Short game technique is everything. A precise short game limits the damage of an imprecise long game. So – While you are adapting to an open stance, this will help you contain the damage in the short term… and make you fearless in the longer term.
John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy
On Jul 23, 2016, at 4:30 PM, John Negley <jpnegley@icloud.com> wrote:
John: Thanks for the nice note! I have become a devoted follower of your teachings, and have made significant progress during the past two years. I do have a question that keeps coming up regarding wrist position in the backswing. I noted from one of your followers that you had emphasized the need to “open his right hand more during the backswing.” I have, at times, gotten too wristy, which I believe comes from my tendency to roll my wrists at takeaway. Please describe your thought process regarding wrist position in the takeaway/backswing. J
I wrote to John saying
Hi, John
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p style=”text-align: justify;”>I’m not sure about the quoted passage, but I can say the wrist activity is controlled by the trailing arm flexion. The more the trailing arm bends, the more the wrists hinge. The control we exert over the position and or direction of the wrist flexion determines whether or not we can use our swing components in balance with one another.
Supination comes from a need to get clubhead travel in a swing without lower body engagement (Jones, Hogan). Pronation comes from a full turn and lower body – driven swing (Trevino, Nicklaus, Watson, D. Johnson). A full turn provides room between the arms and the torso as the lever complex remains on the plane.
This swing room cannot function properly (Under Control) if the club face rotates too far below the plane due to its disconnected nature. The pronation slows the transition to allow a reconnection to occur before impact out of necessity. The anterior muscles in the forearm are stronger than the posterior muscles, so isolating them with pronation keeps us from launching our golf club from the top and engages the lower body as a power source. It has been known as reconnecting the “V”.
I hope this helped. Best Wishes,
John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy
Attitude, like all expressions of intellect and emotion, is a conditioned response. There is the cause and its effect. There is the primary and its secondary. Attitude does not/cannot exist without that which manifests it. The stimulus-response dynamic is alive in all things, including the golf swing.
Now, the discussion of the golf swing does not abridge or negate the realization of a basic human truth. Because truth comes first. However our attitude, based on our life experience, sometimes colors that truth to fit our own narrative. If our narrative cooperates with the bigger story, our reward is being labeled as having a ‘good attitude’. Our opposite getsbthe label of ‘bad attitude’.
The qualifier is not the individual, unfortunately, but rather the story to which we respond as unique individuals. If the story is idealistic, the idealist has the good attitude and the confused has the bad. If the story is confused, the opposite is the case. It has to do, I think, with setting aside our ego so the truth exists as it is and not as we want it to be.
The truth affects us. We color it with an attitude conditioned by experience. Then we express it. Attitude is essentially a descendant of the conditioning of luck. Life experience, as an attitude adjuster, has many tumblers. However, Luck is the only one of those tumblers outside of the soul and beyond the control of the human being. We know it exists, but have been conditioned by a confused story to ignore its impact in our lives and in our world.
I’ve written a book about Luck, which is a humble and, I fear, too brief look into what makes miracles, heroes, villains, and stars. Opportunities seem to lay down like lovers for otherwise ordinary people who do nothing more than what comes naturally – based on their experience. Sorry… their attitude. This is, to say the least, an off-topic post. Take it for what it’s worth.
John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy
Lucas Glover won the 2009 U.S. Open. Then he more or less disappeared for a while. He reemerged for a time citing his swing had been yielding a slap fade that he didn’t like, and he realized the culprit. His head tilt at address and associated clubface alignment was diagnosed by Jack Nicklaus as being too open. Thank you, Mr. Nicklaus.
When the clubface opens/grip weakens, the feedback loop that is guiding us calls for a change in path to compensate. The shoulders open, impact steepens, the bottom of the arc moves forward, and thin shots and heel shots emerge from the darkness to swallow our golf swing whole. The fade becomes a casting slap that only increases the cut spin. All this because the eyes align to the right (For Glover) of his target.
So, what is so insidious about the quiet, unseeable troll of swing dynamics is that it never fails to change our mind about the ball and the target in preparing to move. Therefore, it never fails to change our movement. Jack Nicklaus noticed it because his own swing trigger is a tilting of his head to put his eye alignment on the target line. He did it every time, so this swing troll never bit him. He noticed it in Glover because it was so different from his (Jack’s) norm.
The disconnect for Glover was that his head tilt drew his arms away from his body to re-steepen his impact while trying to reach a ball position that was too far forward – not its orientation to the target and his feet, but to the line his eyes were on. His head tilt rearward aligned his eyes to the right of his target, thereby moving his ball position forward in his mind. His swing adapted as best it could, but not before it compromised his confidence by distracting him from the process (Intention) of scoring.
Be aware that the alignment of your eyes at address greatly determine the path of the golf swing. With an Open Stance, the eyes must align at the target, as well. It is much more difficult to tilt the eyeline outside of the target line from an open stance than from a square of closed stance, so flattening is the only adaptive choice to maintain ideal impact. The dynamics involved in flattening the swing plane while maintaining the ability to shape shots is entirely due to setting up open with a neutral eyeline-target line position. This open stance eye positioning induces an inside-out (Flattening) plane along the body line while remaining square to the target line.
John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy
I Had an Open Stance Dream Last Night
Lag is a Byproduct of a Flat Swing
I have a very intelligent Open Stance Academy audience for which I am thankful. One of you contacted me yesterday and wrote…
Hello John. Since reading your publications re the open stance, I have attempted to model your teachings over the past two years. One lingering question is always cropping up is, how do I get my trail elbow and wrist positioned to maximize the lag? I have tried to roll my forearms and wrists more aggressively on the backswing in order to better position the elbow more under than over. I have tilted more away from the target at setup. Is there a better technique that you can suggest? Thanks. John Negley
My response to this intelligent question was…
If your downswing flattens, your hands have more difficulty keeping or holding onto clubhead momentum. Hence, the clubhead outraces the hands to impact.
At the top of the backswing, the toe of the club and the heel of the club are, more or less, on the plane. However, post-transition, when the pressure in the leading shoulder relaxes by externally rotating the leading arm, the club speeds up. Consequently, the leading arm initiates rotation of hands, shaft, and clubface toward the direction of the impending force.
Without the mechanism of lag (And the trailing elbow position approaching impact), the clubface closes too fast to reach impact square to the target. It closes too much. Lag, on the other hand, is a byproduct of a flattening plane, which is a byproduct of a flattening arm swing from the top.
So, John… Minimize the tilt along the target line (You’ll still have adequate tilt along the body line) to flatten the arm swing. Also, work on delivering the club flat into impact with the leading arm and club shaft. Best Wishes.
John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy
I Only Have One Question About an Open Stance, and Here It Is
Poor Jordan Spieth, right? Maybe. The beginning of his trouble on Masters’ Sunday began on Thursday and probably before that. What we saw him go through on the twelvth hole was nothing more than stress-induced uncertainty. After a week of consideration and psychological and athletic synthesis, my answer may put a little different slant on the situation.
Jordan made the same error he was making before last year’s U.S. Open. He was setting up closed. Prior to the beginning of that event, he had identified his error and had non-competitive opportunity to repair himself. But by the time he identified it at The Masters, he was three rounds into the event. This created a very difficult feedback loop to assimilate under the gun, so to speak.
With his driver, he missed badly to the right all week. He constantly had to scramble and put tremendous mental energy into managing a less-than-optimal driving game with the remainder of his razor-sharp game. He repaired his driving error to some degree on Sunday, but the psychological damage had been done, and the sharp edge on his irons and short game were dulled by the stress. Consider the following:
His errant driving had put such stress on his iron game, short game, and putting throughout the week that, under the exacting pressure of the final nine holes on Sunday, he was mentally unprepared to make good shots and recover from any more bad ones. Even the best player in the world cannot recover from a poor set-up in the midst of tournament play. The result is what we witnessed with a lump in our throats.
The tragedy we felt was a loss of four shots on one hole at twelve. What some may have missed in the larger picture is that Jordan, while a ridiculously great golfer, spent three times that number of strokes recovering from tee shots to the right due to a closed set-up. Choose just the last two holes and count his strokes over par and the drives he hit in the trees to the right of the fairways. There’s the tournament.
Jordan will learn from this, as any professional would. The permanence of his solution will depend on his set-up routine going forward. If he can put his ball in the fairway, he will dominate again very soon.
John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy
You’ll Never Hear, “Excess Leg Drive is Your Problem.”
The Comfort Zone is the vehicle for the golfer to get in “The Zone”. How a comfort zone affects a golfer’s ability to change their swing is the key to adaptation not only within golf, the golf swing, etc. but in all learning. Athleticism plays no real role in learning – only in adapting.
Some golfers have comfort zones that are huge. These people can learn in any golf instructional language. So they can make almost immediate changes that last because the foundation, their comfort zone, tells them nothing truly unrecoverable will happen as a result of throwing caution to the wind in adapting to instruction. They consider themselves flexible in thought, so they are flexible in deed. Outcomes are incidental to people like this.
My best friend has no ability to convert instruction into action in spite of the fact that he is a great athlete. His comfort zone very specific and, as a result, very small. He learns in a cocoon. So to leave his cocoon with swing changes means he will be alone with the instruction for a long gestation period. He will not be forced because the outcome is paramount to him.
The point is that if the outcome is incidental to a golfer, they will learn faster because the instruction is internalized faster. If the outcome is paramount, a person will take longer to convert the instruction. The instruction has to be converted in private because the cocoon is the comfort zone. There are variations in between. But I thought to hit the extremes here.
John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy
Why An Open Stance Wins The Set-Up Debate
I have been noticing PGA Tour players are starting to set up open to their target. The first time I noticed it was happening was at the 2015 Players Championship. Ricky Fowler was set-up beautifully open in all his level shots. Then I noticed that it wasn’t just Ricky and Bubba. There were a dozen guys doing it… I mean – appreciably open.
Even Jordan Speith, though not set up open, struggled mightily after his Master’s victory when, as he acknowledged, his alignment had become closed. There now appear to be a spate of high-profile golfers setting up open. Check it out next time you watch a tournament.
Then, most recently, Sean Foley wrote and article about the power of intention in the November 2015 Edition of GOLF Digest. He applied it to focusing one’s attention. Whether he got it from Deepak Chopra or my application of it to the golf swing… it looks this site is becoming more relevant to the golfing world every day. Why did it take four years?
John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy
The whole reason golf swings fall apart is due to the inconsistent alignment of the feet in relation to the ball and the target. I think golf professionals have ignored the importance of set-up to their own benefit for fifty years. I am cynical about it, of course. But cynicism, on its own, does not make the claim untrue.
In reality, I am paying a back-handed compliment to the intelligence of golf professionals everywhere by suggesting they know enough to ignore set-up. As a PGA Member, I suppose am complicit in the dodge. In for a penny, in for a pound, you know? Be that as it may….
I am getting the most remarkable results from all … I mean EVERY dedicated student I have. This philosophy does NOT FAIL to get results. Also, look for my now-released E-Book, The Open Stance and Three Short Game Lessons, to expand on the theme of my writings.
John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy
Jordan Peterson and The Open Stance Corollary
Should Jordan Speith Give Advice on Hitting It Straight and Far?
The secret in the open stance is not really a secret. We knew already. We just forgot. Forty years after being thrown off the scent, I began reintroducing the world to the Open Stance.
We have prominent examples of the open stance at the highest level of golf…
Bryson Dechambeau, Ricky Fowler, Bubba Watson, Patrick Cantlay, Charles Howell, and many others play from an Open Stance. These guys are long hitters and renowned ball-strikers/shot shapers. Some set up wildly open, which I love. However, their genius is the expression of their intention – their unique solution. Their golf swings are the epitome of “Athleticism”. Their choice of an Open Stance is the vehicle for their journey.
However, it’s not as though the Open Stance is a new concept. We have numerous examples from throughout golfing history of great ball-strikers setting up open. Bobby Jones set up open to his target. Watch his short film with Jimmy Cagney. It’s really a beautiful piece of work.
Jack Nicklaus is perhaps the best example of the efficacy of the open stance with a neutral grip. Mr. Nicklaus played the ball forward in his stance, producing a very vertical plane and a ball flight that was called a fade, but would drift to the right – almost imperceptibly, as it fell to the ground. Certainly his choice of set-up would be the only one needed for proof, but there is one more example that is even more compelling….
Lee Trevino was and is a great champion, and he chose an open stance set-up. Lee is also widely regarded as the finest ball-striker of all-time (No disrespect to Ben Hogan et.al.). The Merry Mex is a blocker with a strong leading-hand grip. He was shorter off the tee, but absolutely deadly with the accuracy of his golf ball strike. His video will return to this site. When it does, enjoy the video, and then click on Kostis.
Fred Couples is an Open Stance stalwart and ball-striking legend. Fred switched to an open stance in the last twenty years. As a result, he remains very long off the tee and is also, now known as a great ball-striker well into his fifties. Additionally, his back problems seem to have subsided.
This last video, emceed by the velour voice of Charles Beren, outlines the thesis that gave birth to the secret.
John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy
