Nuts and Bolts...
Now, remember, I said I changed his poorly constructed strong grip to a professional style, very slightly stronger than neutral grip.
I have nothing against strong grips, per se, but if a golfer has a good basic swing, and a severely closed-to-the-path clubface, I will try a grip where I keep the grip under the heel pad, but have the clubface more matching the back of the left hand.
This doesn't work all the time for a particular golfer, but more often than not, it INSTANTLY presents the ball with a less closed-to-the-path clubface.
In this case, it did right away. His first few shots with the new grip were solid pushes, an average of 6-to-7° inside out with a basically matching face.
So, now we have a push, so I had him try to start the ball slightly left of an intermediate target, which he did almost right away, delivering a near zeroed out path, but with a 5-7° open face.
Why did the face not "move left with the path"?
Because out of the same stance, he had to actively rotate his hips and torso more, and this activity, and the change of sequence from a "hips facing the ball at impact" to a "hips past the ball and point 45°-ish to the left at impact" made the face more open to the path.
With his old grip, he cupped his wrist at the top, and retained the bend in the wrist through the ball. (he had forward lean, but a bent left wrist because the bend was UPWARD TWOARD HIS ARM, not forward toward the target.
So now, we had to teach him to square up the face.
Interestingly, most folks who have never seen me teach think I flatten everyone's wrist at the top, and have the golf apply twistaway and limit the left arm flying wedge rotation on the backswing to help the golf square up the club.
A weaker golfer, or a bigger slicer, MAYBE. But this ex-pro baseballer, who will be scratch if we continue to work, needed to learn to square the club up in a more "TOUR" manner. So we taught him to increase the distance between his grip logo and his watch face, and rotate the back of the left hand downward toward the ball, and continue this whole arm rotation to a "catch the raindrops" position just post follow-through.
It worked like a charm, moving the face more toward the path.
The last degree or two came from continuing that left arm rotation to a "hang the dry cleaning" left thumb under/butt of the club at the target at last parallel location, on the way to the finish.
