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Welcome to our new feature, the Malaska Golf Member Spotlight, where we feature one of our active members. This Member Spotlight focuses on Chris Grundy and what Golf has meant to him.

CHRIS GRUNDY - SOUTHPORT, ENGLAND - 20200725

PUTTING WITH TIME BETWEEN PUTTS

Get in your set up position. Then put the club out in front of you where you want it to go after impact. Then let the weight of the club and or momentum swing the club back into the backswing. Let the club swing where it wants to go. Then swing down and hit the ball. This really helps you feel the momentum of the club and takes the tension out of the backswing. 

FRONT LOADER DRILL

If you don't use your imagination, you have no chance when playing at Augusta because the speed of the slopes and angles of the breaks are unreal.  Keep that in mind for the Masters.

PLAYING AUGUSTA

Dial in three wedges from three key distances

DIAL IN WEDGES AND DISTANCE

Stop struggling with hitting the ball on the hosel and making pitch-out shots.

What causes you to hit the ball into the hosel? When you set up to the ball, your hands and arms move farther away from you, or your body moves closer, which runs the hosel into the ball.

Swinging too much from the inside can also cause you to hit the ball into the hosel because your hands and arms are moving away from you.

What’s the fix? First, set up to the ball, look at where your hands are, and make a swing. On the swing, make sure your left hip pushes out of the way as you come into the ball. Your hands must feel like they come closer to you and go around to the left. If your hands return to the same spot or inside that and go left, you won’t hit the ball into the hosel. It’s actually impossible.

The key is to make sure you move away from the ball. As you run the club into the ball at impact, that is the apex of the arc, and the club moves around to the left.

STOP HITTING THE BALL ON THE HOSEL

Your left leg gets your hip to work correctly. Practice making swings where your arms have room to swing.

STANDING ON YOUR LEFT FOOT

If you could slow down the world for a better shot, would you?

FOCUS AND RELAX

IVAN POVOROV

Malaska Golf Certified Instructor, Pepe Cortez, advises how to approach the first tee and overcome the jitters.

FIRST TEE JITTERS

A Malaska Golf Member wants to know how to incorporate the L to L Drill into his full swing.

Mike demonstrates the L to L Drill and then applies that to his full swing. All Mike is doing is extending the backswing and the follow-through of the L to L Drill. He is just adding a little more turn.

If you were to slow the swing down, the positions would be the same as the L to L. The club still hinges on the backswing and rehinges on the follow-through. Most people try to “chicken wing” their arms or do other things because they don’t let the weight of the club rehinge on the follow-through.

Some Tour Players can extend the club more on the follow-through because they are so flexible. They can continue rotating their pelvis at a speed that keeps up with the clubhead. For most players, once their hips stop, the club rehinges.

Again, work the L to L into your swing and recoil the club back to the L position after the swing. This will help you to reinforce what that feels like.

L TO L IS YOUR FULL SWING

How changes fundamentals like posture can lead to dramatic improvement.

CORRECTING POSTURE

In this video, a Malaska Golf Member has a sports-connect question about throwing a frisbee. This is a great way to feel how you turn the corner and how your left hand works on the follow-through.

Mike grabs a frisbee with his left hand and cups it. He makes a throwing motion which is the same left-wrist action as in a golf swing. Mike demonstrates this action by throwing the frisbee.

Mike then faces the camera and shows the frisbee at the point where you hit the ball in golf and the release of the frisbee or the follow-through.

Mike has drawn an “X” on his glove to illustrate that the “X” is visible to the camera when your hands release through the swing. Your wrists don’t turn over and show your hands to the sky. This is an old way of teaching where you have swung and opened the clubface and rotated your forearms.

If you have a baseball grip, the hand action is the same as when you swing. Mike takes his golf club and applies the same frisbee-throwing action to hitting a golf ball.

A FRISBEE AND HAND ACTION

BODY ROTATION

Golf has gone through many changes. Learn how players have changed their attitudes over the years.

THE EVOLUTION OF ATTITUDES IN GOLF

Chipping is just off green putting. The ball gets in the air because of the loft in the face. Set up with your weight or force slightly on your lead foot. This changes the angel of approach to the ball. You are catching the ball on the face then brushing the ground. The loft of the face gets the ball in the air. Put a dot on the face on the fourth grove from the leading edge. The back of the ball and this dot connect. You use the same line of compression that you did in putting.

CHIPPING THE BALL IN THE AIR

Mike Malaska discusses instinct and grip. A member wants to know if you can get it too strong. Mike says yes, it is possible. 

Starting with your left hand, take a club and act as if you were going to hit something. Where you place your hand is about where you want your grip. Repeat with your right hand and then put both hands together. 

The joints should line up to where you have the most amount of force and where it is most stable. The thumb should go on the side of the shaft, not on top. Instinct will tell you not to put the thumb on top because the club would pull out of your hand when you hit.

If your grip is too strong, you would have to turn it far underneath, and then your hand would want to turn back to line your fingers and joints up where they were. 

Again if you take the club and act like you’re going to hit something, instinct will tell you where you place your hand and thumb.

INSTINCT AND GRIP

Tour pros hit lower shots in their short game compared to average golfers. The first way you can begin to control trajectory is by using a lower lofted club.

LOWER LOFT

PRACTICE STATIONS

Having fun is one of the most important parts of the game. Learn how to take some pressure off.

HAVE FUN WITH THE GAME

Tom Watson was one of the greats. Learn how how effected my perspective on practicing.

HOW TOM WATSON PRACTICED FOR TOURNAMENTS

Hitting a pickleball is very similar to hitting a golf ball. Mike takes a pickleball racquet and attaches it to a golf club to help explain the similarities.

PICKLE BALL AND GOLF CONNECT

Having a stable foundation is key to learning and enjoying this game. Here, Caroline shows us the benefit that increased clubface control has on her swing.

BUILDING STABILITY

Taking a club that is not designed for the shot you are hitting then challenging yourself with making the club work. Is a big part of becoming a better player. Adjusting the face to make the club hit a shot it is not designed to hit makes you a better player. Challenge yourself with different shots with the wrong club.

BUNKER CHALLENGE

Most pros hit the putter in the center of the face. Here's the first drill to help you do this.

CENTER FACE HITS

Here Mike uses the Chair Drill to help Billy feel the role of the hips in the swing

USING THE HIPS TO GAIN CONTROL

Golf has gone through many phases. Learn how golf has changed since when me and Andy first started playing.

HOW GOLF HAS EVOLVED

When your wrist works correctly, your swing becomes better. Learn how to get your wrist at the right angle.

YOUR HANDS RELATIVE TO THE SWING ARC

Revisiting Nibley Park is like revisiting my childhood. Learn how the course helped improve my game.

THE FIFTH HOLE AT NIBLEY

There are such things as slices and hooks in baseball. A lot of it deal with the path of your arms.

HITTING WITH COACH NATE REYES

Mike covers different exercises that help with your golf swing. The static back press is his favorite. 

Mike lies on his back as his feet rest on a chair. His quads are 90 degrees to his body and lower legs. He puts his hands on his stomach and relaxes.

Mike notices that his right shoulder is a little off the ground, as is his right hip. This means that Mike's body is twisted. He takes deep breaths and relaxes into the ground.

Next, wrap a rope around the heel of your right foot and pull your leg back. This stretches your hamstring. You should be able to stretch your leg past 90 degrees to 45 degrees. If not, it means your hamstrings are tight, which will show up in your golf swing.

Now wrap the rope around your toes and pull down. This stretches your calf muscles.

As Mike lay on the ground for the first exercise, he evaluated his body to see if his hip was up or if he felt twisted, which would show up in his golf swing. The key is to let your body stabilize and get back into neutral.

The following two exercises were stretching your hamstrings and calf muscles. If these muscles are tight, that causes a problem when you swing. When you set up to the ball, you don't want a lot of angle in your body or keep your knees flexed. Keeping your knees flexed while turning your body requires a lot of flexibility in your hamstrings, hips, and calves

Even though keeping your knee flexed became popular, it wasn't easy. If you are tight in those muscles, when you push your right hip out of the way, don't be afraid to straighten your right leg. Jack Nicklaus and Bobby Jones both did this.

These exercises are good for you; each tells a story about what your golf swing is and is not.

FITNESS STATIC BACK PRESS

A Malaska Golf Member wants to know how and why Mike does the one-arm swing.

Mike begins by swinging an iron back and forth, independent of his shoulder moving. Mike places a finger on the outside of his shoulder socket to show the pivot point. You aren’t moving your shoulder forward as you swing.

Your shoulder socket must be relaxed for your arm to swing. Mike demonstrates this and hits a few balls with his right hand and then swaps to his left hand. You will notice there isn’t much body movement, and the pivot is at the shoulder socket. The key is to loosen up your arms without much body movement.

As you go to your full swing, you must keep that same lack of tension in the shoulders. Your arms need to go faster than your chest to create more speed. If your shoulder sockets are tight, you can only go as fast as your shoulders can turn.

Once you have a feel for that, then it’s about making a swing with the same amount of lack of tension in your shoulder sockets so your arms can accelerate and hit the ball.

SHOULDER SOCKET TENSION

Looping the club is a way to get the momentum of the clubhead out in front of your body. If you let the club fall behind your hands then you are looping incorrectly. Here's how Joe looped the club using his arms and hands.

HOW JOE LOOPED THE CLUB

As you swing step forward with you trail foot. As you reach the top step forward with you lead foot then hit the ball. This helps to stabilize your lower body as your swing. It also loosens up your arms and shoulders. This allows you to swing and step and hit the next ball. If your arms and shoulders are to tight you can not swing and get back to the next ball. Your body moves to much. 

WALK THROUGH DRILL

Brian Gott, a Malaska Golf Certified Coach is answering Ask Mike’s this week. This question comes from Tyler Dunnigan. Tyler asked about lead arm depth in the backswing.If you remember, a while ago, everyone was focused on the towel drill, where we would stay connected by pinning the left arm against the chest and keeping everything tight. Well, that’s been disproven by biomechanics. We now know that pinning the arm against the chest causes too much rotation, flattens out your swing plane, and makes it difficult to get back to square and stay on plane.What we want is lead arm depth, but not wrapped around the body. We want a good shoulder turn, with the arm out and away. If you look from this angle, as I take the club back, the arm is not pinned against my chest. It does connect when it comes down here, but we don’t want it wrapped around the body.We want the arm to stay out. The angle between the chest and the arm only changes about 17 degrees for most good players. We just don’t want to get too wrapped around, as it causes too much rotation. The more we can get the arms out and up, the easier it is to bring them down. Mike has a drill in the M System called the Four-Step Drill, which will help with this a lot.The Four-Step Drill goes like this: Step one, take the club out; step two, rotate; step three, push the arms out and away; and step four, hit the ball. Remember, you want a good shoulder turn with the arm going out and away, keeping everything in front, not pinned behind. If the arm gets pinned behind, you end up with too much rotation, the club gets laid off, and you must play catch-up.So, try the Four-Step Drill, and remember: the club goes out, up, and away—not pinned against your chest and wrapped around.

LEAD ARM DEPTH

Take an alignment stick place it on the club shaft so it extends longer than the grip end. Then set up to the ball with the stick touching your lead side. Make your backswing. Once you reach the the end of your backswing. Now make the shaft pivot behind and touch your trail side. This will work the club out into the correct arch to run into the ball. This is a feeling that offsets the change of direction and gets the club in the correct arch. Rather than dragging the handle forward and having to catch the club up. 

ASHLEY - DIRECTING THE MOMENTUM OF THE CLUB

Brian Gott, Malaska Certified Coach, is subbing for Mike on this question. A Malaska Golf Member wants to know whether you can perform the Front Loader Drill before you make a shot on the course.

Brian demonstrates the Front Loader Drill, where you start the swing with the golf club extended out in front. Most other sports you play don’t start from a static position; everything has movement, and we react to it.

The Front Loader Drill helps you move back to the position in the backswing. You will likely lock up if you are too concerned about getting into the correct positions.

Before hitting a shot, you want to feel where you intend to swing. The Front Loader Drill is a great way to do this. Make that pre-swing and get a feel for it. Then, set up and reproduce that feeling when hitting the ball.

You will get a better result with your shot instead of getting locked up and worrying about what’s happening behind the ball.

FRONT LOADER DRILL ON THE COURSE

I have been working with Phil Blackmar for many years. Learn how he has improved me as a player and what we have done for golf together.

WORKING ON MY GAME WITH PHIL BLACKMAR

Doug Roberts is a PGA Class-A Member since 1996 and is currently rated by Golf Digest as the #1 Golf Instructor in Utah. He is a 2-time recipient of the Utah PGA Teacher-of-the-Year award. Doug is a Certified Staff Instructor for Malaska Golf and excelled for 25 years as a
Trainer and Instructor for the Jack Nicklaus Academies conducting golf schools in 14 countries and in 30 states across the USA. He is a National Staff Member of PXG, a Master Staff Instructor for the Patriot Golf Schools and is a FlightScope Certified Instructor.

Doug is a former Director of Instruction for the TPC of Scottsdale, the Estancia Club in Scottsdale, Victory Ranch in Park City and the Jack Nicklaus Academy of Golf at The Ledges. He is a past Lead Instructor and Video Analysis Specialist for the Nicklaus/Flick, ESPN and Jim Flick Premier Golf Schools and former director of Nike Junior Golf Camps in Utah. He leads his own popular golf schools, clinics and private lessons at The Promontory Club in Park City, Utah and also at The Entrada Club in St. George, Utah.

Doug played basketball, baseball &amp; football in his formative years before deciding to focus on his golf skills. These skills would lead him to be a 2-time All-Conference player at the University of Utah and play in the NCAA National Championships. He owns individual tournament wins at the Junior, Amateur and Professional levels. This blend of experience from playing competitively, to working alongside some of the game’s greatest instructors has provided Doug with the expertise to help all levels of players use natural forces and find athletic success in their golf.

MALASKA CERTIFIED: DOUG ROBERTS

NEW TASKS OVERRIDE OLD HABITS

Can you swing your arms faster than gravity?  Of course you can.   Can you swing faster than gravity in the right arc?  Challenge yourself to find out.

OVER TOP STICK CHALLENGE

Generating acceleration and force through impact.

IMPACT AND ACCELERATION

By understanding how the body is designed, you can have an optimal swing that avoids injury.

SWING HOW YOUR JOINTS ARE DESIGNED

Getting a feel for impact is very important. Practice making longer swings.

MAKING LONGER PITCHING SHOTS

Baseball can give you a feel for where you should be at impact. Start to feel what your right arm needs to do.

PRACTICING IMPACT WITH BASEBALL

DUSTIN MAY

To learn how to change directions you first have to understand that there is no top in a swing. It is a constant motion. So as your arms start back your body starts moving forward. The same as throwing a baseball, Or hitting a baseball, and or hitting a tennis ball. The sequences are all the same. 

CHANGE OF DIRECTION DRILL

Each person has a different swing. Finding the right putter for your swing is very important.

QUALITY TYPES OF PUTTERS

Creating width is not a matter of how far you can move the clubhead from your body, it is how far you can distance the club handle from your chest. Creating width is the first step to increasing distance with your driver.

CREATING WIDTH

Today's Mulligan Monday is all about fixing your backswing. Grab your tennis racket and practice swinging a forehand shot.

As you take the racket back on the backswing, the racket face closes and faces the ground. You complete your swing in a circle as you follow through to hit the tennis ball.

Combine your golf club with the tennis racket and practice making a tennis swing. You will find that it is the same motion and swing.

Use a tennis racket to feel your golf backswing.