’t go left follow through. We worked on it for a bit and then hit some drivers to look at the numbers and I already had a positive angle of attack and put some of the best trackman numbers down.
We went over to the chipping green and he had a look at my front edge and mid sole chip and messed around on there for awhile then called it an afternoon.
My impressions of my lesson were very positive and will likely schedule another in the future. What really impressed me the most about the lesson was his plan, he didn’t state it but I could tell he knew exactly the way he was going to get me to do what he wanted, no head scratching at all going on. I know the couple of things I need to work on and only I can do that part but I now have a pattern that I can feel confident in and only time will tell and my tournament scores. Matt.
