Q&A with Ryan Hager - Plainfield Country Club

Alex Elias

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Courtesy of Jon Cavalier (@linksgems)

Often amateurs recognize their miss, but may not understand the reason behind it. How important is it to understand your own swing? 

Understanding your own swing is vital. When I started learning to teach at a higher level, I went and worked for a guy named Jim McLean at The Jim McLean Golf School in Miami. A process that we all learned in our training was the process of helping a person understand how to improve. The first step is you have to know exactly what you're doing. You don't need to know every single inch of your swing, but you do need to know what you do correctly, and also what you do incorrectly. You also then need to know what to do instead. That's why typically I will look at PGA Tour players in the video analysis part of a lesson and I will show somebody this is what your club face looks like during this part of the swing and here are four examples from the PGA Tour of different positions you could be in. Understanding that, you start to see the gap and notice the differences between you and world class players. Then, you need to figure out how to bridge the gap and that's where the lesson really comes into play. If you have a good instructor, they should give you the proper drills and training aids to try and bridge the gap. So, you have to know what you do, right and wrong, you need to know what you need to do instead, and how to bridge the gap between where you are and where you need to be. You really need the total picture in order to get better at golf. 

When a player isn't taking a lesson, how should their practice be broken up? 
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​As far as practice goes, there's the long game which basically makes up your driving, long-irons, mid-irons and wedges, the full swings you'll hit over the course of the round, and then there's the short game: putting, chipping, pitching, shots from the rough, and bunker shots. I think that should be practiced 50/50. I think the best use of your time when practicing would be with a Driver, 8 Iron and then shift to short game. If you can drive the ball in play and consistently get the same draw or fade, then after that you need to be able to hit all of your irons the same way. I picked an 8 Iron, you could pick a 7 Iron, but you want to get comfortable making good contact and compressing the ball. You could essentially do that with one club and you'll have a good feel for the entire bag. Then, the other half can be spent with check-ins on the different chips and pitches based on the course you always play and then some touch control for distance. I think distance control is the hardest part of short game. Most of your time with short game should be focused on making sure the ball is going the distance you want. ​