I’ve got a pull-draw problem. Slicers, I know you think this a humble brag, but you can score from short and right of the green. Long left? Nope. The real frustration is that I’ve tried everything to fix this miss that has plagued my approach play over the last few years. Nothing has worked. I must be missing something, right?
This is the background that I took with me to my lesson at the PGA Show in Orlando with Michael Neff, Golf Digest’s top-ranked teacher in Oregon and founder of GEARS Sports, a 3D motion tracking system popular with PGA Tour players, instructors and club fitters.
Except I didn’t tell Neff anything about my big miss or how I’ve tried to fix it. I didn’t need to because after he placed sensors all over my body and club, the GEARS tech would tell him everything he needed to know in one swing. The technology uses the sensors and eight cameras to track dozens of body and club metrics, measuring exactly what is happening at each point in the swing.
MORE: The secret to a bigger turn isn’t in your shoulders. Pros focus on this body part instead
I took one swing, hitting what felt like a pretty flush 8-iron into the net.
“I really like a lot of things going on here,” Neff said as he reviewed my backswing. “Your pivot looks clean to me. You get about a 45-degree hip turn. You don’t over hinge. The club face is pretty neutral, matching up to your left arm pretty well.”
Translation: I’ve got a downswing problem. Neff explained that as I come down into the ball, “There’s a couple things that we don’t really love.”
Flaw #1
“You have more tilt than turn. That’s a no-no,” he said. At impact, as you can see, my upper body is tilted away from the target. This is called side bend and having some is a great way to shallow out your downswing, approach the ball from inside the target line and hit a draw. The problem is that I have too much of it, which can lead to hooks.
GEARS showed us that I have 19 degrees of tilt, which is more than my ribcage turn, which is 16 degrees at impact. “Whenever we see more tilt and less turn, we always see a lot of face-angle deviation. When the body stops turning, the face starts to start to go all over the place,” Neff explained.
Face-angle stability is something that elite players obsess over because a stable clubface—one that doesn’t dramatically flip through impact—produces a much more consistent ball flight. Too much face movement and you need to time the release perfectly with your hands to hit the ball straight.
Neff explained that at impact, most tour players have more ribcage turn than side bend, which allows them to have that stable clubface. I have the opposite.
Flaw #2 
Another humble brag incoming. I have way, way too much shaft lean. Again, any casters might envy this, but I promise you too much shaft lean is no good. Take Neff’s word.
“We definitely don’t want to see this much shaft lean,” he said. “That number is 15 degrees, that is off the charts for shaft lean. A lot of that is from the ball position.”
MORE: Early extension is a swing killer. Pros prevent it with these two key moves
Having some lean, where the butt of the club is slightly toward the target at impact, is crucial to creating quality contact and a penetrating trajectory. When you get too much of it like I do, however, the ball comes out too low and hot, making it very tough to hold greens.
OK, so knowing these two flaws, it sounds like all I have to do is turn a little more and release the club a little more the pull-draw will be fixed, right?
“If you were to turn more and drag it less, put the ball more forward, this ball will hook,” Neff said. Wait, what?
Fixing my swing flaws would only make me hit the ball worse because it turns out that my clubs are way too upright. GEARS measured that at impact, the toe of the club is four degrees upright. This causes the ball to hook, which is why I lean the shaft so far forward and stop turning through the shot, Neff explained. Ideally, the club should be coming in flush with the ground—neither to the toe nor the heel should be up.
This is where club fitting and instruction come together and given that GEARS can measure both club and body data, Neff was able to see how all of these elements work together.
After seeing my first swing (left), Neff told me to feel like I’m turning my body more into impact while releasing the club (right).
When clubs are too upright, they become super draw-biased. Though the lie angle on my clubs is standard, since I have long arms for my height, I need clubs that are significantly flatter—around four degrees, Neff said. This is something that Neff also identified on GEARS with Billy Horschel, who was using clubs that were too upright.
Since the lie angle on my clubs promotes a big draw, I lean the shaft forward a lot and stop turning in an effort to keep the ball from going left. The solution isn’t to simply fix my swing, but to make my clubs flatter and only then can I start working on technique.
What’s fascinating is that all of this information was taken from just one swing, which reveals the true benefit of 3D technology. Sure, many coaches can video a swing and see that I have too much shaft lean and side tilt and not enough turn. Others can use a launch monitor to see that my club is too upright at impact. It’s in measuring all of this data at once and integrating it together that GEARS made this lesson so efficient.
Just days later, I took all of my clubs in and had them bent to a 59-degree lie angle, as Neff advised, which is extremely flat. I’ve only played once since, but the results are encouraging. The ball is not going left, and I seem to have the freedom to finally make the swing changes that I need.
Should it work, then this is best one-swing lesson I’ve ever gotten.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
