This desperate golfer was ready to quit. We set out to save him

The student and the teacher.

Nick Piastowski

Welcome! An introduction is in order. At GOLF, we inform. We make you laugh. We try not to make you cry.

We help, through gear tips, through fashion suggestions, through swing advice — which leads us to here, and a concept that’s been bouncing around like a golf ball in the author’s head. Can we save? This is an attempt at that. But there could be more. If you enjoy what you see below, but don’t like the state of your game, please reach out to [email protected] or [email protected] and explain. Maybe we can help. Maybe we can rescue you.

Perched on a barstool in a quaint New York City bar playing early 2000’s top 40 and serving overly salted popcorn, Josh asks for a straw, though not for his whiskey-powered drink. His wife, Andrea, soon deduces its purpose, but is nonetheless stunned.

“Are you,” pausing as she rightfully tries to do the math on this.

“Are you trying to hold that straw like a golf club?”

Josh smiles. Two seats away, I smile. He’d at least gotten that far.

Previously, the relationship between golf and my old friend had become mostly nonreciprocal. For about three decades, Josh gave. Played the rounds. Bought the clubs. Watched the golf. Read the stories. (Other sites than this one, naturally.) And golf returned just an unwieldy mix of lefts and rights, chunks and tops, skulls and headaches, teasing with the occasional bogey-golf round, before slapping him back down with an all-too-frequent triple-digit number. He didn’t have one miss. He’d collected them all. Things came to a head about a year ago, though, after a knuckleball into a bush on an 18-hole day’s 8th hole, where Josh picked up, before offering this ultimatum to himself:

If this wouldn’t stop in a year, he’d quit. He was packing up his golf bag and leaving.

Really? Golf, as we know, is more than a score. It’s outdoors. And it’s out of the office. It’s buddies, brats and beers. But you can also find those elsewhere. Birdies are why we play. Long drives. Long putts.

So in Josh’s discontent, I saw content. (Some friend.)

What if he could be saved?

What if this website could rescue a real-life person, with an actual life (work, family, whiskey drinks), who wants to play better golf — under a deadline. It’s a bit extreme. It’s maybe relatable. Perhaps you’ve come to this point, with similar flaws. But I’d find a teacher — and they’d need to make quick fixes, with an eye on long-term success. It puts pressure on the instruction. It questions the “do these 7 steps, and you will change” concepts you often see (of which I’ve been guilty of distributing).

Kelan McDonagh was game. He’s the director of instruction at Metedeconk National Golf Club in Jackson Township, N.J., which is about 60 miles south of New York City. He’s a disciple of Mike Adams, a GOLF Top 100 Teacher hall of famer. He also has an Irish accent, which gave the proceedings a bit of golf regality. In short, he’s wise, which we witnessed over a couple hours on a summer Saturday afternoon.

And about three hours before Josh was fiddling with the straw.

5 steps a golfer was shown so that he wouldn’t quit
Ahead of the session, here are thoughts from Josh in response to some questions from me, which are written in italics. Hopefully they give you an additional sense of the golfer he is.

When things are going right, what’s the best of the best for you?

“When things are going right, I have a really, really good drive with a little bit of a left-to-right shape, and reliable, straight irons out of the fairway. I don’t know if I’ll ever be good enough around the green to dream of playing in the 70s, but I’m good enough around the green and with a putter that if I get there in regulation or close, I can contend for par on most holes. It’s just that that’s never been put together for me.”

Approach Shots
a golfer watches an approach shot
Save *several* strokes per round by doing this on approach shots
By: Zephyr Melton
When things do go south, what’s the feeling?

“The feeling is it’s embarrassing. Like it doesn’t matter if the other 14 holes are good and if I’m playing with somebody and they’re pushing the middle 80s and I’ll start out the same way. It goes off the rails and suddenly you’re three or four shots over on a hole and that’s super embarrassing … and it’s not fun for me and it sucks all the joy out of the rest of the round and sucks all the joy out of the game.”

If you had three wishes for today, what would they be?

“I think No. 1 is to just figure out why when I miss a shot, I miss it. Like it can’t be whittled down to: ‘He slices all the time.’ This is a bigger, more fundamental problem. So wish No. 1 is just that I can identify what the issue is. And then I would like some sort of path forward. How can I reasonably work to improve that? And then wish three is I don’t want to contend for the Tour; I just want to shoot in the 80s and play around with my friends where the worst thing that I do might be a mindless double or triple a couple of times. I can live with that.”

In his lab next to Metedeconk’s range, Kelan went to work.

He had five steps. The words for each are below. Below them, at the bottom of this article, are videos.

Josh and Kelan
The teacher and the student — and grip work. Nick PIastowski
1. The grip fix
This actually should be in all caps and bolded.

THE GRIP FIX.

Kelan changed Josh’s left hand, right hand and club position.

— Josh’s left hand had been set to where he saw maybe one knuckle; the adjustment moved them clockwise.

Through a drill, he was shown how effective the left hand had — or hadn’t — been. In his training center, Kelan used an Adams device, but a two-by-four also works. Kelan duplicated Josh’s grip, placed the club at the butt end of the two-by-four, then rotated through, showing an open club face. That lead hand, Kelan said, has a relationship to the lower body. “Your lower body opens the club face, so we better make sure that the lead hand is in a position to keep it square.”

— Josh’s right hand had been set to where his right thumb was nearly aligned with the club’s shaft; the adjustment moved the thumb and knuckles slightly counter-clockwise.

Through another drill, he was shown how effective his right hand had — or hadn’t — been. Holding an iron with just his right hand, Josh took quarter swings, then stopped on the follow-through, which showed an open face — and obvious trouble. “So if you’re wide open with the grip and your body wants to do this as well [come over the top, as Josh was],” Kelan said, “now you’ve got a lot of things moving left.”

— Josh’s palms had also mostly been gripping the club; the adjustment moved the club to his fingers. Notably, Kelan had Josh throw a golf ball, then asked where he held it. The fingers, he answered. “So every time you’re hitting a golf shot, you’re throwing whatever’s on the other end of the shaft [the clubface], so this object [the clubface] is thrown at that object [the ball] to make it go somewhere. … So if we’re throwing an object, we better damn make sure the grip’s in the fingers. If it gets up in the palm, we have no control over it.”

Unsure where you’re holding the club? Kelan had Josh put a club in his left palm, then asked him to try to lift it. He strained. But holding it with his fingers? Easier. You can also hold a club out in front of you and wave it left to right, and the results are the same.

The conclusion:

“Left-hand grip needs to be stronger,” Kelan said, “right hand needs to be weaker.”

How hard was it for Josh to make square contact before?

“Pretty hard,” Kelan said. “Maybe one in 10.”

Here, I also asked whether Josh’s new grip was universal, or more specific to him.

“It’s 100 percent for him,” Kelan said. “The next person that comes in after Josh and for whatever reason I do what I just did with Josh and not measure him, that would be completely wrong. Chances of them needing what he needs are pretty slim.”

Josh and Kelan
The teacher and the student — and stance work.
2. The stance fix
Kelan changed Josh’s stance from squared to closed, moving Josh’s right foot a few inches backward.

The reasoning?

Josh himself.

Kelan measured Josh’s wingspan and height (his wingspan was an inch shorter than he was tall), and his forearm and upper arm (his forearm was longer than his upper arm), and he tested Josh’s shoulder mobility, having him position his arm out and his forearm upward, before having him move the forearm backward (which showed he had limited shoulder mobility). All of this is a staple of Adams instruction. What the measurements found was that Josh naturally comes over the top on his swing — so a more closed stance would prevent that.

Here, I asked Kelan how often players are unaware of their swing tendency based on their body measurements.

“Every day. … The longer forearm, the club wants to come out. If you have a longer upper arm, that does the opposite then — it’s going to let the club shallow. If you got mobility in your shoulder, you’re going to be able to naturally shallow. You think of Sergio Garcia — he’s a perfect example. He’s got longer upper arm than forearm and he’s got mobility in his shoulders, so you see him at the top, he gets that thing laid way down. That’s because his body naturally lets him do it. It’s not because he’s worked on it for a million years.”

Kelan had another thought: Some others would maybe try to leave Josh at a squared stance.

And then?

“He’d do five swings on the Trackman and the guy will see that’s doing this all day [coming over the top],” Kelan said, “and the guy will try to get him to move his feet but try to shallow the club out and fight his body. He’ll hit two or three nice ones, and then he’ll be like, oh, maybe that’s it. But …”

Which to master that would be …?

“Another lifetime. The idea that we send the student away to work on things that literally fight how they naturally move is just — it doesn’t make any sense to me at all.”

Josh and Kelan
The teacher and the student — and posture work. Nick Piastowski
3. The posture fix
Kelan adjusted Josh’s posture to where his arms hung more out in front of him; his knees flexed a little more; his back was curved toward 10 o’clock; and his chin was on a line with his back.

A cellphone pic was the impetus. Locked arms. Stiffened back. Dug-into-the-chest head.

To get Josh into a better spot, Kelan had him stand upright, then asked him to slide his hands down toward the top of his knees, bending forward from his hips.

What was the posture endgame?

“We’re just looking to get the body in a position where the arms can swing and not be interrupted by the body,” Kelan said.

And what was Josh doing?

“He was sitting a little bit into it here [at his waist],” Kelan said. “So granted, he was hitting some lovely golf shots, but it still looked a little bit — there was a lot of work going on down at the ball. I want him to stand at the ball in a way that his arms hang and now it’s just a lot of freedom, a lot of flow.

“So granted his wingspan is about an inch shorter overall compared to his height [and] he does need a little bit more knee flex, but he doesn’t need to sit into it.”

Was the adjustment bringing out more athleticism?

“A little bit more separation between the lower body and the upper body,” Kelan said. “If you think about it logically, if I sit into the golf shot like this [as if you were about to sit on a chair], this is all stacked on top of each other. Whereas in a very productive and consistent golf swing, you’ve got separation between the upper body and the lower body, which is created by the angle that the posture creates from the upper body and the lower body.”

How did it feel, Josh?

“I think probably the thing that I noticed the most about my own game, in that there’s something wrong here, was in those [cellphone] pictures you just showed me. Just like from here [pointed at his midsection] and up never has felt or looked natural.

“Like I can see pictures of myself swinging and know I shouldn’t look like that.”

Josh and Kelan
The teacher and the student — and finish work. Nick Piastowski
4. The ‘heavy’ explanation — and the finish fix
Kelan changed Josh’s finish so that his head and chest finished at about a 10 o’clock spot. It was part of the primary swing thought he was given: Stay on your left leg and finish tall.

Why? It all started with another question.

“Has it ever been explained to you before why we hit the ball heavy?” Kelan asked Josh.

No, Josh said — but that’s not to imply he hadn’t sought counsel as to why the low point of his club often struck before the ball, or drop-kicked it. He said he watched YouTube. Several thousands of hours of YouTube, if he were counting. You might be doing the same, despite Tiger Woods’ verdict on the medium.

So what gives?

Josh’s head placement at impact was off. To test that, Kelan had him move his head to his right — which showed him hit even farther behind the ball. Josh then moved his head more to his left — which aligned him better.

To help with that, the move was made for Josh’s head and chest to finish forcefully at the 10 o’clock position. Previously, they stopped at about noon.

On the first attempt with the change, I laughed. Josh laughed. Kelan laughed.

“That was really good,” the instructor said.

There was a drill to assist. Josh was given a ball just larger than a softball, and he was told to throw it into the ground on the downswing. As he did so … no, it couldn’t be.

Was he also pushing up off the ground? Was he also creating ground force?

“We are getting into it now, boy,” Kelan said.

Josh and Kelan
The teacher and the student — and hip-turn work. Nick Piastowski
5. Hip turn fix
Kelan changed Josh’s right hip turn so that it was rotating “as far back as it could.” It was minimal before. Now, he was moving back to a position where, theoretically, he could look at something set at about 8 o’clock.

What happens with minimal hip turn? With Josh, his arms and shoulders would raise — to a spot that almost looked like a baseball swing. (The author is guilty of this. One wonderful playing partner even once asked if I played a lot of baseball.)

Kelan then offered this:

“What I find is that people that drive for a living or people that sit in an office chair consistently, the hips get pretty tight.”

Had Josh been swinging more with his arms? He was. So what should the right move look like?

“The arms need to initiate the swing,” Kelan said, “but when they’re done correctly, they naturally turn to the hips and the shoulders.”

The exit interviews
After two hours, we were done. How were we feeling?

To Kelan, I asked for Josh’s prescription. The answer was both technical and mental.

“First and foremost, like we’ve been saying all day, it’s got to start with his grip, and his grip is something he can work on in his house or his apartment in the city. He doesn’t need to be on a driving range. He doesn’t necessarily need to be seeing ball flight immediately in the next couple of days. If he can get his grip situated where he gets familiar with the idea where the left hand has to be in the fingers and not in the palm, the right hand comes on comfortably to cover the thumb, and then obviously if he’s able to get to somewhere to swing, even if it’s at home without hitting shots. I think a lot of his troubles in the past have been from his hands weren’t on the club correctly, which in turn was affecting how he was able to move the club in space. A couple of checkpoints I gave him in relation to his left hand — where he needs to hold it and feel it and be able to see the club swinging left to right, right to left, up, down — that’s stuff that he can do at home in the house.

Bunker Shots
kelnan mcdonagh watches GOLF editor Zephyr Melton as he hits a long bunker shot
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“Then obviously the goal will be, in a perfect world if we’re looking to get his hunger back for the game, obviously the more he gets out to practice and play, the better. But from his own mental point of view about his overall outlook on the game of golf, knowing that if he leaves next Friday or Saturday to go play, he’s actually looking forward to it, whether it be working on what we did or putting it into play or just genuinely excited to get back on the golf course and see how it all plays out, which I think has been the ultimate goal of this scenario. …

“I firmly believe if he grasps the changes with his hands and with his feet and the more he gets comfortable with that, the more he’s going to get relaxed and the more the club is really just going to do the work for him.”

Josh?

You still quitting?

“Not at the moment.”

So he still might.

Golf doesn’t always have happy endings. Golf isn’t linear. We have a path — but the mind brings bumps. What Josh learned will go to war with what he’s known for 30 years. He’ll slip back into that. Often. But there was a moment, toward the end, where things clicked and he connected and it was sublime. Fluuuush. It keeps us coming back. It keeps us chasing. To that end, Josh is taking a long weekend soon and playing 72.