Right Hand - Redux

[jgmumm]

I've read alot about the right hand in this forum and then recently read the Fundamentals of Hogan with David Leadbetter where Leadbetter suggests that "your secret" might be a cupped right hand (rather than the cupped left hand that was Hogan's "secret").

On the right hand drill page (great drill by the way), it was mentioned that Greg Norman had a device called "the secret" that enforced the right hand position. Leadbetter also has a similar device called "the answer". My question is: is purchasing either of these devices worth my time or money?

Thank you for your answer.

J

[GregJWillis]

If during / after the drills you still have problems uncupping the right hand, then yes, get one. It works, and you will be amazed at what the actual position of the right hand should be in at impact.

A discussion about drills in general:

They will get the average person about 1/2 way to where they should be. It's a blanket statement, but one that I like to tell my students around the second lesson when I see that they are still having trouble with the same problem we worked on the last week. It gets a negative reaction but is always coupled with interest.

I say, "After doing any drill, you will stop and go back to a full swing because the drill is boring or you think you have mastered it. You then incorporate the drill in your head where it takes the forefront thought for a while. Over time, you will always gravitate back to your original swing. It is natural. If it wasn't, then we would all have perfect swings and I would be out a job. Keep doing that drill at every practice session and eventually you will be able to really master it, and we can go on to the next drill where we start this process all over again."

The idea of a drill is to start the change in the right direction. From there, the player has to make conscience choices to agree or disagree with each change that they see and feel. Your personality plays a great roll in this process. Some love it and embrace change, others fight tooth and nail, the rest a mix. The drill should isolate 1 aspect of the swing and explain its relationship to the rest of the fundamentals. And it should be practiced in that understanding. Extream embrasers of change sometimes overdo a drill's intension and make it some kind of religious montra and will only do that drill 100 time before each swing. Extream fighters will do the drill once, and if they don't get instant tangible results that solve their swing, job and relationship, they are done with the drill.

The idea of only getting 1/2 way to the optimum move, position, swing or whatever the drill is isolating, is explained by the fact that we will always fall back to what is comfortable. A drill generally makes us uncomfortable (not in a physical-pain sense, but in the brain acceptance sense). Falling back to comfort is human...for me it is maccorini and cheese, that is my food comfort. In any sport, doing what you have always done is where you will always end up going back to for comfort. Find a balance of doing drills, incorporating the drills into the full swing and building comfort back into old swing is the goal in a practice routine. So, expect that you will never have the perfect repeatable swing right away, but doing the drills will get you closer every time.