Watch part 2 now to see how you're moving your body in the opposite direction of the pros!
Ik-Joon Lee worked with David Leadbetter for 6 years and felt like he was not getting the answers that he needed for his swing and weak, high, spinny ball flight.
Playing inconsistent in tournaments, he diligently sought answers but was told his "swing was great" and he just needed to "play more" and it was "all in his head".
Never able to find an instructor with answers to his problems, he gave up the game for a while and now at the age of 28 decided to give it "one last go" to see if he could make it at a professional level.
You're going to see the initial transformation here that we did in only a few days, which hundreds of thousands of dollars of lessons didn't fix in 6 years.
More importantly, you're going to see how to fix these problems in YOUR swing using nothing but this website. This article covers the exact drills I used to produce these dramatic changes.
The Hunt for the Right Instructor
In his return to competitive golf, he needed to decide on a new instructor for his endeavor. He had narrowed it down to 4, me - Chuck Quinton; Kevin Smeltz, David's right hand man at the Leadbetter academy; Brian Mogg, who helped YE Yang beat Tiger Woods at the PGA championship; and Gregor Jameson from Lake Nona, who has been working with Retief Goosen for the past couple years.
After a lot of research and homework, Ik-Joon decided to go the RST route and work with me because the RST swing methodology simply makes the most logical sense and can answer and correct all his issues.
So, he booked a flight from Korea to Orlando and committed to staying here one month to work with me.
Here are some results after our first week on fixing his stuck, flippy position at impact to produce a ball flight that is literally half as high as before and is now far more penetrating. The top row of pics are his first recorded swings, the bottom row is after one lesson working on the videos discussed below.
Dramatic Improvements...Fast!
After our lesson, Ik-Joon was ecstatic about the improvements and had the following to say:
"I've worked with David and other top instructors for years and not a single one could ever tell me how to exactly get into the impact position you taught me in 5 minutes."
As you can see, his impact position has changed dramatically in only one lesson using the drills on the site. Note all of these improvements:
- He's more stacked at impact, with his left hip socket over his left ankle,
- He's retained more angle in his right wrist, which is critical for compressing the ball and lowering ball flight,
- His hips are less open,
- His feet are more anchored to the ground, allowing him to use the ground for leverage,
- He has far less secondary axis tilt, which is much easier on his lower back, and
- His hands are more in front of him at impact and aren't flipping and breaking down in the follow through.
So, the big question is, how do YOU produce these types of radical changes in your golf swing to hit flatter, more penetrating golf shots that hiss off the face?
Step 1 for Shots That "Hiss": Don't Spin the Hips
The first place to start is with the "Hips Spinners" instruction video that covers the Belt Buckle Drill. Spinning the hips through impact not only takes away the ability to leverage the ground and activate the glutes, but creates too much secondary axis tilt, shallowing out the angle of attack and leading to a path that is too far from the inside.
You'll notice that Ik-Joon looks as if he's "falling backwards" at impact and in the follow through because he has spun his hips open. Spending time on the Belt Buckle Drill was an important piece of the fix.
Once he understood the concepts I cover in the video, we were able to get more into the very important details that help facilitate proper weight transfer and to quiet the hips so they act more as stabilizers rather than rotators.
Step 2: Quiet the Right Foot
This is where we introduced the concepts covered in the "Role of the Right Foot in the Downswing" instructional video. You can see in the "after" pics on the bottom row that his right foot is more anchored to the ground to provide another reference point for his hips and aid in balance and stability. In the "before" pics, he would not be able to hold that position for more than a second. The after pics demonstrate how much more stable he is at impact, and he could hold that position all day.
Once we had fixed his impact alignments using the concepts you can learn on the website in my videos, we started moving on to his backswing. While it generally is ideal to fix them in the opposite order, he was a good enough player to be able to get into a great impact position without having to address his backswing issues just yet.
We needed to fix ball flight first in his case, as that was his main struggle and what he was really after over the past decade of his golfing career.
Once we had this under control, we needed to make it easier to repeat and easier to make fine tuning adjustments that would then allow us to manipulate ball flight by getting him more on plane and keeping the club more in front of his body.
Step 3: Right Elbow Stays in Front at the Top
The pictures below show his before position (top) and then, one day later, his after position (bottom).
In these photos, you can see that his takeaway is nearly absolutely perfect, with the clubhead in line with the hands, toe up, and his hands are in front of his chest.
As we move to the top, his right elbow has stayed in front of his torso, which makes getting the club back in front of the body in the downswing and at impact far easier with no manipulations necessary.
The core of our work here was from the "5 Minutes to the Perfect Backswing" video. This video walks you through, step-by-step, my systematic and very structured approach to building the absolute perfect backswing in the shortest amount of time possible.
Utilizing isolationism and stacking, RST builds the neural pathways in your brain that allow you learn the movements quickly by working with how your brain naturally learns new movement patterns. This video is a MUST to build a world class backswing like the one you see pictured here.
