Imbalances are forces that provide context for all human achievement. Forces counter one another in nature and in your golf swing. Balance is the key. However, I want to explain “why” imbalances are important in creating golf swing efficiency.

I’m the first to admit to pushing an essentially meaningless intellectual exercise. All answers to golf swing questions are provable, but not necessary. The only reason I explain things this way is to counter the trend in modern instruction and help students trust their instincts.

A need, an intent, and a philosophy can easily replace all available ‘expert’ opinions about becoming a better golfer. Choosing the best set-up philosophy is really all that is needed. The student will gain adaptive experience through deliberate practice. Thereafter, my only purpose would be to teach students how to interpret their experience.

Suffice it to say the mind creates it all. Therefore, we are talking about how our mind affects our movement. The same set-up philosophy will create the same solutions to it. Fortunately, we don’t have to argue the point. Physics provides a list, or basket, of possible solutions that solve any set-up challenges.

For example, Bubba Watson and Sergio Garcia look and swing differently using an Open Stance philosophy. Yet, they achieve excellence because their intentions and their chosen philosophy are efficient and constant. Each adapted differently (Shoulder Width…”) to the same set-up philosophy while choosing offsets from the same basket of solutions. In other words, we can look differently while adapting similarly.

John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy

The effect of foot placement on the golf swing seems to be an underexplained relationship in golf today. I suspect there is more money in omissions than cures. Of course, an alternative answer may be that there is a pervasive knowledge deficit. In either case, a student’s quest for knowledge is unfulfilled.

There is an ear for every voice. However, we need to demand that our ear gets a better explanation from our chosen voice. Otherwise, we might be getting instruction from a very confident dumbass. If true, time and money have been wasted getting a sales pitch instead of a golf lesson. Better answers can create a mental connection between our feet and golf swing.

From our first steps, we learn to fight gravity using our feet. As we gain experience walking, we dare to try running. There were answers available on the subject of how to run, but we didn’t need them. We never questioned the process, because we were too busy making it happen.

As long as our intent remains constant, we will always figure out how to move with certainty. Certainty implies commitment and efficiency. Therefore, discussing foot placement and how it affects a golf swing is really a discussion about finding and committing to objective, athletic efficiency. Properly evaluating our feedback is an absolute necessity in determining efficiency. But, what standard do we use?

We need a proper point of reference to objectively observe movement, which is always where and how we place our feet at address. For example, if we turn our rear toe toward the target, we inhibit torso and hip turn and shorten our backswing. If we turn our rear toe away from the target, we encourage more torso and hip turn and lengthen our backswing.

Foot orientation is also a feeding factor of trajectory and shot shape. But, how feedback opens the mind of the golfer is more important than any incidentals of movement. Opening our mind allows us to become more responsive, adaptable, and function with less doubt. An Open Stance promotes an optimal placement of the feet, objectively, for feedback to do it’s job for us, subjectively.

John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy

There is one, most important guideline to follow when you are ready to achieve. That guideline is putting first things first after you create an intent for your game. There are any number of professionals willing to tell you what to do and how to do it, while ignoring why it is doable. The future of learning to achieve in golf will begin by adopting the one true route to excellence. After all, “The shortest distance between two points is a straight line… in the opposite direction, Danny.”

Some very smart people are trying to convince us of an alternate route through mental training, fitness training, dietary training, et.al. Logically, these paths eventually lead to improvement. But, I have never been the kind who suffers detours well. I am pretty impatient, so wasting time makes me cray-cray. It’s a blessing and a curse.

Usually, the instructor who is oblivious to the detour is just responding to the student’s anxiety instead of breaking down the anxiety into progressive parts. This kind of omission takes focus away from self-improvement and makes it about a relationship between instructor and student. As a self-improvement guy, the reliance on someone else for diagnostics seems ridiculous. Therefore, my goal here is really about helping you help yourself.

First, Need to reach a goal. Second, intend to make it happen ASAP. Third, create a philosophy to guide you (The Open Stance, of course). Fourth, before a move is made, decide what outcome will influence every other in your golf shot – having assumed the rest is carved in stone. Nothing will derail the progress of someone who has decided to take a specific outcome to the practice area and practice until they achieve that outcome.

The outcome should be obvious to the golfing world. And, it will be in time. But, for now, I am the advocate for first things first on the road to achievement in golf. If you would rather take second things first, then I’ll get there first. You will continue trying to get more distance or hit it higher, chip it closer or hit better lag putts without ever doing one, most-important thing first.

The following videos contain my advice on where every process should begin. By taking first things first, we eliminate doubt and disappointment. By setting primary, smaller goals, we we can accelerate the WHOLE PROCESS. But, we have to recognize the difference between the first thing and everything’s else. We cannot be distracted from the essentials of golfing excellence.

John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy

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The fastest way to lose your golfing mind is to make a change in movement without changing your set-up. If you try to flatten your plane like Tiger and Phil without opening your stance, you are asking your brain to process new information to get back to a solid strike. Moreover, your brain has to interpret feedback in an illogical way. Repeating an illogical thought process will always distort the feedback loop.

Pros tend to work on movement first, because they are searching for better results. Tiger almost had it with Haney. He flattened his plane, but he kept his stance square. He blew out his knee and his back – never knowing that the set-up creates and defines the movement, not vice-versa. Furthermore, in violating the natural order of things, Tiger took a year to adjust to his damaging new swing. He won a lot of tournaments while he was breaking down, though.

Recently, Phil has been trying to flatten his approach to his ball. He stated that the reason for his swing change because shaft angle was too steep, too deep into his downswing. The swing he wants to change was a reflection of the cognitive or physiological dissonance between his set-up and intent. Phil is changing his swing without an accommodative (and causal) set-up change.

When Phil or Tiger steps up to hit a driver we all think, “Wonder where this is going?” It’s an adventure every time. We also know every time they hit a fairway, they score. But, Tiger and Phil continue to hit it all over the map.

Every time they shell it into the trees, I’m yelling at the TV, “You can’t do both!” I mean, it seems like they are determined to lose their minds by pitting their swings against their set-ups from the tee. How can these greats not know something that the rest of us know? The answer is easy.

‘Why?’ is never asked. Asking why would invite doubt and risk spoiling the happiness brought about by achievement. Also, why question things that make us special? Isn’t it easier to be blissfully ignorant? I would be. If you have been successful at every level for decades, the answer is never philosophical.

Sports heroes are men and women of action. From their experience, action leads to achievement, which leads to happiness, which leads to Ego, the placeholder for knowledge. Thus, “cogito ergo sum” is not part of the hero vocabulary.

But, if these titans of the turf could apply their athleticism to a better set-up philosophy – the Open Stance – they could keep their ego, happiness, and achievement, without diving into their psyches. The Open Stance is the vehicle that would allow their flattening action to blossom. Employing an Open Stance frees the mind to interpret results without the interference of confused expectations. Only then can efficient movement emerge. Somebody, go tell’em.

John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy

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“You’re not clearing your hips”, he said. Chances are good that, if he is dishing out advice, it is because you have been listening to him. You’ve been a thirsty traveler, and he has been filling your glass with sand. I feel bad for you. But, there is hope. Clearing the hips is not your problem.

Clearing the hips is a marker for a swing that is ailing. It is noticeable because the way the golfer moves indicates an illness, and the eyes focus on the center of the body for answers. If I can affect any change in golf at all, I hope it is getting people to understand the causal relationship between set-up and movement.

Extension through impact can be misinterpreted as a problem with the hips. Misdiagnoses inevitably lead to bad advice. We need to be aware that movement is incidental. It expresses intent, no matter how clear or fuzzy. Over time, clear intent may eliminates the ‘doubt that keeps us sane’, but it will also save our golf swing.

“Clearing” the hips is movement employed to maintain acceleration in the clubhead once the clubhead speed overtakes the speed of the hands. The counter-balancing motion in a conscient golfer’s swing will either prolong or arrest the movement preceding it.

If the backswing is quick, for instance, it is short. If it is short, the clubhead launches from the top. An early release requires the brain to send opening signals to the body – just to make contact with a golf ball. The incidental, opening motion actively moves the ball back in the stance, which serves to steepen an otherwise shallow impact.

These things snowball, don’t they? The moral of the story is that we have to be immune to any advice targeting any area of our moving golf swing that is above the knees. You can use any device you want to fix any malady you have. But, your problem will metastasize or return to other areas of your swing if you do not address the underlying cause.

It is almost a metaphor, or similetaphor, to our physiological health. “You are what you eat”. Our diet (Of golf swing advice) will lead to health or illness. The closer we get to consuming what the earth supports, the healthier we become. The earth supports us through the placement of our feet.

John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy