The Key To Great Wedge Play Is Eye-Solation

I’ve seen thousands of golfers try to chip, pitch, and wedge shots many different ways. However, one factor separates the good and the great wedge players from the bad and the ugly. The ball doesn’t move when a great player moves. Which means, their eyes don’t move when they move.

Major league players keep their eyes steady to pick up fly balls, ground balls, the first baseman, and the catcher. They look graceful while throwing, catching, and hitting because they eliminate inefficient motion. We observe one common theme in great athletes – their eyes don’t move more than absolutely necessary.

Without practice, our wedge game may get a little off. If our contact suffers, our swing gets longer to build a “Slop-factor” into our process. We know our set up is off, and we know it because our ball position looks a bit unsteady while we swing. Ball position is a set-up variable, so we can figure out, pretty quickly, how to diagnose our wedge malady.

Concentrating on eye-solation while practicing forces us to observe our movement, which helps accelerate our progress. Golfers don’t have to set up open to keep their eyes still, mind you. However, they DO have to set up open to keep their eyes still, produce shaft lean, and steepen impact for ball compression in the event we have adverse lies or have to produce backspin.

The one, best way I’ve found to accomplish everything needed for great wedge play and short-game mastery is eye-solating our weight on our forward foot while we swing. The longer our shot, of course, the longer our swing, which means we need less eye-solation in our swing set-up. Learning to move your wedge swings around this one necessity will create better contact, which will take the “Slop” out of your swing-length, and make you “sticky” into and around the greens.

John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy

Patrick Cantlay Won The Memorial From an Open Stance
The Open Stance…The Eyes Have It
“Real Eyes Realize Real Lies”

Yesterday, I was teaching a gentleman how our feet can change our ball position. The dynamic is simple enough to understand. However, expanding our knowledge is the point of coming to OSA, so you get the full monty.

The first assumption is that all fundamentals are in tow. Otherwise, open, closed, or square are all included. Also, we are assuming motion is a consequence of set-up orientation, and not a predetermined method – like Stack-and-Tilt. Ouch!

Assumptions eliminate circular logic, which is most of what I deal with from doubters. Setting assumptions ahead of time squashes the jumping around normally accompanying their “game”. In fairness, I’m sure my own, logical style is equally frustrating to them. Nevertheless – our feet….

Our feet are attached to our leg at our ankle, from which our feet extend anteriorly to assist our perambulation. If we notice, we are able to move our toes left and right while keeping our heel in the same spot on the ground. In doing so, we utilize muscles and joints differently to relieve the pressure it creates. Our upper body movement adjusts to accommodate different foot orientation, too.

Swinging our golf club with our forward foot perpendicular to the target causes our adaptive response to react differently than if our forward foot is pigeon-toed backward or splayed toward our target. I am tempted to talk motion here, but I won’t. Let’s get into ball position with three, leading-foot positions.

Assuming the trailing foot is square to our body-line, the leading foot can move our ball position forward or backward, depending on degree. When our leading foot splays open toward our target, the natural bottom of our swing moves forward or, toward our target with the change. Consequently, our ball position moves, physiologically – backward in our stance. By contrast, when our leading foot pigeon-toes backward (With our same set of assumptions), the natural bottom of our swing moves away from the target.

Small changes in our foot orientation can have beneficial or disastrous effects on our golf swing. Motion consequence is for next time. However, if we place our feet intentionally, and with knowledge of our choice, our ball position becomes an intentional choice, by default. Then, our results are more measurable. But, just to reemphasize our theme – Our set-up HAS TO BE purposeful.

Open your stance, and play golf.

John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy

Our Stance, Ball Position, and Adaptation Form Our Practice

Your Set-Up Can Feed Your Brain or Starve Your Brain

Patrick Cantlay Won The Memorial From an Open Stance

This morning, on the lesson tee, I found myself explaining the value of an Open Stance from an economic point of view. However, before you start to think in terms of economies of scale or the Phillips and Laffer Curve, this economic discussion has to do with minimizing waste within a system. Economy, in this sense, implies building efficiencies into our golf swing.

When we set up open, we create a kenisiological formula to solve. Our brains tend to confuse, at first. Then, we start considering movement options, as well as understanding kinetic, adpative differences. Of course, no changes occur without committing ourselves to a specific intention with our golf ball.

Once we push off the shore into the open ocean of stroke possibilities, we don’t change our craft. We just teach ourselves to row with the tides and wind to conserve energy. The conservation which forestalls Entropy, which is the energetic inverse of systemic efficiency. The higher the entropy, the lower the economy and unavailable energy.

Well, it just so happens, that the Open Stance lowers the amount of unavailable energy due to athletic, adaptive necessity. When our movement becomes more economical, the energy requirements go down, and we conserve energy. When unavailable energy goes up, entropy goes down. Therefore, we believe that an Open Stance helps fight “Climate Change”… Just kidding.

Notwithstanding the science talk, the Open Stance forces the trailing elbow into correct, repeatable striking position to keep the club on the target plane. That position alone eliminates excesses in arm swing and rotation – bringing them into balance. Moreover, our Open Stance economies affect our lower body, as well.

Due to our need to keep our club open to our foot line, we have to keep our elbow inside our trailing hip. IF we hit this position, then we have replaced a lower-body inefficiency and further lowered our entropic state. We no longer snap our lead leg into a posting dynamic consequent with a rotational strike. Instead, we transfer our weight onto a flexed lead leg – saving the damage caused by rotational swings.

Our new “Leg drive” keeps our club from closing, flattens our downswing, and with the assist of our trailing elbow, creates lag. Lag creates power without the effort of rotational swings. When we lower our effort to get the same result, we LOWER?… ENTROPY! That’s right! Conservation of energy, economy, and building unavailable energy are all the same thing. However, they all mean just one thing – Improvement.

Once we improve our strike structures, we can tap into that reserve of unavailable energy to generate more speed. However, trying to build speed without structural controls is like slapping a new 650 horsepower, Corvette LT-1 engine into a Model T Ford chassis. That frame could never control that power. Therefore, we need to build your swing frame into one that supports all the power you can muster. We do that with one intention and one philosophy – an Open Stance.

Open your stance, and play golf.

John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy

String Theory and Our Golf Swing
Set-Up Philosophy Can Create or Destroy Golf Swing Efficiencies
Patrick Cantlay Won The Memorial From an Open Stance

Blurry is a blessing sometimes. This guy is working on a move to take his hands out of his swing by changing his grip. Although our mission is not to funnel everyone into the same solution, the solution is the same in time. Homie here, is experienced at adapting to his Open Stance. Therefore, he can work on more than a grip change while adapting.

Part of our challenge is to focus through the imperfect shots we create. Dubber doesn’t get bogged down with a poor strike. He simply reloads with the same intention and set up philosophy. Listen to him recognize his tendencies and solutions. Two weeks later, he realizes he still needs the help of alignment sticks. However, he needs them to measure his distance from the ball rather than for ball position or openness.

Most new Open Stancers need the sticks to work out the most precise expression of their intention. By the way… golf clubs work just as well. At any rate, when you observe the blurry narrated video, you’ll see everything you need to measure his resulting movement against his intended movement. Did you notice I didn’t say – RESULT?

Blurry is not in a hurry to fix the last shot. His is an execution of a plan. Your’s should be, too. If you can keep your focus on moving within an intended structure, your movement adapts automatically. When we chase, or change our set up, we lose ground on those, more-focused Open Stancers.

Open your stance, and play golf.

John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy

https://www.openstanceacademy.com/golf/articles/

https://www.openstanceacademy.com/golf/the-ancestor-of-every-action-is-a-thought/

https://www.openstanceacademy.com/golf/our-stance-ball-position-and-adaptation/

Did Jordan Spieth lose the Open with his driver? To listen to the commentators rip his driving accuracy (36%), you might think as much. Certainly, his driving woes are no surprise to this guy. However, woes are totally curable.

Did you see Stenson shank it on 17, and then break his club. He did the same thing at the 2015 BMW in Chicago – with his driver .

Oof. Anyway, he was set up open at the Open’s seventeenth. I assume he was trying to hit a knock-down shot, but he laid it off and couldn’t recover.

Spieth has recovered his putting touch/stroke, at least. Furthermore, his iron game is solid. So, what’s up with his driver swing? How is someone capable of sharpening the rest of his game consistently incapable of addressing only one part?

Without stating the obvious set-up deficiency, I’ll address movement. He does the same thing Stenson does to start his downswing… he drops the hands from an upright position. Consequently, both start their downswing with rotation and arm swing instead of leg drive and arm swing.

The difference between these two movement dynamics is creating room to set the trailing elbow early in the downswing. Jordan and Henrik don’t have driver leg drive because they set up square to closed. I’ve explained the sequence of swing choices we make to adapt to any set-up. Furthermore, I’ve explained the necessities created by an Open Stance. If you’ve read my stuff, you know the must-haves.

I obviously don’t know what Spieth and McCormick and Stenson and Cowan are working on. However, I do know that whatever topics they discuss are incidental in nature, which means movement-based. It’s a shame such sensational athletes become tied to the sweaty, flabby-armed, slapping machine of “modern” instruction… poor guys. Boys, don’t worry… I’ll pick up when you call.

Open your stance, and play golf.

John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy

Should Jordan Speith Give Advice on Hitting It Straight and Far?

Lee Trevino Recommends a Flatter Swing

Why The Open Stance Controls Your Trailing Elbow

Golf lessons delay the lasting gratification of self-discovery. For decades, our culture trained us to pursue immediate gratification. Today, I’ll use the Open Stance and Modern Instruction to bookend our philosophical conversation on the topic.

The pain accompanying delayed gratification manifests in impatience and intolerance for any gradual process, like learning. Hence, masses of people live in their subconscious dream-world rather than the harsh reality of personal responsibility. Golfers are no different.

Impressionable minds prefer others tell them what to think rather than cultivate their own opinion through discussion or civil argument. They are happier with the bread-and-circus of identity politics, socialism, and Hollywood morality. It’s really quite Orwellian. If you have not read 1984, their’s is a submission to group-think. Like hamsters at the feeding tube – waiting for the next elite morsel.

Russel Brand, whom I believe is a formidable intellect, interviewed my man Jordan Peterson last year. Their discussion turned to individual identity and responsibility. He argued we received a little consciousness in The Garden of Eden as a consequence of choosing immediate gratification over discipline. Eve’s and Adam’s lack of discipline, and their associated pursuit of ease, was enough to ruin their blissful existence. Whether or not your subscribe to the allusion, the fact that we need discipline to be happy, is universal.

The cure for a little consciousness, therefore, is not a return to unconsciousness or zombieism – glamorized in modern media. Unconsciousness, Brand and Peterson agree, is not a solution to life’s problems. We can’t go backward. It’s too late for that. The solution is MORE consciousness.

Furthermore, they share my opinion that there are many different ways to understand a journey. But, that fact does not supplant one underlying truth that binds every story. Apparently, they believe there are things that are relatively true, and things that are absolutely true… just like Johnny.

Though unsaid, I believe the point is that being merely awake is not our human goal… it is simply our vehicle to gathering experience through individual discovery. Whether an intellectual, a teacher, or a student, we need to use our waking hours for disciplined, intentional work to reach worthwhile, personal goals.

Make a decision to exercise discipline when you practice your golf game. Create your own structure based on a Open Stance platform/philosophy, and work at it. It’s fun. Once you get used to the time commitment, you’ll like it.

Open your stance, and play golf.

John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy

Look What Jordan Spieth Is Doing With His Set-Up!
The Secret in The Open Stance
How to Adapt to an Open Stance

I’d never heard of Bertrand Russell, only Russell Brand. Only when Russel Brand quoted him in the following video, from 2018, did I know a bit about Bertrand Russell and his work. Notice the language used in the first minute. Intention, expression, etc. All it means is that the truth is behind the curtain of prevailing narrative.

From the beginning of my Open Stance work, my verbiage revolved around a curve of knowable truths. On the one end we’re the beginnings of things. And, at the other, the measurement of those beginnings. Because I wrote about the interconnectedness of all human pursuits, I naturally had to develop incisive language to eliminate sloppy thinking.

Words are, once again, gaining power. Our ability to build topical platforms for civil human discourse depends on precision. Within our constructions exists an agreed upon set of assumptions that bind the subjective to the objective – no matter the topic. The more I teach, the more I find that it’s our assumptions that have diverged over the past decades… not our intentions.

Choosing an Open Stance philosophy expresses our intent to efficiently and solidly strike a golf ball, and move it toward a specific target with power and precision. It’s not exactly splitting the atom in the hierarchy of important things. However, it provides a goal-setting/achieving opportunity that expresses a disciplined golfer’s innermost desire.

Fortunately, I am in position to arbitrate the assumptions on this topic.

Open your stance, and play golf.

John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy

Add Intention To Your Practice

First Things First: Create an Intent for Your Game

Why We Don’t Cut a Steak With a Spoon

Emerson knew the golf swing as well as words. Even Ralph knew the natural order of things. He wrote, “The ancestor of every action is a thought.” Implicit is knowledge of the mind as the engine of every movement.

Every word I write is to convey his message in practical terms for golfers, world-wide. In literal and cryptic form, the thread running through my body of work is intention. Likewise, bringing minds into communion with the beginnngs of their humanity negates movement-focused or – voices of the incidental.

Adaptive response is a given, you see? Therefore, adaptation is incidental. All my students learn to trust their own decision-making around one thought, which simplifies their learning process. Once I educate the world of golf on the power in self-trust, we can have a real, subjective discussion about the golf swing.

At the moment, we have subjective discussions because we have been conditioned to trust “Swing Gurus”. Listening to a guru of the inevitable is listening to a salesman of the useless. Conveniently, there are no short-cuts to improvement except for not wasting time chasing the fixes swing gurus throw out there.

The success I have with students seen and unseen tells me the Open Stance is more than a trickle now. It has turned into a clear stream cascading down a snow-capped summit. Whether or not it feeds a fountain of youth at the base remains to be seen. However, the Open Stance waters are definitely, and at a minimum, a potent potable.

Open your stance, and play golf.

John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy

Thesis Creep
Bruce and Specific Intention
Byron Nelson Wanted to Buy a Farm

After watching Jordan Peterson talk about what it is to be “good”, I feel that displacing every golfer’s darker impulses with an open stance is warranted. You may find the discussion of avoidance as interesting as I do. Let me begin by first setting Peterson’s perspective front and center.

Peterson argued that he isn’t good. He is has a healthy fear of his darker impulses. “I became terrified of how terrible I could be.” Arguing that the nature of man is inherently evil, he cites a history splotched with war, genocide, and corruption. Jordan even takes us, biblically, all the way back to God destroying his creation due to our misdeeds.

Therefore, he recommends his students “Read history as a perpetrator and not as a victim or a hero.” Isn’t that a fantastic twist on the prevailing narrative-consciousness? We battle the forces of success, arrogance, and worldly corruption as we walk our path.

The path, to JP, represents Truth… not OUR truth… but THE truth. Therefore, the path is not OUR path, but THE path. Inevitably, some stray from the path, and some don’t.

JP explains the psychology as we derive power and, by association, happiness by controlling our dark side. We need to ‘focus on an ideal that is transcendent and absolute, or we will fall for anything.’ This guy has the most fascinating intellect I’ve ever witnessed. Nonetheless, Jordan creates an opportunity for a corollary I find irresistible, so I will now turn onto Golf Blvd.

Our darker golfing impulses revolve around our desire to define our individuality in a competely subjective manner. We indulge in what makes our golf swing unique by creating our own definitions – never knowing where the path is. Some go through their cloudy, mist-shrouded, peat-laden, golfing life having never even searched for a stable footing of truth.

You see, golf does not tolerate equivocation or subjective reinvention. Our golf game demands what our life demands – discipline, self-control, hard work, and pursuit of truth. When we stop doing one of these, we leave the path for indulgences of ego and sloth, to name two. Consequently, our game suffers. In short, golf doesn’t play our dark game. Golf doesn’t reward undisciplined golfers with lasting success, so why start down that road?

I have made it my mission to bring the truth about THE golf swing to everyone doing the work on their own. However, I could invoke my inner Jordan Peterson and say it a different way. For instance, I could say, ‘I want golfers to become terrified of how terrible they could be if they listen to modern, subjective instructors.’ Why would I want to cause anxiety? Because, there is a transcendent idea just sitting beside you as you ponder your darker impulses. All you have to do is pursue it, and it’s light will show you the path.

Open your stance, and play golf.

John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy

Water’s Natural Movement is Upward
Watch Out For Rabbits, Sheep, and Boars This Year
String Theory and Our Golf Swing

We all love gerunds, clever phrases, and pithy observations. However, my opinion is that ideas and profound solutions, throughout society, mean more to people now. In that spirit, how might Open Stance golfers identify that our pretending is ending? Let me draw out some corollaries.

We know, for instance, that the “Recovery” in the economy was due to monetary heroin in the form of QE123. Mainstream economic news outlets pretending everything was fine, pumped our stock, student loan, real estate, and bond markets to the precipice of failure… again. But, is everything fine?

We know money supply increase is the classic definition of inflation. Obviously, we know the US Dollar only buys a fraction of its 1913 purchasing power. However, when will that inevitable inflation return, and in what common-knowledge form? I suggest inflation is more than a monetary definition. Inflation is the artificial expansion of any system. Information, sales, and services are no exception.

We even inflated our cultural sensitivities. Conservatives stood witness to thirty years of emotionalizing every issue in the world. We’ve seen everyone-gets-a-trophy-ism, political and corporate corruption, and identity politics ruin debate and thought, prosperity and trust. Recently, more radical interests have been trying to erase American history by destroying venerable and hallowed monuments and institutions.

Now, we see greater minds engaging in the deflation. The protections of the radicals are withdrawing. Books and media are deflating along with their fidelity to the Truth, which partially inspires my own work. Revisionism, which once halted the discussion it proposed to advance, is also being exposed as a cudgel to separate people into groups. So, what can we expect? Good things are ahead.

So speedy are the conversions back to logical and profound thinking that more-impressionable minds are reeling from the wake. The SS Sales Marketeer is, ironically, running aground on watershed ideas. The days of pretending that different words, describing the same action, somehow mean something new – is ending.

Look at all the many gerunds describing (ha!) so many dynamics. Aren’t they delightful? Our change of mind is, of course, ongoing. Time determines outcomes. Groups are productive only when their members are logical. Of course, I do know one logical group to which belonging golfers find worth. But, let’s save that for now.

Open your stance, and play golf.

John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy

https://www.openstanceacademy.com/golf/a-lie-can-travel/
https://www.openstanceacademy.com/golf/waters-natural-movement-is-upward/
https://www.openstanceacademy.com/golf/open-stance-dream/