Lesson #139 – July 9th, 2020

We are still at Knight’s Play due to Coronavirus. Patrick really worked on the downswing today, much more so than the backswing. We are continuing a full 10 minutes to start the lesson on the backswing but now we are putting a lot of effort into the downswing.

After getting to the top, I am to establish pressure on the ball of my left foot and the heel of the inside of my left foot and turn under with my right core. Once I am halfway down, I need to allow my shoulder to really go down while keeping the club behind me. Patrick has to hold my right shoulder as it does down, under and through. If he didn’t hold it, I would likely fall over. It helps me feel my upper body getting through the ball. I have a tendency to fall back with my upper body at impact and it should actually move forward and toward the target.

I am still trying to get the feel of this as my right shoulder has never been this low at impact. The lower I can get my right shoulder the more I can allow the club to stay behind my body and lag. It is going to take months to get used to this and I have a ton of stretching I will need to do before I can get my shoulder down and through at impact. Some of that will be core strength to keep my posture and some will be flexibility in my obliques and lats.

The more we go through this process, the more I realize that I had absolutely no flexibility for the golf swing when I started. I really need to work on stretching the “length” of my sides. In the past, I pulled with my right side on the way back and pulled with my left side on the follow through. This means the muscles never lengthened. This is why I couldn’t hit the ball far at all. At the top of the backswing, my right side should be long. At impact and beyond impact, my left side should be long. Good luck telling that to the common amateur.

UPDATE: It is now March 2020 and we are over 230 lessons in. I am just now starting to grasp the true importance of the right side being long but with a flat shoulder turn. I tried to lengthen my right side by pulling up with it. Instead, the left hip sets the angle by going down and into the right side at the take away and then the upper thoracic or shoulder turn feels very flat. In fact, it feels like my right nipple is turning on a horizontal line which caused my chest to lead my hands on the way back. Once again, this is truly mind boggling to the common amateur.

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