SET UP FOR SUCCESS Before hitting the ball

BY RYAN WILLIAMS PLAYER DEVELOPMENT PROFESSIONAL

Ben Hogan once said, “The swing is 90 percent over at address.” Claude Harmon, Sr, Masters Champion in 1948 and father of legendary coach “Butch” Harmon, spoke endlessly about “Grip, Alignment, and Balance.” Even as a budding golf nerd, I would go into lessons with Tommy Masters expecting him to tell me something fancy within the swing itself when, the majority of the time, he would make small tweaks to my posture or ball position. What dawned on me is how highly great minds in the game value how a player positions his or her body relative to the ball and see clearly its influence on both the quality of the strike and the direction of the shot.

To borrow from another titan of golf instruction, John Jacobs said, “The sole purpose of the golf swing is to produce the correct impact.” Below are tour averages on the PGA Tour for what is happening at impact:

Let’s focus the rest of our conversation on controlling the “Attack Angle” or the degree to which the clubhead is swinging down or up at the moment it collides with the ball. Having the Attack Angle be within certain parameters is crucial to the quality of the strike; for example, a player with a positive Attack Angle (club moving in an upward direction) will not be able to hit an iron or wedge consistently. To dive deeper into the data, the shorter the club, the more down a player would ideally swing while the strike with a driver is much more level. On the LPGA Tour, the players actually average swinging up on their drivers.

All things being equal within the swing itself, a player’s address position has a huge effect on producing the ideal impacts displayed on the graph above.

Pitching Wedge: set-up should encourage a descending strike

1. Ball slightly back of center

2. Weight more to front side with level shoulders

3. Stance slightly narrower than shoulder-width

7-Iron: set-up should encourage descending strike

1. Ball in middle of stance

2. Weight centered or very slightly to left side with slight shoulder tilt

3. Stance shoulder-width

Driver: set-up should encourage a level or slightly ascending strike

1. Ball forward in stance (under logo on left breast for a right-handed player)

2. Weight evenly distributed with slightly more shoulder tilt

3. Stance slightly wider than shoulder-width

For the smallest motions in golf (chips and pitches), don’t be afraid to go even narrower, ball even further back in your stance, with your weight stacked even more to your front side.

So now that you know the parameters and the set-ups that encourage “ideal impacts,” take a hard look at what happens in your ball flight. Do you pop drivers up? You’re very likely swinging too far down at impact. Do you top fairway woods or blade wedges? The most common cause for both is not swinging down enough! Before you go making complicated changes within the swing, find out whether you can make a simpler change before your swing even begins!