Funky foot work!?

[gators78]

Has anybody seen or heard of this? Slice?

I was wondering if anybody has ever heard a teacher or seen other players do this type of footwork, because I have never seen it. I was reading Golfpunk and they had an article with Bradley Dredge. In one picture they showed him on his downswing, and the picture is right on his downswing when his left arm (hes a righty) is parallel to the ground. The picture also shows his RIGHT foot almost off the ground, except for the back heal just touching. It would be like if he was swinging with a golf ball under his right toes on the downswing, except there is no ball. Anybody ever hear of this or why someone should do it??

[hoganfan924]

Never heard of this, but many players have a problem of lifting the right heel early (very common - me included). Perhaps this is a drill to break that habit.

[gators78]

This is a video I found of Nick Dougherty, and hes got some strange foot stuff going on here, but this one is with his left foot. If you watch his left foot during the swing its almost as though he steps at least twice during his swing, whats up with that???

[url="http://youtube.com/watch?v=hkVSeCA4IiU"]http://youtube.com/watch?v=hkVSeCA4IiU[/url]

[gators78]

Somebody?

[slicefixer]

Well, first of all the video is TERRIBLE for an accurate determination.........but, with that being stated up front here is MY theory.........

First of all "footwork" is almost totally dependant on the PIVOT.....or "type" of pivot...........secondly, IF you SET UP properly and pivot properly you'll have "calm"/"quiet" feet (btw, "quiet feet" doesn't mean that the right heel shouldn't come off the ground....it just doesn't SPRING/JUMP straight up in the air.......the right foot ROLLS to the instep and THEN the heel is PULLED off the ground by the unwinding core)..........IF you don't then you'll be FORCED to "jump around a bit" in the swing motion in order to create the conditions for an effective downwing.........Now, as for Nick Dougherty in particular............

First, at address his left foot APPEARS to be 90deg to the target line......an indication that he's been fighting a "spin out" so he's squared up his left foot in an attempt to "keep his left side IN the shot a split second longer.........and that would make sense as, AT ADDRESS, his left hip socket is NOT over his left heel, but, rather outside of his left hip socket ..........which means that in order to reach his left pivot point (so that he can ROTATE around it) he'll have to do SOMETHING to get the left hip over the left heel......if he doesn't get the left hip over the left heel (generalization) then he'll be "SPUN OUT"........the most common way to "correct" for this set up "error" in the swing (left heel will "outside" of the left hip) is to simply learn to move a bit more laterally in the transition..........however, Doughtery, like most of the younger players, has a LOT of rotation in his swing........and, as a rule, you can't start rotating/unwinding aggressively until your OVER your "left pivot point"...........looks like to me that during the swing iteslf there is a "heel shift" of some kind so that he can get his "left pivot point" lined up to utilize during his downswing/throughswing..........IF the video were a LOT better this could pretty easily be determined, but, I learned a LONG time ago that crappy video leads to erroneous conclusions............but you asked for something and that's the best I got.........

ONE other thing, in my experience, both personal and working with good players, what you see with Dougherty is VERY common, ie. "unusual footwork", and can usually be corrected with some SIMPLE SET UP changes.........almost 100% of the time.......