This piece was inspired by a conversation that I had recently with the not so well known Scott Ellis. Ellis is the swing fixer for PGA Tour players Chris DiMarco and Shigeki Maruyama. He has a successful business called International Golf Schools.
The instruction is more personal, it is customized to your satisfaction and he has some fantastic guys on staff. There is dinner every night and 18 holes every day after the instruction with the instructors. In my opinion, Ellis pays his instructors very well so they show up with a fantastic attitude to help the client and the attitude just rubs off.
Besides that, Ellis is just one of the coolest guys to hang around -- he has charisma. When asked why he wasn't among the top 100 instructors, he said he doesn't need that to feed his ego. I, on the other hand, could use it to feed my family. As we discussed some of the stuff I had touched upon in my last piece on tour trends, Ellis agreed with me on pivot and the layed off position at the top of the swing.
He did say not everyone can make that Tiger Woods pivot, but a lot of players are following suit out there. They are laying off the club at the top. I would like to get more descriptive with the layed off position at the top. I'm not saying that the swing needs to be shorter, although that too seems to be in the trends that are occurring on tour. Short and more controlled with the iron shots. Do you recall all the players at the Players Championship hitting soft controlled 8 irons on the 17th hole? A hole all of about 135 yards.
Tiger practices hitting his 7-iron 130 yards, his 8-iron 130 yards and his 9-iron 130 yards, just to see what spins he can produce. What I mean by layed off is pointing the club to the left of the target line at the top of the swing for a right-handed player.
The reason this works so well is that the clubhead has less motion to move into the slinging position. When the club head is pointed down the line it has to sweep from behind the neck to over the right shoulder. It moves almost three feet before it is in the layed off position. As it is sweeping over, the body is also making the rotation motions, to get the timing of these two motions together makes for some really interesting inconsistencies.
When someone suggests a swing fix to you, perhaps it isn't a fix you need. It may well be a change. The PGA Tour pros can go for a fix some times. If they want to keep their card they need to earn some dough. It's not the time for a swing change for them, as the season is kicking into full gear. But then again take a look at Vijay Singh. He is laying the club off and he just started doing it.
Do you recall the story that I had mentioned in an earlier piece, involving Paul Azinger and what he had said about Vijay working on one thing for the past 10 years and he was just now getting good at it? It was pivot and he has a pretty good one due to his focus. He is now trying to lay it off, under pressure it will be tough to trust.
We may see the same thing that happened to Tiger a few years ago, happen to Vijay. He may not be in for his best year, time will tell. This position may have taken Tiger a few years to get used to it as well. We have all been speculating that Tiger's worst season was because he was trying to go from a fade to a draw. This speculation has always bothered me, because I too grew up playing golf since I could walk and I truly believe that Tiger could hit the ball in any direction he wanted. He may have been more comfortable with a fade, but I'm sure he could draw it too.
Once you try this position, even in a practice swing, you'll see the difference and if you do happen to make solid contact on one of your first attempts you will never want to go back to the down-the-line position. There is enormous power just waiting for you. This change will not be easy. I know a lot of my students struggle with it at first, they want an easy change. I will never forget once working with Glen Day and his comment to me after a wordy explanation of vector points, "I don't want to build a watch, I just want to know what time it is."
Day didn't want a change, he wanted a fix. Sometimes we watch a friend try to make a change and it causes them to fall flat on their face. This happened to one of Glen Day's college buddies that made the tour along with him, Doug Martin. I believe he was the No. 1 player at that time on the Hogan Tour and before his first season on the PGA Tour he started to work with Doc Jim Suttie.
The swing changes came at a bad time for Martin. He lost a lot of confidence in that first year and never regained it. Making a change takes time and patience, but that isn't what the game of golf teaches us. Perhaps you need to be like Glen Day to play for all that money.
Why do you play the game of golf? Is it to enjoy yourself? Maybe to watch a ball fly with perfect trajectory heading where you want it to go? You most likely don't have what the tour pros have on the line from week to week. Why not make a drastic swing change? What is a trend today will eventually be taught to you in golf magazines and by PGA teaching professionals. As the years have gone by, laying the club off has always been thought of as a bad thing to have in your swing, however the teachers of the past also taught things like keep your head still and hold on to your angles, which some still teach. This new trendy stuff will just take it's course and as we watch the game's greatest players make these swing motions that I speak of, the ones we all marvel at because of the effortless power, perhaps we will stop and wonder what makes it so easy for them.
Why do they all seem to possess the ability of pure ball-striking? Why do the swings seem to look so simple? Smooth tempo, perfect balance and ball crushing clubhead speed. What's it going to take you to make a change that will make a big difference? What will it take to trust what you see the best players in the world do and try it yourself? Swing changes take awhile, but ask yourself where you are going with those archived swing theories of the past. How far are you going to take it? As you ask yourself that question, follow it up with: why do you play golf?
For more information, visit 7mythsofgolf.com.
Billy Bondaruk was recently recoginzed as one of the top 9 instructors in Northern California.
