Rinker’ s Golf Tips Oct 5th Brain Manzella Top 100 Teacher is the Director of Instruction at English Turn in New Orleans, Louisiana where the PGA Tour used to play the USF&G Classic. I asked Brian what were the five things that the club does to make the ball go where it goes. He said they were 1) Club head speed, 2) path which is horizontal, left, straight, or right, 3) path vertical which we call angle of attack, 4) club face angle, and 5) impact point on the club face. In Brian’s experience, people that hit the ball to the left 95% of the time, they swing too much in to out, or to the right for a right-handed golfer. That geometry also makes people struggle with hitting fairway woods and long irons. Brian said “Good luck getting that puppy in the air!” We talked about the frontal view of a good impact position, and how before we had high speed video, having a divot in front of the ball was good enough, because we get a different dynamic loft at impact vs address. “Everything doesn’t have to look a certain way as long as the club is doing what it is supposed to do and the body may have to be in a certain position. Most people who don’t have enough forward shaft lean at impact have an open face problem.”
When we start the down swing one school of thought is to try and create as much lag as you can, turn like crazy, and all this energy is going to magically get to the club head as it hits the ball. Another one is somehow you can push the club the whole time from the top. When it comes to Rory McIlroy, he must be doing something much more efficient than a lot of people are doing. So we talked about this sequence from the top and that we are trying to put as much energy into everything by stepping on our front foot first, and then turning the hips and shoulders and getting the arms off of the chest. So basically the feeling in this first part of the downswing is a pulling or pulling the grip off of the club, along the path of the hands and that will get you down about half way, or where the left arm is parallel to the ground. At this point of the swing it’s time to start putting energy into the club head. A lot of people think they are not supposed to do that and are supposed to keep pulling instead of pushing or releasing the club head with their hands and wrists. You want to actually start pushing out on the club and putting some speed into the club head while you are starting to twist the shaft down which is going to help square the club face at impact. Right after impact, you want to get the club head on the other side of the hands from the down the line view. It’s the same motion you would have if you were trying to literally throw the golf club as far as you could down the fairway. It helps to create speed in the club head with the hands and wrists being active at the correct time. Learn to do a fling or a flip. People are scared of it, but the harder you fling it, the more you are going to lag it, to put the club in the correct position to hit the golf ball. We want to give people permission to do this. You can over do trying not to flip the club. You can also use your hands and wrists too early in the down swing, instead of pulling longer from the top of the swing and then flinging it at the correct time. The training aid the “Orange Whip” helps you to get the feel of this.
We had a caller ask about what his path and club face angles needed to be to hit a draw. He wanted the ball to start a little right of the target and draw back to the target without crossing the target line of going left of the flag stick. Brian said that a path of four to the right and a club face angle of two to the right would accomplish that with a center hit. So it’s about a two to one ratio. Brian Manzella can be reached at his web site www.BrianManzella.com