Lots of golfers think their impact should look similar to their address.GOLF Magazine
A fallacy shared among most rec golfers is that the goal on iron swings is to return the club to the same position it held at address. Uh-uh. The two positions are dramatically different and may explain why mid- to high-handicappers never improve.
Here’s a drill to fix the problem.
Stick an alignment rod in the ground right behind where you play the ball at address. Make sure the shaft is straight up and down. Place another rod next to the first, but angle it, say, 20 degrees toward the target as shown in the photo above.
Set up to the ball, using the first rod as your guide. (Your hands can be a little bit in front if that’s what you prefer.) Now, press your hands forward and shift your hips toward the target until your clubshaft matches the angle of the second rod.
This is the preferred impact position, which guarantees the ball-first contact all great ball strikers achieve. Add a little lower-body rotation, too. If you can re-create these positions during actual swings, you’re money.
It has been an exciting senior season for Abington Heights guard Andrew Kettel.
As the Comets were streaking toward a Lackawanna League Division I championship, Kettel announced on his Instagram social media account that he is continuing his academic and athletic careers at Hartwick College.
Abington Heights posted wins over Valley View and West Scranton this week to finish the league season undefeated. Kettel has been one of the catalysts. A two-year starter, he is averaging 14.8 points per game.
Abington Heights is the No. 1 seed for the District 2 Class 5A playoffs. The Comets received a bye into the semifinals.
Last season, Kettel helped lead the Comets to the District 2 championship.
Hartwick College is an NCAA Division III program. The Hawks are 8-14 this season and 2-11 in the Empire 8 conference.
Former Abington Heights teammate Robby Lucas is a freshman at Hartwick and leads the team in scoring at 14.0 points per game.
College commits
Several players from the Lackawanna Football Conference made their college decisions official.
Western Wayne lineman and long snapper Vinny Baldini committed to Lackawanna College. A multi-year starter for the Wildcats, he helped lead the Wildcats to a share of the LFC Division II championship with Mid Valley as a junior.
Baldini joins Lakeland quarterback David Naniewicz as a commit to the Falcons, who are transitioning to an NCAA Division II program in the PSAC.
Scranton offensive lineman Carter Tomczyk, a three-year starter, announced on social media that he is committed to continuing his academic and athletic careers at Wilkes University. The 6-1, 268-pound senior helped the Knights reach the District 2 Class 6A playoff this season.
Mid Valley quarterback Brett Yanoski committed to King’s College on his Instagram account.
Wilkes University finished 7-4 overall last season.
A four-year varsity player, Yanoski completed 131 of 237 passes for 1,542 yards and 16 touchdowns as a senior and led the Spartans to a win in an Eastern Conference Class 3A game. He was also the starting quarterback as a junior when Mid Valley shared the LFC Division II championship with Western Wayne.
Yanoski finished his career with 3,452 yards passing and 32 touchdowns.
King’s finished 5-5 overall last season as a member of the NCAA Division III and the Middle Atlantic Conference.
Scranton heavyweight wrestler Austin Gottstein announced that he committed to Keystone College to continue his academic and athletic careers.
Morano named tennis coach
Emily Morano, a multi-sport standout at Mid Valley, is returning to her alma mater as the boys’ varsity tennis coach.
During her high school career, Morano was a first-team all-star in soccer, basketball, and softball. She went on to compete in basketball and started playing tennis at King’s College, and continued her athletic career in both sports at SUNY-Cortland as a graduate student.
Mid Valley finished 5-6 in the Lackawanna League last season under the guidance of Emily Messett, who resigned after this past girls’ tennis season.
Morano is also the junior high girls’ basketball coach at Mid Valley.
Is your driver stance too wide? Here's how to nail your foot positionTitleist
It happens to weekend warriors and tour pros alike: You stripe a few down the middle and your driver starts to feel automatic — until it isn’t.
In a recent video from Titleist, GOLF Top 100 Teacher Joe Hallett explains that when players get that sudden boost of confidence, it often pulls their focus from the fundamentals. The most common error? A stance that creeps too wide.
“When you start hitting the ball good, especially on the tee, there’s something that starts to sneak into you and it’s this feeling of power, the feeling that you’re invincible. And that begins to show in the width of your stance,” he says.
“Little by little, you will notice as players get up to the tee, they start to get more and more of this set and the stance becomes wide,” he continues, “That is when you need to start worrying.”
Find your perfect driver stance
To find your optimal driver stance, Hallett explains that you need to determine what width gives you the most accuracy and power. The best way to do that is to use Hallett’s Goldilocks method:
Hit a few drives with your feet just inside shoulder width
Then at shoulder width
Then slightly outside than shoulder width
This will help you understand how each stance width impacts your quality of contact, ball flight, accuracy and even power.
“If we keep our feet together, it kind of controls the swing, the length of the swing. That probably lends itself to more accuracy,” he says, “As the stance gets wider, it provides a little extra punch.”
Once you’ve hit a few shots with each stance, Hallett says you should start to notice a slight decline in performance as you play around with that wider stance.
“You are going to have a phenomenon where you go, that wasn’t quite as solid,” he says, “Back that up a notch, and then you have found your stance width.”
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While your perfect driver stance is optimal for most tee shots, sometimes you really want to step on one. Hallett says that’s when you need to know how to make a wider stance work for you. In his experience, a wider stance that does not work has one commonality: The trail foot is too far outside the trail shoulder.
“This stance, I call wide right,” Hallett says.
The reason the “wide right” stance causes issues is because it forces you to make a massive move to load into your trail side, which, as Hallett explained earlier, can reduce your accuracy and power in a big way. Hallett says having your trail foot too far back can also cause you to keep your weight on your lead side through the swing, creating a reverse pivot and as a result, draining your swing of power.
“When I go to hit this, my weight’s going to move backwards. And I can tell you that moving backwards is not going to help the ball go forwards,” he says.
Instead, Hallett recommends setting up in what he calls the “correct right” stance. The key: move your trail shoulder and trail foot together as you take your stance.
This trick helps you stack your shoulders over your hips and knees, while positioning your feet slightly wider. Which allows you to load properly at the top of your backswing and generate maximum power without sacrificing control.
“Now, I’m loaded up behind the ball and I can add some extra pop into that tee shot,” Hallett says.
To dial in your drives on the course, just remember to focus on your feet. Stick with your optimal driving stance for most shots, and when you’re ready to really crush one, set your trail foot and shoulder together. This “correct right” stance will help you load properly and unleash your a powerful, controlled strike.
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