Three months in, three modules in and a progress report…
Handicap 9, but had not played to it in a couple of years having moved from a tiny parkland London course to a long windswept seaside championship course.
Faults prior to starting, shocking ballstriking, all sorts of mishits, fat, thin, left, right, short, usually short, never long. Rotten chipping.
Pluses Solid putter, usually for a 5, sometimes on par 3’s.
Since embarking on Lag’s tuition, I have discovered all sorts of wonderful things I never knew about the golf swing and certain insights that have really helped move my game on to a different level so that I am now able to play most courses in sub 80 rounds from the back tees.
I have had a couple of 73’s and one 71 in the last two weeks (par 69)
The most noticeable change is the quality of my bad shots which has now improved to being playable and still recoverable for par.
In fact, I have actually won more in bets since March than I have paid Lag for his three modules!
I thought it might be a nice idea for us students to help each other by chiming in with our lightbulb moments as we plot our way through the modules.
Without any doubt, the most important concept for me is ‘the holy grail’ concept of sustaining lagpressure by continually accelerating through to PV5. Its the sensation that gives you that incredible shot that you see the pros hit, right where you aimed, knocking the stick out. In truth, I probably feel that sensation only twice or three times in every round but its becoming more consistent and an interesting thing is once I find that shot, it sets the key for the rest of the round and I usually play to around level par from there on in even if I don’t have that sensation with every subsequent shot.
Its almost like you don’t have to get it perfect, the intention and approximation gives you a good result anyway.
The other major lightbulb moment for me…and this may be a very personal and individual thing, is the realisation of how important the 4.30 line is in golf. As Lag says in module 1, the greats live this geometry, problem is, nobody bothered to tell us amateurs!
Firing hard along the 4.30 line from the bird’s eye view, all wrists and pivot…that is the biggest lightbulb moment I have had, if ever I do it successfully, the ball loves it!
My latest lightbulb moment is understanding and feeling the significance of the frozen right arm. Here is an excerpt of some comments from Lag that fellow students may find useful.
[b]why do you think I am so adamant about not moving the arms (in module 1)?
Pivot and wrists… that’s the clue…
then the right arm can be frozen…
Watch Hogan…
keeping the right arm bent keeps the right arm tight on the body…
I think it’s the absolute secret of the swing…
very important…
it’s part of the real secret of the swing… for hitters… it does two things…
it stablizes the arms and wrists through impact… then keeps force upon the shaft after… into P4 and beyond…[/b]
What is the handicap now? Have you seen reductions?
Are you still in the UK?
Do you think it might be a good idea for all of us based in the UK to try and have a get together some time? We could play golf, have dinner, chat and have a few beers.
I’m in Northern Ireland but would rather go play your championship course than have you come here lol!
I got to single figures really with just a half decent eye and a bit of smoke and mirrors after taking up the game late in my early 30s about 14 years ago.
I then went to the Mclean school while holidaying at Doral about five years ago and unfortunately my decline started around then…what they were teaching me was like putting a square peg in a round hole and I lost my natural ability to strike the ball.
I have struggled to regain my strike since and tried a number of different teachers and methods but to no avail…
I then stumbled across the Sevam1 and Lynn Blake sites and that led me to iseek where I found Lag and joined his online class in March.
In all honesty, I have not posted a great score yet to reduce my handicap but have had several mid 70 rounds in practice on my Irish par 71 course and a few low 70s scores at my par 69 London course. I was fortunate enough to play Merion from the tips a few weeks ago and shot 78 compared to 77 from my scratch partner who is a member there so there is a definite improvement since March.
I think a UK meeting would be a great idea and a lot of fun! Maybe we could even get Lag to hop over and join us!
OK…have taken the plunge. After having had three/ four months to assess/ digest Lag’s take on the pros and cons of flat v upright, I have decided to follow suit, if a flat rotating power supply is good enough for Hogan and Lag, its definitely good enough for me.
I have just left my full set of Nike blades with my pro to flatten the lies to 6 degrees flat.
Will report back later if I am still able to make contact with the ball!
Glad to hear the progress, I’m in the Uk and am 1 week in on Module 1
Am still flapping my arms but it’s getting better as I do the drill more and more. I am a similar story, started golf at 13 though and my handicap came down each year 36-18, 18-9 and then 9-4. Then I got the David Leadbetter/Nick Flado video for christmas and decided to remodel my swing now instead of later
Have learnt a lot last two years from Brian Manzella, then Lynn Blake and TGM sites. Found iseek last week, signed up on the spot for lags course. I’m still flapping about off 5 but i’m setting my sites at +1 handicap and my long term goal is the seniors tour at 50
I’ve got 17 years to get that good
Getting lightbulb moments all then time with this sites archived posts.
Great to have a few guys on here from the UK! I like Styles idea and I’d be up for getting together at some point. Sounds like we are all in similar positions (i.e) mid 30’s and 40’s with handicaps in the 4-10 bracket and mid life crisis starting or on the way Get enough of us together and perhaps we can persuade Lag to come out on a flying visit and play some nice windswept links courses! As an ex tour player he will probably need a private jet and a limo from the airport as well as a suite in a top establishment - anyone got any contacts
I am going to be very restrained here…it was the cleanest ballstriking session ever.
The lie angles looked perfect and felt very comfortable to me when I picked them up. I have been doing a lot module 3 drills and a few little secrets seemed to come together all at once.
I would say the module 3 elements of saving some right arm and the importance of retaining as much pivot as possible for post impact rotation were the two biggest things.
Not going to say anything else for now, I want to go out and test it in real play to see if the hitting fairy is still with me.
Welshdentist,
Read as many of the archived posts as you can, its all great stuff.
Addington Arnie,
Yes, maybe Lag will waive his appearance fee for his British students! Seriously, its a cracking idea so lets make it happen!
My swing is changing as the work I do in the drills wash through. I found that when I had an enforced layoff because I was travelling a lot a few weeks back, if anything I went backwards a little…its important to keep drilling for me as Lag’s technique is so different to what I did before…Thank God!
I drill every day, maybe about 20 mins on module 1 and 2 and 30 mins on module 3. You will already have noticed that the drills are quite an aerobic workout in themselves!
I feel like a leper over here in Australia with you guys over in the UK.
I couldn’t afford the airfare to come over there and have a game with you.
I wonder if we could each post our swings for the the other guys to look at. We could all learn from and maybe even help the others.
Thats the beauty of the internet…isn’t it? We can communicate just as easily?
In some ways it quite nice to think that there are international ‘members’ scattered all over the globe.
Welshdentist asked about posting swings and I noticed that Cheesedonkey posted some module 3 vids. In principle, I guess it may be a good idea assuming you mean vids of the modules rather than the whole golf swing.
My feeling is that in terms of critiqeing a module, only Lag is able to make a ‘professional’ comment…but if people felt it might be of help from a kind of collegiate perspective in sharing our experience, I guess that might be useful, lets see what people think.
Believe it or not I just got that look from my club guy. All I asked for was 3* flat, but he knew me as being a 2* up guy… They were Mizuno MP62’s… he actually held them up to the bending machine and said, “Are you SURE you want to do this?”
Almost implying I was going to damage the club! Make it… unusable in some way.
The look I got was priceless…one of a mixture of pity, sympathy, incredulity, concern, real concern, should they call the hospital?..the psychiatric hospital? was I well?
Anyway, rather gingerly, he suggested that I only do this to one of the irons which he bent to 5 flat…
When I left I expect the shop pros looked something like this
When I returned 20 mins later they still looked like that…
When I said…yes, lets crack on, more funny looks, this time a bit sideways, scared looking,
Anyway, I then had the best practice session ever and I asked Lag later why all clubs weren’t designed like this!!
I should let you guys know that I am only 5ft 7 in or as my wife says 5ft 6 and a half!
To further define my assessment about the new 6 degrees flat irons…
the shafts are heavy s400 and they are nike blade irons, very traditional look and feel, much heavier also than standard clubs.
The sensation when swinging now is one of almost swinging along my belt line, very flat indeed. I thought that this would be difficult and strange but in fact it was easy and natural. It made me realise that actually, I didn’t have to make some compensatory last minute changes into impact.
Undoubtedly this is related to my height which is not dissimilar to Hogan’s.
Wonder what lies Woosnam used?
Anyway, for anyone thinking about taking the plunge and flattening your lie angles, I would definitely recommend it if you are a similar height.
Swinging flatter must be done in tandem with adjusting the lie angles of your gear… wedge to driver.
However, not necessarily the SW (the one you hit out of the sand) … I will explain later…
For pivot driven hitters, we do not rely on maximizing swing radius to earn our velocity nor our acceleration…
Flatter clubs and swing planes naturally engage the pivot, and discourage arm driven golf swings, which just don’t work as well.
Flatter swing planes from P3 to P4 put the geometry on our side for accuracy… because we it becomes increasingly more difficult
to come OTT of too inside out… OTT becomes more about trajectory and less about starting the ball left.
Taller players can always bend their knees more to lower their center of gravity. George Archer and George Knudson both
applied this technique with great results.
I was wondering what some of the lie angle you all are using. I am currently at 2 degree’s flat and thinking of going lower I now have 2 rounds under my belt and like the results so far, should I go flatter. Lag I believe I have read some where that you have your irons bent 5 degree’s flat.
Get enough of us together and perhaps we can persuade Lag to come out on a flying visit and play some nice windswept links courses! As an ex tour player he will probably need a private jet and a limo from the airport as well as a suite in a top establishment - anyone got any contacts 
