Mike Malaska works with John Lang on his golf swing. He starts with his experience and how he made the sports connection between golf and other sports he has played.
From a baseball, tennis, and basketball background, this was the first sport Mike played where the ball wasn’t moving but was stationary on a tee. Mike made a lot of connections with other sports that made it easier for him to play golf.
The first connection is that you do not hit the ball with your club shaft; you hit it with the clubface. Your hands are essential to understanding the clubface. It would help if you thought about the club shaft as an extension of your arm.
When Mike started playing golf after baseball, he likened the clubface of a golf club to that of a baseball bat. When he set up to the ball and opened the clubface slightly, the ball would go to right field. With a slightly closed clubface, the ball would go to left field, and of course, if Mike hit it straight, it would go to center field.
The baseball analogy made sense to Mike, and most people who start to play golf try to hit the ball with the shaft and not the clubface. Mike even used a 10-finger baseball grip when he first started playing golf, and he looked at the clubface as a baseball bat.
Mike tells John that he is going to get his hands on the club correctly and get them to connect to the clubface.
Mike Malaska helps John understand the importance of having the correct grip.
The correct grip will help create the best speed producers with your wrists. Your left wrist serves as a chopping action, while your right wrist is more like a throwing or slapping motion. If you don't have the correct...
The next step in John's lesson is to get his right hip out of the way on his backswing.
Mike makes John drop his right foot back in his stance and wants John to push his right hip back on the backswing. This allows John to have more swing with the right foot back while pushing the right hip back...
At the final point in John’s lesson, Mike reiterates the importance of feeling the club in your fingers. Tour players rest the club on their shoulders, holding it in their fingers with their hands lightly on the club. Or they toss the club in circles to really feel that in their fingers.
Mike sa...
