First July “Breakthrough”

When I first starting playing lefty, I spent a lot of time in front of the mirror, working on things like my grip and setup. My basic premise was that the fundamentals of my right-handed grip and setup were solid, so mirroring these over to the left side would be the best way to get started.

I certainly didn’t expect my swing motion to directly carry over, knowing that it would take a considerable amount of time and repetitions for my left handed swing to be as good as my righty swing. I also discovered pretty quickly that my range of motion in the left handed swing wasn’t nearly as good as it was on the right side. That has certainly improved, and I expect that to continue as time goes on – at least as much as it can given my age.

As a result, there were certain accommodations that I needed to make, chief of which was that I found that I needed to have a much stronger left handed grip. Otherwise, I really struggled to square up the clubface. Today for some reason I decided to dig in and try to figure out why my my left-handed grip needed to be so much stronger than my right hand grip. What was allowing me to pronate my right wrist and open up the clubface so much more in my left handed swing?

I setup with a club in each hand with my top hand in place, and pronated both as much as I could. It was clear that I was able to open the clubface significantly more with my right wrist. This seemed to confirm that I needed to have a much stronger top hand on my lefty swing.

However, I then realized that my biceps were pointed in different directions. With my right hand swing, my left bicep was externally rotated as far as it could go at setup – i.e. my left elbow was pointed straight down/back and my bicep was pointed straight forward. Because my left bicep was so externally rotated, I simply couldn’t pronate my left wrist very much further than it was at address. However, with my left hand swing, my right bicep was not nearly as externally rotated – it was probably at about a 45 degree angle. When I tried to pronate my right wrist, I was able to rotate it another 45 degrees, opening the clubface a huge amount.

When I tried externally rotating my right bicep the same as I do on the opposite side. I found I was not able to pronate my right hand very much at all – just like on the opposite side. This has the potential to be a game changer, as one of the things that I’ve struggled with the most on the lefty swing has been clubface control.

Of course we had a big thunderstorm today, and as I write this I can’t even go outside to hit balls into the net. I drove by the course this evening and there’s enough tree damage that they might not even be open this weekend for me to try it out. However, I do know with certainty that it will take some time to get used to this new setup position with my left arm/wrist/hand. However, since I’m mirroring what I’m already doing on the righty swing, it shouldn’t take too long. Hopefully I’ll be able to post a followup soon with some on-course results.