The Amateur
Golfer’s Dilemma
The Amateur Golfer’s Dilemma emerges when a teaching pro sets amateurs up to the ball in a fashion identical to touring pros and tries to teach us how to swing like a touring pro. Unfortunately, this only works for the 1% or less of golfers that have professional dynamic rotational movement skills created by proper legwork. In other words, setup distance from the ball is a key variable that should be absolutely individualized and NOT institutionalized as it currently is in the world of golf instruction. Consider the fact that all golfers have always been taught to setup like a touring pro, no matter our movement skills.
Your proper setup distance from the ball must be based on your rotational movement skills, which can be assessed by recording your swing and then watching yourself strike a few balls. If you stand up through impact and lose your setup position spine angle, which is called early extension, it means that you are standing too close to the ball for your rotational movement skills. You need to move back from the ball to the point that you no longer early extend or only do so very minimally.
Setup Distance from the ball
While pros can setup like Figure A, most of us amateurs need to setup like Figure D, which you will NEVER be taught by a teaching pro, save for the rare outlier. Unfortunately, we are all taught to setup like Figure A no matter who we are, which is the greatest failing among teaching pros and is the cause of virtually every swing fault.
After you identify your proper setup distance from the ball, you then need to learn how to dynamically swing from your heels to the best of your ability. I have developed multiple drills that train a golfer’s nervous system to swing more dynamically from the heels instead of their toes (forefeet) – all but one drill are easy to learn. To be clear, all of the drills are designed to exaggerate the heel-swinging mechanism so that both your conscious mind and your brain’s subconscious motor learning sectors learn what is needed to dynamically swing from the heels and use your legs properly during the swing.
The Amateur Golfer’s Dilemma book, website, and videos exist because virtually no teaching pro teaches us amateurs to setup to the ball based on our individual rotational movement skills and they do not teach us how to swing dynamically from our heels. This creates a host of movement pathologies that never go away and actually get worse over time. This is why the subtitle of The Amateur Golfer’s Dilemma book is How PGA Professionals Unknowingly Prevent Amateurs from Breaking 80, 90, and 100.