I had the pleasure of attending Tim Cusick's Teaching the Teacher seminar the past couple days. Tim is the Director of Instruction at Four Seasons Las Colinas and is regarded as one of the best teachers in the country. I had been excited about attending this seminar for the month leading up to it, and it did not disappoint.
In the following days, there will be blogs about different aspects of this seminar because it is not possible to fit it all into one. In this blog, I want to talk about one of the best parts of the seminar for me, and that was watching LPGA and Korean Tour player Ilhee Lee hit balls and take a lesson from Tim.
Ilhee is 22 years old and has recently moved to Dallas from South Korea to work hard on her game with Tim and to play more events on the LPGA Tour. She has a beautiful, graceful swing and a wonderful personality go to along with it. She works very hard on her game, and especially on her short game. Ilhee was 88th on the LPGA money list last year, and even though her swing looks almost perfect, the real reason she is that high on the money list is her short game, especially her distance wedges.
Distance wedges are very important to all golfers, and even more important to very good golfers. (See Phil Mickelson Blog as an example). Ilhee showed off some of her wedge shots and it was amazing how tight the grouping of balls was that she would hit to a certain yardage. How does she do it? A good system to swing the club the right length, and lots of practice....
Here is the system, and how it can work for you...Il Hee has 3 wedges: a pitching wedge, sand wedge, and lob wedge
She makes swings based on her body. For example, one swing may be from hip to hip, meaning hip height on her backswing and through to hip height on her follow through. That produces a consistent yardage. The next height would be her chest, and the next her shoulder. That means she has three different heights for backswing and follow through, with three different clubs. That automatically covers 9 different distances from inside of 100 yards.
Knowing exact yardages and swings from 9 different yardages from inside 100 yards would improve the average golfers handicap by at least 5 strokes. It takes some time to figure out, but once you have the yardages down, it will benefit you for the rest of your golfing life.
Here is how to understand how far those wedge shots go:
You will need a friend, wife, or pro at your course, a laser range finder, and an open driving range.
Take each club and hit five solid shots from each height of your body (hip, chest, and shoulder) and have your partner run out to where the balls landed and laser back the yardage. You will get three yardages for your first club. Repeat the process for each of your wedges and you will end up with 9 distances (12 distances if you carry four wedges).
Write all these yardages down on a sheet of paper, or on a bag tag attached to your bag and keep it until you have memorized the 3 different yardages for each of your wedges. I promise your scores will immediately fall if you put in the time to measure out how far each wedge goes using the different body parts as a guide to swing length.
Ilhee hitting pitch shots
Good Luck!
I like it, Chad. This is where my game needs most improvement, and this seems like pretty good advice. Now I need to take it to the practice range, and hopefully then I can start to execute on the course. .
ReplyDeleteGreg Thiel