Rinker’s Golf Tips 4-27 Top 100 Teacher James Sieckmann. James is a short game expert and works with approximately 20 professionals playing on all the major tours. I asked him what was the best tip that he ever received and he said, “Be kind to yourself because getting better is hard.” James’s short game methodology is based on spending a week in 1994 at the Players Championship with his brother Tom, and videoing Seve, Raymond Floyd, Corey Pavin, Tom Pernice and other Tour players. These players had different techniques, and he found out good players do it completely differently than he had previously thought or been taught to do. Players have feels and thoughts, and a lot of times, they don’t do exactly what they think or say, based on video evidence. A lot of people think releasing the club is wrong in chipping, but James found out the best players in the world release the club in their short games, and it makes their margins for error bigger. James said, “If you work hard on the wrong things, that’s not a great recipe for success.”
James wanted to get this message out so he came out with a DVD series titled Phase 5. A lot of people came up to him after this and said the other stuff they were working on didn’t work, and agreed with James that playing the ball more forward in the stance, with the body open, the club face open, and releasing the club head worked and was more successful. What put James on the map as an instructor, was when he said that the kinematic sequence of a power swing, was not the same sequence as a finesse wedge swing. In a power swing the lower body starts the down swing. In a finesse wedge swing the club head starts the down swing and the lower body is more passive, with the club head falling down the plane and the motion being controlled by the arms and hands. Another genius thing James came out with was his steeps and shallows. He said there are five unique moves with two steeps, two shallows, and one neutral which is an on-plane swing. Over the plane is steep and under the plane is a shallow. Releasing the club head is a shallow so to have balance there needs to be a steep which is setting up so that the center of your chest is open and pointing in front of the ball. There is more to this but they just have to balance.
Lastly we talked about bounce. James said Bob Vokey always said, bounce is your friend, so it’s better to have too much bounce than not enough. You want to have a sand wedge with a lot of bounce, 11-14, and a lob wedge with a lot less bounce 6-8. This will allow you to play from variable situations and always allow you to have a good choice of loft and bounce. He said that his Tour players always defer down or use less loft, play the ball more forward, with less shaft lean, and an open club face. This will allow the bounce to be exposed and used and the turf interaction doesn’t interfere with the shot. James said at the end that purchasing a lob wedge for a junior, when they are young, is really ruining development. A lob wedge is one dimensional and using it around the greens doesn’t develop the skills to be world class. Chipping has become a lost art because they fall in love with their lob wedge. Seve had a 3-iron that he played with on the beach and learned to hit all kinds of shots with it. That’s probably why he developed hand eye coordination with a lot of imagination. Young people need to learn how to manipulate the club and set-up to hit different trajectories with the same club, so they should wait as long as they can to put a lob wedge in the bag. James Sieckmann can be contacted at jsegolfacademy.com.