New golf swing moves to accompany new clubs

I would like to introduce Bruce Furman.  I have been working with Bruce for the past two weeks on my swing mechanics and love the changes he is assisting me with.  Bruce has a keen eye for the golf swing and is going to be a great resource moving forward.

Bruce is the Director of Instruction at Langdon Farms Golf Course just south of Portland in the summer months and is the Lead Instructor at The Golf Academy at PGA West (LaQuinta Resort) through the winter months.  Bruce came very highly recommended by some of my peers and was voted second place in the 2011 Golf Digest “Best Teachers in your state (Oregon).”  Bruce has a number of other qualifications that are listed here: http://www.pgawestgolfacademy.com/bfurman.html

Qualifications don’t always mean good communication, though, and when I went to Bruce two weeks ago I was solely looking to see what his approach to teaching was and if I could learn from him.  After the first hour lesson I knew he and I would fit well together and have decided to work solely with Bruce on swing mechanics for the unforeseeable future.  In just one week Bruce had me making some big swing changes that I could tell were moving my mechanics in the right direction.  Check out these before and after images:

IMG_7769 IMG_7770

The one in which I am wearing a sweater was taken on day one with Bruce, before he had offered any swing thoughts.  Basically it was the swing that I brought to the table.  The blue-shirted image was taken 8 days later.  All four images are captured at the top of my actual backswing, so it’s not me freeze framing in different positions, rather it is a result of the work he is having me do.

His method reminds me of the work I was doing with Scott Hamilton in Georgia back in early 2012.  Scott was having me do a full shoulder turn on top of a solid pivot and keeping me long on the top of my swing to generate more power.  The instruction with Bruce is similar and I enjoy getting back on that track and am excited to see what the future holds.

Why make this change and add in Bruce right now?

Good question.  The reasoning is that I was talking with goal guy-Stuart about my progress and we could see that statistically I was getting behind in some numbers, especially fairways hit and tee shots in general.  Because of a few reasons, including the length of time stuck at certain levels, Stuart suggested that I needed to make a transformative move rather than continue down the same path that I had been traveling.  The transformation was two-fold, the first part being to get a new bag of sticks that fit me as best as possible and the second was to approach my full swing in a different manner.  The latter aspect of the transformation was definitely the tougher of the two and one that I didn’t necessarily want to approach, but one that I knew needed to be addressed for my ultimate goals.

I still see Adrian very often at Columbia Edgewater and think of him as a top coach and will continue to consult with him for the next four years.  It is hard to write this and make the transition public because it has nothing to do with Adrian or how he teaches, rather it is the manner in which I am learning at this point.  I talked with Adrian a couple of days ago and he assured me that all is well and neither of us has any hard feelings.  He is a very understanding and gentlemanly man and knows that we all learn differently.  AND, it’s not to say that I couldn’t have gotten to the same future result with Adrian; the point, though, was to make a transformative move because something needed to change.  Now that I have signed on with Bruce I plan on working with him at the very least 9 months.  That, in my opinion, is about the length of time you need to spend with an instructor in order to see their changes truly come through.  It’s important not to change too quickly as you can become tangled in multiple swing/learning thoughts, but it is also important to recognize when something needs change, no matter how comfortable your current situation is.

I hope this is coming off the right way.  It’s not you, it’s not me, it’s just how it is.

Speaking of change, I finally got the new Titleist clubs on TrackMan yesterday and there were some very interesting comparative numbers.  I will do a full write-up in the near future, but for now here is a small sample of the results:

Old clubs 5-iron:

Screen shot 2013-05-15 at 10.11.12 AM

New 5-iron:

Screen shot 2013-05-15 at 10.10.53 AM

Tons of data to consume in the full reports.  I have only done the irons so far, today is a woods and driver comparison.

Plenty more info to come on Bruce’s instructions for me and which changes we are making in the golf swing.

This post is brought to you by longevity.  For it’s not playing well today that matters, but playing well down the road and it’s important to remember to become one with the process.

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