Some of the guys are making changes in their swing in order to produce a better ball next semester . Below are some pictures of Blake Turner compared to a good friend of mine, Anthony Broussard, who has had success on the mini tours and is 2 for 2 advancing through the 1st Stage of PGA TOUR Q School.
Both Blake and Anthony have the club on the shaft line for most of the downswing. In this screenshot, they are in similar positions.
In the follow through, you can see a big difference between their swings. Blake stops rotating his body and swings his club above the shaft line, which starts his ball right of his intended target. Consequently, in order for his shots to return to the target, he must shut down his clubface and he does this by rotating his forearms very quickly around the impact zone. When timed up correctly, his swing produces a nice draw. The problem with his swing is when his timing is off, even just a little bit. When the forearms rotate too slowly, the face is open, resulting in a push cut. When the face is square, he hits a push. When he rotates the face too much, he hits a hook. And when he doesn't shallow the club onto the shaftline on the downswing, he hits a pull draw. These two-way misses make it very difficult to swing freely and score consistently.
Anthony on the other hand, rotates both his hips and torso much more through impact allowing his club to stay on the shaftline on the follow through. He does not have an active release of the clubface, which allows the face to be square much longer through the impact zone. Since his plane and clubface are great around impact, he hits a straight ball that starts online. It also allows him to work the ball without altering his swingplane, just merely leaving his clubface open a fraction for a cut, or closing it down a bit for a draw. This is one of the reasons he plays this game for a living.
Blake has been working hard in the off-season to make his swing more repeatable and he is looking forward to some better results next semester.
