The biggest difficulty with Richard was having his dominant arm on the front side of the club. I much prefer to have the student's dominant arm on the back of the club. So, it was difficult for him to learn to use the right arm. It's still instinctive for him to attempt to employ the left arm when going for the additional speed.
During the lesson today, we had some interesting things happen. We quickly returned to the same success with the irons that we had in the last lesson (like the previous pictures in this thread). In fact, his speed with the irons was faster when hitting the ball than it was in the practice swing. I've found this to happen many times with my own stroke. I have much faster speed when hitting a ball. I can't get the club to move as fast without a ball.
Here's the interesting part. When Richard tried to max out the driver speed, he reverted to some of his original alignments. Each of the pictures on the left are of a practice swing, where he was trying to exaggerate some of the alignments. The pictures on the right are hitting a ball, where he returned to some faults. Amazingly, his speed when hitting the ball was 107 mph, with poor alignments. So, he's gone from 84 mph to 107 mph. That alone would qualify him for an amazing change. But, even more amazing was the speed on the practice swing. It was
118 mph!!! You can get some false readings if it picks up a portion of the ball speed. But, it's impossible to get ball speed when you're not hitting a ball!
As Homer said, "Impact is not a destination." When Richard learns this (physically) and is no longer ball bound, he can find his true potential in clubhead speed. 84 mph to 107 mph is a great success story. But, I can't wait to get him from 84 mph to 118 mph, when hitting a ball. I've never seen that much change. I know it's just a practice swing. But, I'd challenge anyone to get that speed with a golf club, with or without a ball, when your starting speed was 84 mph!
