Visit to the Swamp Part 3a (Thursday 16th November 2006)
Today was the day that I was due to meet the one and only Yoda himself. Lynn had spent the previous 3 days in Orlando doing a private clinic with Brian Gay and Verizon. But all credit to Lynn he said that he would be back in the Swamp by the Thursday (he had drove back to Marietta from Orlando during the Wednesday evening and Thursday morning)
Martee and I had gone down earlier to the Swamp to warm up as I was not due to meet up with Lynn till about midday. That warm up session was interesting as I was still processing the information from the previous afternoon with Ted (Martee and I discussed what Ted and I had worked on the previous evening just to make sure that my thick noodle received and processed it correctly!) Some bad shots here and there but had some good ones too but the main reason was to get ready and warmed up for when Lynn turned up.
When Lynn arrived back in the Swamp, we had a chat in the range’s clubhouse about what I was looking for from the 2 days of work and what my goals were with regards to my game. I was a bit surprised when Lynn asked if I had any professional aspirations but sadly being 29, my dreams of taking the Tour by storm are long gone.. (Champions Tour maybe…….21 years should be enough to get my game ready right??
) I told Lynn that all I wanted was to improve my game and to be the best player that I can be. I did however tell Lynn that I was there with an open mind and that my golfing brain was going to be a sponge, I was ready to soak in all the information that Lynn was willing to share with me with regards to the Golfing Machine.
So after that quick chat, we headed off to the short game area to work on the fundamentals and the basics.
Even before a ball was hit, Yoda began the session with him describing as well as demonstrating the flying wedges, extensor action, plane angle and much much more!!
I would recommend that if you do go down to the Swamp that you take your camcorder with you (along with plenty of tapes and back up batteries….between the 3 of us, we managed to get just about everything on tape. Hopefully, with the help of Martee, I will be able to get them all onto CD in a format that I can view) in that one afternoon there were plenty of little nuggets of information that will lead to many 'a-ha' moments down the line.
Lynn is one of the best teachers that I have the privilege to work with; he is a wonderful communicator and motivator. One of the best things about Lynn’s teaching is that he demonstrates everything that he explains to the student. The Golfing Machine focuses on precision, as does Lynn, so when you do something right he will say so and you really have.
So we worked on Basic Motion for the afternoon, made sure that I could execute the Basic Motion properly and that I could do it with all three hinge actions (Horizontal, Angled and Vertical) Since I am a Swinger of the golf club, the Horizontal Hinging felt more natural to me but since we were there to learn, Yoda got me to do all three. Vertical Hinging still gives me the fits, but after a few tries I managed to get it right J
By working on Basic Motion, we could see what needed to be worked on in my game. It was amazing to see that all the faults that I had in my Basic Motion (additional right wrist bend, flipping, lack of extensor action, dragging the club back too far inside and lack of proper execution of the Horizontal Hinge) would be the common flaws all the way through my game. I admit my short game is not the best in the world, but with all this new information, I feel that come next summer, I can improve a lot.
A drill that Yoda had me doing was to set up normally with the ball but then turn my body to face the target and then I had to hit balls using this stance, this taught me more about the Horizontal Hinge and also forced me to hit down on the ball instead of helping it up into the air. Looks strange but it does work!! He also got me tracing the plane line with my right forearm, this fixed my age old habit of dragging the club too far back inside.
After the session on the practice area, we had a quick break before heading out to the mats to work on some Acquired Motion shots (the grass range was closed due to the 10 hours worth of rain the previous day)
Again with Acquired Motion, you could see the common theme that ran through my game with the flipping, addition wrist bend and so on.
The first thing that Yoda changed was my set up (see previous post) whilst Ted got me to go into Impact Fix to get my ideal set up, Yoda had another idea. He got me to set up with a little more weight on my left foot, flared out my toes (left about 30* and the right about 20*) to aid my turn on the way back and through the swing. It was almost like setting up in Impact Fix (I think its Special Address or Fix)
Also by lowering my right shoulder my right forearm was immediately softened and moved more inline with the shaft. Now I looked more like a golfer at address and as Yoda says 'I don’t think you can miss a shot from there…'
One thing that was noticed with my Acquired Motion was that I was not letting my head 'swivel' through the shot, I had become a bit too 'ball bound' so we worked to get rid of that so that I could let the body do its job and let the motion of the swing flow more freely.
Like the Basic Motion a lot of time was spent on making sure that I was not adding anymore wrist bend to the right wrist as I took the club back and on tracing the club back on a straight line as I had a habit (in both my Basic Motion and Acquired Motions) of dragging the club back behind me. Add a bit of extensor action and whola! I finally had some structure to my swing and my Acquired Motion swing was getting better and better.
Once Yoda was sufficiently happy that I was grasping the concepts involved with the Basic and Acquired Motions, we moved onto the Total Motion……….(more in Part 3b)
Alex
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