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

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