[alex_chung]

Visit to the Swamp Part 2 (Wednesday 15th November 2006)

This was one of those days that worked out a lot better than what was originally planned. The plan for my first full day in Georgia was to play a round of golf with a few friends (Martee included) but due to the weather front that came into Georgia on Tuesday evening it was a complete washout (Tornado warnings and solid rain for about 10 hours! Just like home then!)

So with the golf cancelled we placed a quick phone call to Yodasluke aka Ted to see what he was up to during the day and to see if was free. Luckily he was!!

But before heading down to the Swamp for the first time (for me anyways) Martee and I paid a visit to the PGA Tour Store that is in Kennesaw as well as the Golfsmiths. I just wished that we had that kind of ‘superstore’ available to us here in the UK where you can get clubmaking equipment as well as OEM equipment all under one roof. Before you ask I walked out of both stores having only bought a dozen balls, a glove and 200 tees. Martee had his eye on a Ping stand bag.

So after the retail therapy we headed down to the Swamp! We took a bit of a scenic route but then again I was never known for my map reading abilities!!!

Once we were at the Swamp, we quickly introduced ourselves to Ted and cornered him before he could run away from us
We had a quick chat about life, golf and the golf swing before heading out for some lunch where we talked more about golf and so on (thanks to Ted’s friend for picking up the tab)

After lunch we ventured back to the range and starting chatting about what I was looking for in my visit to the Swamp. Martee asked some questions that had been puzzling him for a while about his swing and the Golfing Machine in general. This carried on for about an hour by which point all of Ted’s students for that day had cancelled (all a bunch of sisses I tell ya…its only a wee bit of rain!! )

Before I even hit a golf ball, Ted explained a few concepts to Martee and I. The visual with the hula hoop and the dowel was pretty eye opening and light up a light bulb in my head. The concepts of the golf swing and The Golfing Machine was explained in a clear and concise manner that it was easy for a newbie like myself to understand. There is a reason why this man is the Georgia PGA Section Teacher of the year, he can teach!

After a couple of swings, Ted could tell straight away that I was a swinger of the golf club rather than a hitter. He did not do anything to change it and said that there was no point in doing so if that is your natural inclination with the golf swing.

The first thing that he changed were my set up. My old set up had my right shoulder too high which caused the right forearm to be off plane. Too many years of ‘conventional’ teaching caused my set up to be wrong and as everyone knows once you go wrong with the set up, you have a job of a time to get things right at impact.

We spent a while working on Impact Fix, trying to get right shoulder lower, the right forearm more on plane and to get my head into more of an impact position. Ted and Martee both noticed that face on when I took my Impact Fix position, I was just moving my hands forward and that there was not any movement in my hips or my legs. So worked on it more with my hips clearing and moving my weight forward (this in turned moved my head forward, but Ted let this slide as previously my weight and head moved backwards so it was the lesser of the two evils)
It was pretty amazing how by working on Impact Fix the swing suddenly moves up a notch, I was beginning to hit the ball a bit better, more cleaner contact but I was still getting my ‘dying quail’ high fades. Ted said that the Impact Alignments in the swing happen naturally if you let it happen and the by product of getting a flat left wrist/bent right wrist at impact is that your right forearm is on plane and your right shoulder will goes downplane and is on plane.

The next thing that Ted’s expert eye noticed was that I was ‘Roundhousing’ on my downswing. So this is where the Downstroke Waggle comes to the fore. Ted had me doing a few dry swings to make sure that I was going it correctly. Again, I was just doing the waggle with the arms and had left the hips stationary. He showed me that it was a more dynamic movement that involved the whole pivot as well as the hands.

By doing the downstroke waggle, we could work on a whole multitude of things, we could see that I need to slide my hips first before turning them in the downswing (delayed hip turn) and when it was executed properly I could see the right shoulder go down plane and it felt that my right shoulder was going down a lot more than I was used to. I had never felt my swing like that before. Also by doing this, my swing path was changed and I was hitting the ball from a more inside path as opposed to hitting it with an OTT movement. ‘Down and out man..’ Ted would say and I can still hear him when I execute a good swing ‘That’s right man…’

At this point a lot of bells were going off in my head, suddenly things that I did not understand were suddenly becoming more clearer, I understood things more and could finally see in the flesh how the Golfing Machine could be applied to me.

From then on it was just hitting balls and making sure that I could do what Ted wanted me to do. We did talk about hinge action but we did not concentrate much on that as Ted felt that once I got everything else right that the hinge action would take care of itself as I was not fighting it.

One of the phrases that I learned or kept hearing all day was put your ‘head in your hands’ as once I thought about something else I would inevitably hit a poor shot. So put you ‘head in your hands’ and monitor what they are doing.

So in Summary the afternoon with Ted, we worked on the following:

1) Impact Fix
2) Proper Alignments
3) Downstroke Waggle

This was a good start to the week and I could see things starting to improve. Again, thanks to Ted for spending the time with me, helping me go further along this journey with the Golfing Machine.

My first day with Yoda (Part 3) will be posted up later on in the week.
Alex