I guess your answer depends upon your mind. What is it in us that converts stimulus into reaction? How can different golfers, made of the same bundle of neutrons and electrons, interpret the same outcome in completely unique ways. I’d say it is 80% how we are wired, and 20% how we are conditioned. I can get into why I estimate it that way, later. Your answer to the binary headline will determine your willingness or ability to adapt to a different golf swing philosophy. The speed at which you adapt is also a byproduct of that initial answer. It does not matter if the process is slow or fast. What matters is that you don’t waver after the decision is made.

It’s a matter of perception versus protection. There is a segment of the golfing public who are relativists, by nature. There are also segments who are pragmatists, protectionists, and experimentalists. There are characteristics of each type that underpin a commonality.

The relativist adapts slowly if too much information is introduced because they disembark their learning vehicle early in the confusion. But, they adapt very quickly if you focus the message. Give them one thing to do, and leave them alone until they think they have it. Outcomes are all feedback for these folks on course and range. They have a natural disconnection from results that sustains their pursuit of change. They can take that one thing to work on and add their own ideas to that framework. These people are very open to ideas of all kinds, so focusing them on a framework idea is key.

The pragmatists hear empirically-proven information and make the change with dogged determination. As a result, all their outcomes are feedback on the range and partly feedback on the course. Their hiccup in adapting is wondering, “How much” is enough? They require exactness in how to make a change. If left alone with an idea, worry takes over for lack of a learning structure. If there is a visual example to imulate, their improvement stays on course. They create motion and let the motion take care of the rest. As long as these folks retain all their distance, they adapt surely with change. The Open Stance caters to this type.

The protectionists are loathe to do anything that doesn’t immediately feel right. Outcomes for these types are most consequential. Change is a negative thing for them. They may entertain a framework, or a philosophy, without ever adopting it. They require an impartial third party to dip their toe in the water before they will do the same. Control is the keyword for these types. They do not like feeling off balance. They will always retain something significant of their own swing philosophy, good or bad, and rationalize it as “what works for me”. If these golfers ever decide to let go of their present, familiar ‘feeling’ for a new one with the Open Stance, they may never change again.

The experimentalists are never satisfied with anything they try. They get feedback the right way. But, they use it to continue expanding. There is always more distance, more accuracy, more feel than whatever they are employing at the moment. The funny part about this type is that they don’t like to practice – mostly due to impatience. So, they create a self-fulfilling prophecy for themselves. Whatever is new is best. They are very adventurous with swing changes and believe they can do anything. Stick-to-it-iveness is the part that slows them down. If they do decide to stick with a different philosophy, they have to reword or qualify someone else’s information so it can be their own idea.

The Open Stance is effective for all the various personality and learning types. The only difference is the teacher. I mean that it has always been and will always be the voice… never the message. Homer Kelly conditioned us to believe in HIS message and find a voice that told us what we wanted to believe. As a result, golfers became broken thinking there was no best way to set up to a golf ball – no best philosophy. Time may show something different.

John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy

For over forty years, I have seen people struggle with their golf swing or game, in general, always wondering, “What is missing?” and “Why am I not hitting it as well today?” I have seen great players, like my father, get worse and stop playing the game they love for a period of time because they thought they lost the ability to play. I have seen high handicap players who were content with being mediocre but hoped to improve – rocket into scoring respectability and actual achievement in a VERY short time frame.

For instance, I always told my father that watching bad golf swings would hurt his own, mostly reminding him that he always told me to play with better people. Whether golf, basketball, tennis, whatever the sport, he said I’d get better faster if I learned by losing to more better players. I was fortunate to have a great role model and mentor like dad in all my athletic pursuits. Having watched him quit playing golf in sad resignation, only to rediscover his game in the absence of the bad group of golfers he was playing with, confirmed the knowledge I had all along.

This season, I decided to introduce more experiential golf lessons. The results I’ve witnessed have been dramatic, as I had suspected they would be. I began with my juniors who are motivated to achieve. But, even my juniors who do not practice have improved their ball-striking and scoring.

I first thought to make playing a centerpiece of my teaching while in Florida. My first female student, in Florida, went from being happy to break 100 to shooting 76 (20 hcp. To a 7 hcp.) over the six months I played golf with her. We played three or four times a week, so you know. Their ability to make changes on-course while scoring has emerged as a real asset. Most dramatically, their awareness of movement due to set-up has fostered these benefits and been fostered by their teacher’s own play.

When you play golf with an authority figure, whether senior to you or just a better player, you get nervous when swinging your club. When we are nervous or anxious we gain a hyper-focus, for lack of a better descriptor, an our mind is adapting to our situation at light-speed (This is the central tenet to the Open Stance Philosophy that I teach). In the course of adapting, comfort settles into the learning dynamic from the students’ point of view, and they soak up every morsel of spoken and unspoken feedback they create. Once patterns of cause and effect are established, they are placed on the back-burner in favor of more detailed feedback that comes at the student in bigger and bigger waves as self-imposed limitations on their performance evaporate.

As I continue to conduct solely swing-for-swing playing lessons for my Open Stance students, I am redefining the term as my students’ improvement launches to a far higher level of awareness. The faster they become acclimated to keeping my playing company, the easier it is for them to assimilate information. For those who don’t have access to an excellent role model playing from an open stance, my information is available.

John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy

To Adapt Most Quickly to the Open Stance, the golfer trades a more upright plane and a reverse C for a flatter plane and a neutral spine angle through impact.

John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy

John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy

Learning The Open Stance Philosophy is a Choice That Eliminates The Chase

Some people will drink the sand. Some people think it is water produced by the Fountain of Youth. It’s the only thing that will quench their thirst. Some don’t notice a difference even after they take a sip. It becomes a habit – even as their condition worsens. Eventually, their capacity to survive the consumption, literally and figuratively, is exhausted. They quit drinking sand from that mirage and, if they are lucky, move on to the next. Poor bastards.

The metaphor of drinking the sand can be used for any dynamic a human being might create for meeting a need with an action where steps in thinking are left out. It’s Pavlovian in nature. Sometimes the action is hopelessly misguided and leads to eventual disappointment. The pursuit expresses only the inability of its progenitor to come up with a specific plan of attack to address a persistent need… a philosophy, if you will. Usually, what is lacking in the way of a philosophical ‘How to’ is rooted in a fuzzy kind of intent that forces us to chase our fixes instead of learning the underlying cause.

There are signs of all kinds to help us get to where we want to go – road signs, flashing colored lights, mile markers, exit signs, etc. But, if we are desperate enough to let our brain fool us and turn that first swallow of sand into water, we get tunnel vision. Then, we are chasing our fix. Then, all the indicators we once relied upon to guide us to the right place now speed by in a blur of colors, leaving us wondering where we were trying to go in the first place. Will we consume the sand until it consumes us?

Generally, we lose control of what is reasonable and quit trying to find answers and stop chasing the oases in the middle of the desert because now we think they are all sand, regardless of reality. We will question when we last knew the satisfaction of a sure idea’s refreshment. When was the last time the tank was truly full of fuel and not sludge?

There is good news about this moribund metaphor, my friends. It doesn’t have to involve you. You can remain above the fray and out of touch with the desperation of the chasers. The path is right in front of you. And it is SO SIMPLE! Open your stance, and play golf. Be your own observer and teacher. PAY ATTENTION to your signs (i.e. your feedback) on the range and on the course. Drink from a clear fountain of refreshment for your golf game and your state of mind. You don’t have to drink the sand, after all.

John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy

One of the subjects I cover with my students is the importance of creating the proper imbalances in the golf swing to create movement efficiencies. These imbalances occur over the entire duration of a golf swing. From the first movement through the finish, there are sequential imbalances based on initial intention that drive the motion of a golf swing and a dynamic counterbalancing of that force trailing the (intentional) motion. There are names for the forces at work inside your golf swing.

There is centripetal force and centrifugal (Phantom) force. Splitting hairs on whether to acknowledge centrifugal force is the reader’s prerogative. It’s debate, however, seems only to confuse the issue of counterbalancing forces. It seems to me that to deny the phantom force in the counterbalance is to deny the Laws of Physics. Within the golf swing, there is the force of acceleration and deceleration. There is terminal and radial velocity that create the force of inertia, or inertial force of impact. Then there is the additive force of momentum.

No matter which force we cite, they ALL begin with the connection of the feet to the ground. And when a target is thrown into the mix, the orientation to the ground remains constant, so the only logical variable to address, then, is the orientation of the feet to the target line. And the only orientation by that measure that facilitates all precise intention with a one’s golf ball is the Open Stance – the philosophy that leads to swing health and maintains a golfer’s physiological integrity.

That said, all force created is due to a prior decision to get out of control in a forceful way. These force-creating imbalances are made deliberately and within the limits of the individual’s athletic capabilities. Done properly, the chain of events initiated can be summarized with the following statement…. The longer the imbalances can be maintained before compromising impact, the faster the compensatory motion with the golf club will have to be to regain balance into solid impact.

By this measure, it is the ability to deliver the club head to the ball without falling or missing the ball. This dynamic is expressed when the resultant muscle stretch is converted into potential energy – which is to say force. If imbalances dissipate early in the backswing, there is less stretch maintained in the muscles – requiring less speed to rebalance one’s self into impact. As a result, the force created by momentum, rotation, leverage/lag, and the resulting club head speed will dissipate before impact, costing us force and resulting distance. Do we like hitting the ball shorter?… Me neither.

To get a move-by-move description of the imbalances, you will have to purchase my book. It doesn’t focus on the imbalances themselves. It relates the progression of imbalances to the sequence leading to perfect Open Stance impacts. I don’t claim to know any more than what Newton, Jung, Chopra, Hawking, etc. gave me to use for measuring motion of any kind. If accused of any brightness that is out of the ordinary, it is only the light I shed on the truth others have proven.

John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy

To The Golfing Machine crowd, a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 are the ball flights available to use. But they can’t use them all… maybe six, at most. To golfers setting up closed, they might be able to hit three of them. But to Open Stance philosophers, all nine are usable. Can you see the tree?

The 1, 2, & 3 that are the easiest for the golfer to hit because they are below the Plane. If a right-handed golfer sets up closed, these first three shots are their 4, 5, & 6. An actual 1, 2, & 3 does not even have an equivalent on their ball flight tree. They would have to hit a ‘-3, -2, & -1′ to achieve the first below-Plane branch of shots. A 4, 5, & 6 to them are actually a 7, 8, & 9 to the parallel set-up group. And their 7, 8, & 9 doesn’t have an equivalent either. They would have to hit a ’10, 11, & 12′ to hit the final triplet according to their feet alignment. Needless to say, the ball-striking required and awareness of clubface and path are difficult for them to assimilate repeatedly.

If a person sets up square, it’s all the same. The numbers don’t move around. However, having seen some top players’ numbers on ball-flight tree competency, I can tell you that the extremes are difficult to achieve because there is no bias to the square set-up, and the 7, 8, & 9 are the most difficult to hit for these folks because they don’t generate the lag to allow a push starting line.

But, If a person sets up open, their 7, 8, & 9 is an actual 4, 5, & 6, while actually hitting a push draw, push, and push fade due to leg drive and consequential lag. These shots are repeatable because they are above the plane. I’m withholding some details here as proprietary knowledge and literary license. Anyway, the 4, 5, & 6 for the golfer who sets up open is an actual 1, 2, & 3 on the ball-flight tree. Now to the piece de resistance…. Due to the lag option of the Open Stance swinger, they can remove lag to path their club easily to hit 1, 2, & 3. Since there is no actual equivalent on the tree, it is immaterial to measure except to say that you can do it.

John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy

Ok, genius…. Then why, oh why, do all the best ball-strikers in the world choose to control their ball by playing a fade? A fade flies higher, lands softer, spins more, IS more controllable, and as discussed in your last article – falls above the Plane. So, how do you explain what appears to be two divergent statements with one point, which is to hit a fade for control?

My answer is that the context is what matters in discriminating the difference. Because movement does not create anything due to its incidental nature, it cannot take responsibility for controlling anything, including a golf shot. Therefore, we cannot even put the two ideas, movement and control, in the same sentence. Most instructors talk about movement as if a golf shot, intentional or not, is created by movement. It isn’t, as I will explain.

We have to back away from the act of striking a golf ball to discover where the action originates. We have to acknowledge that the golfer seeks to perfectly express their consciousness, which also includes their subconscious, with every swing. We need to recognize the progression of events that lead to impact to understand not only that movement is incidental, but that control is gained before movement occurs. Finally, we need to agree that no matter how impressive the individual or special “their” swing is, the Laws of Physics apply equally to everyone.

The golfer’s conscious mind has the power to focus the subconscious intention. If properly cultivated in Philosophy, the golfer is able to shake off the limits to efficient thinking and movement born of that clarity. It’s not important, therefore, that all the best ball-strikers in the world choose to hit a fade. It’s only important that they intend to hit a fade, and don’t give up until they can express that intention at will.

Now for the control part…. Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore, I am. This Latin existentialist phrase was an early hint at the mind drives our consciousness, and therefore, our existence. I think the point here is that everything that defines us as individuals begins in the conscious mind. Everything that defines human potential begins in the unconscious or, as Carl Jung described it, “The Collective Unconscious”. Deepak Chopra may say something like “The Non-Local Intelligence”. The others may call this source God.

So, if we tap into the universality of potential ways to swing a golf club for control of our golf ball, do we wing it and assume we are the end all, be all? Or, do we pay attention to those great icons who have gone before and copy their thoughts, recognizing a certain wisdom in it? Standing on the shoulders of giants like Newton, Tesla, daVinci, Trevino, Hogan, et.al., we have made our decisions and chosen our course of action. Copying a thought is safe, after all. One can always claim it came to them in a dream. We’ve done it forever. We continue to do it because there continues to be wisdom in it.

Following examples of efficiency or proficiency doesn’t diminish us. It helps us to resonate in harmony with the universe. This conscious decision falls within the limits of reason and existence, and it begins before any movement ever expressed our idea, whether focused by Philosophy or not. If the intention is focused, the movement becomes refined. If unfocused, the movement remains elusive. Either way, control begins before we even draw the club back.

John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy

It always amazes me how little attention golf instructors pay to the Plane beyond the golf swing. Maybe it’s only relevant to these well-meaning folks because it is touched by the golf club as it moves around the golfer? Isn’t it important to know that the Plane is in an extended relationship with the intended start line and the ball, if only by default? The Plane extends past the golf shot in both directions to infinity, if you choose to believe. So, why would we not discuss what is significant about the space “Above” and “Below” the Plane if it extends beyond the target?

The first thing I want to clarify are the definitions. “The Plane” is the swing plane. The Plane does not necessarily parallel the target line nor the line of the feet. “Above” the Plane means any space on the outside of the Plane, from the ball to the highest extension of clubhead movement. It is the space that extends away from the front of the golfer with the Plane as the dividing line. The golfer’s head occupies this space. “Below” the Plane means any space on the inside of the Plane from the ball to the highest extension of clubhead movement. It is the space occupied by the feet – backwards, with the Plane as the dividing line.

All things being equal, a draw or hook goes further than a fade or slice, as we all know. So why would any sensible golfer choose a fade in navigating a golf course for any reason other than that it is widely known that tour players do it? Control, of course, is the answer. Control of a golf shot can be summarized by Lee Trevino best, I think. He said, “You can talk to a fade, but a hook won’t listen.” But, why do you suppose this is the case? After all, a draw is the more powerful, penetrating shot shape.

Power must equal efficiency, mustn’t it? Well, yes – in the production of clubhead speed it is irreplacable. But once the ball leaves the clubhead, the player’s power (i.e. control) atrophies very quickly, but the influence exerted by practiced, efficient movement remains to guide the ball through the elements. The point is that efficiency is not always about power alone. It is about seeking power and precision. Possessing one without the other is useless because the pursuit of only one precludes the possession of the other – leaving the golfer with one long-drive story per month to talk about.

It’s like the way that parents raise their children. They provide a consistent and powerful message to control the development of their child’s values and belief system with parameters they believe best, and then hope for the best. You try to keep them ‘above the Plane with a fade’ because the result is easier to control. Then, one day they won’t listen… they rebel. That is the metaphorical fade double-cross, in golf swing parlance. You might watch them hook it out of bounds by not calling at a certain time, as instructed.

Then, you say, “As long as you live under my roof, you’ll do as I say”. And you ground them for a week using the fade system under which they were raised. Control… it is important to alleviate parental fears of the unknown. It’s why humanity developed Mathematics. Anyway, one day, the child grows up and moves out. The ball has left the clubface. Parental control dissipates, except for that initial, powerful, consistent message to play a fade throughout life (a push draw at worst), which continues to influence their ’round’.

The fade influence represents good, responsible parenting/ball-striking intent (ad.sic.) The law or some measure of character is the metaphorical Plane. Above the Plane is good, below it is a crapshoot. Some have to break below the Plane to feel powerful once out of ten times but lose control of the power nine out of ten times. A snap hook may develop without fade intent. Certain golfers feel power FROM control. These are the people that history remembers fondly.

Now that my metaphor is completed, let’s get back on topic. We ask How, What, Where, and When we should hit a fade, and yet no one ever addressed the “Why” beyond the ‘because the best players hit a fade’ argument. Well, here is your answer….

A fade is above the Plane. It is easier to control because it is above the Plane. The fade is identified by a ball that begins on a starting line, which is invariably diverging from the line of the feet. The ball then flies straight only to fall above the Plane, which bisects the starting line at ground-level, on its descent back to Earth. For right-handed golfers, ‘above’ is to the right of the starting line, and for leftys – to the left.

While it is true that someone can hit a pull fade, the fact that it’s starting line is under the Plane precludes the possibility for repeatability and power. This is true because the clubhead has to pass the hands before impact, which requires an early release and consequent deceleration of the clubhead. The most repeatable and well-behaved, law-abiding fades begin either in-line with the feet at set up or above the Plane.

Now, it’s not the fade that creates control. Wait…huh!?

John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy