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Hello Golfwrx, longtime lurker here.
I'd like to share my experience with you regarding the Tour Striker academy I recently completed while its fresh in my mind to give other, potentially interested folks some insight.
First lets start with a bit about myself.. serious addiction to golf but lacked the information/skills to consistently play to my ability. Handicap probably somewhere around 20.. sometimes better but regularly in that neighborhood. My Golfshot app says 18.3 currently. Anyway, I've had some periods of good ball striking in the past, developed a prettly natural swing on my own then joined a league and it fell apart. Watched too much Golf Fix and read too many magazines.. had theories from different swings all mashed together and it was a wreck. I check this forum fairly often for information and ran across the tour striker thread and ordered one. I understood the concept and thought it would be easy to master but that was a bit arrogant. I worked with the club though and did see results but had a feeling there was more going on with my woes then just hitting down on the ball. I setup a video analysis with Martin and he informed me that my clubface was wide open at the top, he was right. I watched videos on the grip and adjusted mine so the heel pad was on top of the grip, this helped as well but I still had issues anyway. I watched alot of Martin's videos on Youtube and really liked the way he explained techniques, it was clear and made sense to me, but I felt I wasn't going to get where I wanted without someone like Martin looking at my swing in person. I've struggled long enough with my game and after seeing the academy thread here decided if I had a week to get out to Phoenix I would do it, and I did.
The Academy is a three day course that covers putter to driver, with my game I figured it wouldn't hurt to cover the spectrum. Showed up Friday morning, a little tired from a long drive the day before but excited to get to work. We promptly went out to the range and I hit some shots with my irons while the camera was running. It was pretty obvious I was a slicer from the get go.. my grip was fine but I was letting my left wrist go cuppy on my backswing letting the face get wide open and I didn't fix it on the downswing either. In 3 hours I started getting the feel for a more solid face condition and was hitting some awesome shots... shots that I've NEVER hit before.. I mean I've hit shots that draw but almost magically I was striking these with forward shaft lean and getting piercing shots. I'm a fairly laid back person and not prone to hyperbole but on the inside I was flipping out. The day consisted of various irons and drills to work on wrist conditions as well as not being too steep as I sometimes dig a ditch. Played a couple holes and some of my slice started to creep in on longer clubs but all in all a really really productive day.
Day 2; Started out warming up with some irons, still tring to internalize the feel and positions for proper striking/attack angle/post impact. We pull out the driver and start working on aiming/target path/swing path/shaping the ball. I hit a ton of balls on day 2 and started seeing some consistency, still had setbacks but I expect it and stay patient. I'm learning all kinds of drills to reinforce the proper feels/positions.
Day 3: Martin shows up bright eyed and energized in the morning, I'm beat up from the feet up but gotta appreciate the enthusiasm and it gets me excited to get going. Start with warm up, then some irons and we go back and forth from irons to driver. My alignments are getting a bit better, I'm understanding the logic behind what I'm doing. It's not taking as long to make a swing.. things are coming along. We focus on driver intensely for awhile and I start to hit some nice draws. I get ahold of one that draws just a wee bit and just hangs in the sky, Martin says "Thats the best drive I've seen you hit since you've been here" It was.. and probably the best drive I've ever hit to be honest. He goes over bunker play, fairway bunker, low point drills, chipping and pitching.. did I mention it was 80 degrees most of the time? I was drenched, but determined to absorb everything I could. The final day was a tremendous amount of knowledge gained and reinforced. I have videos over the course of the entire academy that I can go back to if I need to check something or look at ANYTHING related to my golf game. Pretty awesome to gain a big step in the understanding of the game but on top of that I don't have to worry about forgetting any details down the road.
Throughout the entire academy Martin was calm, patient and just an excellent instuctor. I know I don't post on here very often but I feel that I've found such awesome resources here and I wanted to share something back with the site. I have every confidence that my game is going to the next level now... and hopefully with practice a few more.
Here are a couple videos from my time there:
I played a 18 hole round the day after the academy wrapped, to be honest I was a bit nervous with all the new info but I decided to not care about score. I wanted to avoid slicing at all costs and did so for probably 80% of my shots which is a different game for me already.
Hope you guys/gals find this useful.
Thanks,
Dave
I'd like to share my experience with you regarding the Tour Striker academy I recently completed while its fresh in my mind to give other, potentially interested folks some insight.
First lets start with a bit about myself.. serious addiction to golf but lacked the information/skills to consistently play to my ability. Handicap probably somewhere around 20.. sometimes better but regularly in that neighborhood. My Golfshot app says 18.3 currently. Anyway, I've had some periods of good ball striking in the past, developed a prettly natural swing on my own then joined a league and it fell apart. Watched too much Golf Fix and read too many magazines.. had theories from different swings all mashed together and it was a wreck. I check this forum fairly often for information and ran across the tour striker thread and ordered one. I understood the concept and thought it would be easy to master but that was a bit arrogant. I worked with the club though and did see results but had a feeling there was more going on with my woes then just hitting down on the ball. I setup a video analysis with Martin and he informed me that my clubface was wide open at the top, he was right. I watched videos on the grip and adjusted mine so the heel pad was on top of the grip, this helped as well but I still had issues anyway. I watched alot of Martin's videos on Youtube and really liked the way he explained techniques, it was clear and made sense to me, but I felt I wasn't going to get where I wanted without someone like Martin looking at my swing in person. I've struggled long enough with my game and after seeing the academy thread here decided if I had a week to get out to Phoenix I would do it, and I did.
The Academy is a three day course that covers putter to driver, with my game I figured it wouldn't hurt to cover the spectrum. Showed up Friday morning, a little tired from a long drive the day before but excited to get to work. We promptly went out to the range and I hit some shots with my irons while the camera was running. It was pretty obvious I was a slicer from the get go.. my grip was fine but I was letting my left wrist go cuppy on my backswing letting the face get wide open and I didn't fix it on the downswing either. In 3 hours I started getting the feel for a more solid face condition and was hitting some awesome shots... shots that I've NEVER hit before.. I mean I've hit shots that draw but almost magically I was striking these with forward shaft lean and getting piercing shots. I'm a fairly laid back person and not prone to hyperbole but on the inside I was flipping out. The day consisted of various irons and drills to work on wrist conditions as well as not being too steep as I sometimes dig a ditch. Played a couple holes and some of my slice started to creep in on longer clubs but all in all a really really productive day.
Day 2; Started out warming up with some irons, still tring to internalize the feel and positions for proper striking/attack angle/post impact. We pull out the driver and start working on aiming/target path/swing path/shaping the ball. I hit a ton of balls on day 2 and started seeing some consistency, still had setbacks but I expect it and stay patient. I'm learning all kinds of drills to reinforce the proper feels/positions.
Day 3: Martin shows up bright eyed and energized in the morning, I'm beat up from the feet up but gotta appreciate the enthusiasm and it gets me excited to get going. Start with warm up, then some irons and we go back and forth from irons to driver. My alignments are getting a bit better, I'm understanding the logic behind what I'm doing. It's not taking as long to make a swing.. things are coming along. We focus on driver intensely for awhile and I start to hit some nice draws. I get ahold of one that draws just a wee bit and just hangs in the sky, Martin says "Thats the best drive I've seen you hit since you've been here" It was.. and probably the best drive I've ever hit to be honest. He goes over bunker play, fairway bunker, low point drills, chipping and pitching.. did I mention it was 80 degrees most of the time? I was drenched, but determined to absorb everything I could. The final day was a tremendous amount of knowledge gained and reinforced. I have videos over the course of the entire academy that I can go back to if I need to check something or look at ANYTHING related to my golf game. Pretty awesome to gain a big step in the understanding of the game but on top of that I don't have to worry about forgetting any details down the road.
Throughout the entire academy Martin was calm, patient and just an excellent instuctor. I know I don't post on here very often but I feel that I've found such awesome resources here and I wanted to share something back with the site. I have every confidence that my game is going to the next level now... and hopefully with practice a few more.
Here are a couple videos from my time there:
I played a 18 hole round the day after the academy wrapped, to be honest I was a bit nervous with all the new info but I decided to not care about score. I wanted to avoid slicing at all costs and did so for probably 80% of my shots which is a different game for me already.
Hope you guys/gals find this useful.
Thanks,
Dave
