He Became A Ball Striking Expert And Dropped His Scoring Average By 7 Shots! (Here’s How)

In this special episode, Milo Lines Golf coach, Blake Cannon and I look back on our time together working on his golf swing and game, and the key changes we made that helped him dramatically improve his ball striking. Within just a couple months his scoring average, both in mini-tour events and during practice went down roughly 7 shots! He found more consistency and confidence in his new pattern, and gained some 20-30 yards with driver. We hope you enjoy this look into Blake’s golfing journey and the time we spent working on his swing.

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Hey everybody Milo and Blake coming at you from beautiful Superstition Mountain and today we have a video where we’re going to talk a little bit about the changes that Blake and I made together that took him from struggling ball striking to an elite ball Striker over the course of a fairly fast Window So that was what five years ago that was about five years ago so I had been out of college played division one college golf for four years and my first year of mini tour play I started out okay I was making some money and hitting it pretty

Good but after kind of Hit the six month point and the wheels came off and I was just I was struggling and I remember going back and tracking my scores and I was averaging about 73 for like the last 6 months before I started working and I

Was like and I was frustrated and getting close to being done because you just I mean you know how that works on mini tour you need to be scoring average 69 or better in tournaments yeah and I remember watching you cuz you were a member here yeah and I’d sit and watch

You practice the same thing over and over again over and over again I got really good at it and one day I finally got was really good and I walked over and I interrupted you and said what the heck are you doing yeah and so then we we started working together within a

Couple of weeks I saw huge progress in my ball striking but you know how it is as a competitive player you have to go out and play at that level to validate it and then for about the next year as I was tracking scores tracking scores my

Scoring average went down to 66 so I went from hitting it about as bad as I had as a competitive player to as good as I have as a competitive player and a lot of times with good players it’s you know a small little subtle change well

That time period wasn’t a small little subtle change we made some drastic changes the frustrating thing for me is a lot of the stuff that you had to fix out is stuff that had been taught into me unfortun Ely so made it hard cuz I spent a lot of time ingraining those

Habits but what was amazing is when I went back to a more natural athletic pattern I actually picked it up pretty fast and over time required a lot less practice Yeah than what I was doing once you had it now it’s just kind of focusing on one or two little things to

Make you get back on the rails it’s just maintenance and that’s what’s funny cuz now today I go back to the same things that we did 5 years ago now thankfully I pick it up even faster now than I did then because I’ve just I’ve ingrained it for so long Okay so

Let’s walk the viewers at home through kind of where you were and what we did to fix it to make the swing kind of where it is today sure so I’d say the first thing we tried to fix and we fixed very quickly was how my body wound up on

The golf swing so when I first came to you and there was a lot of stuff that I didn’t understand at the time that I do now but what was killing me is my lead hip would always drop in the back swing my my hips and shoulders would be on a

Really really steep plane what I was doing with the club was actually intentional which probably led to some of this I’m sure but I was spending a lot of time trying to unload the club that way at that time of my golf career before I knew any better and so what my

Swing would essentially look like is my hip would drop and then the club would throw up over the top and I would react by standing up and extending so AO was hitting a lot shorter than I was capable of and my club face stability was yeah I

I still remember the first time you and I went out and played you were the significantly shorter driver of the two of us at that point which currently is not the case no not anymore in case you were wondering what 330 carry looks like here you go

But you didn’t have the speed because you were trying to steer that sucker yeah into the ball yeah I was just trying to square the face up pretty much entirely with timing and it just blew my mind that I was in trying to at that time rehearse a release that would keep

The face Square yet the face would stay square and I could still hit snap hooks it’s because the club was quite literally passing me in my body would shut off in rotation because of the whole chain of events leading to the impact and the first thing that you had

Me work on I remember it to this day on the back side of the range back there is spending a lot of time for me feeling like my hip actually my right leg was pushing up and everything was getting actually a little bit flatter and taller

In my turn because I was so this way leaned over it that I had to actually feel like I was turning flat and extending the upper part of my body to get taller and most of the leanover was actually happening in the hip complex right off the bat yeah it was right away

Your lead hip would drop like that so what I’ve focused on since then is I spend a lot of time working on for me feeling like my hips turned flatter and feeling like I have a huge stretch in the left side of my body so that I’m

Extending and getting tall now I have some feels that I always know if I’m doing a good job of executing this and the first one is if my hands feel real fast off the ball I know I’m not doing a very good job it has to feel like my my

My back swing is initiated by the wind up of my body and I want my hands to feel pretty quiet to kind of recap for everybody the first thing we really wanted to fix was how we wind the system up and how we maintain the levels in our

Wind up definitely so we’ve got to stick through your belt this is something we actually used with you a l quite a bit yes in this drill what I want you to demonstrate for everybody is how your your hip turn what it did before so what

It did before is I would you can see how down this lead hip went in the back swing and what would happen in transition now is he’d have to jump it up I’d have to get up and then my hands would react by doing something of that

Nature yeah and I’m not sure the chicken or the egg there cuz you were doing stuff with your hands on purpose yep and so I think your body might have started reacting to that it did I think so so then what we had you do is do some wind

Up so now you’re going to try to feel like that turns a significantly More Level it’s still on an incline but it’s not on nearly as steep of an incline right no and the other thing is going back to kind of we we did a lot of just

Foundation one type shots with this drill cuz as we discussed earlier the secondary part of this is we just wanted to quiet my hands down in the takeaway cuz I create lots of wrist extension early in my swing if I don’t think about it so when we paired these two drills of

Working on my levels and then just lots of those Foundation one type of swings so Foundation one for those of you at home is a a swing where we basically eliminate the lever system so you’re just turning your arm structure back just using entirely pivot which was

Perfect for this drill cuz I could sit here and I could use that stick kind out of the corner of my eye like okay that’s good and then I would just hit a lot of foundation one wind up unwind and do that until I

Was blue in the face yes we did a lot of that cuz I wanted to get really good at making my wind up initiate the swing and so if I didn’t take the hands and wrist out I would just fall back into my old pattern that’s what allowed me to get

Through that and be able to actually make this change effectively but that also needed to be paired with some subtle changes in how our wrists and arms work it’s actually not subtle it’s they’re they’re quite extreme so what did we do how do we change what your

Hands and arms were working well for starters once we changed how my tilts worked it got easier probably couldn’t have executed the correct motion with how my body was working at least not very easily but we were trying to tried to minimize forearm roll CU I had a lot

Of it I had a lot of forearm roll with my trail forearm going underneath early in my back swing and I didn’t really have the face super open but the club would get really stuck behind me too because of what my wrists were doing I was just throwing all the way to the

Club behind me early I think that’s what led to your body creating those interesting inclines tilts because you’re trying to create enough down when your arms are y too shallow so now you’re trying to figure out how to get that aim down there so as we were

Working on tilts it was really easy for me to hit a bunch of soft shots just essentially thinking keep nice wide structure and just minimize roll in my forearms and once I got to about this point everything fell into place and the back swing when I sent everything in the

Right direction it was pretty easy but in the beginning it was really natural for me to want to go that way so it spent it took some time for me just to get comfortable feeling like okay I can just keep my forearms feeling very very neutral essentially and that was step

Two and then from there a lot of the downswing issues that I was having fell into place as we changed how I wind everything up I remember you specifically telling me I like to focus on how I wind it up and let it all just kind of happen naturally cuz you felt

Like if if you could get it wound up correctly it would just automatically kind of do its thing it just and that goes back to a lot of your principles from that point the motion started to feel athletic again and I started to feel like I was moving athletically as

Opposed to before it felt like I was doing everything I could just to square the face up whereas I remember the the moment when I made my first like full good swing with it and I just remember thinking I don’t even know what my hands really did I mean they did stuff right

They always do but I just kind of remember thinking like oh I just swung and it’s like oh cool now I’m going to swing harder cuz I’m not thinking about what the club face is doing anymore hard remember when you started swinging harder yeah you just started swinging

Harder cuz it’s like well I’m not I’m not trying to square the face up time it up and it just became a lot easier and then confidence builds rapidly it was like a snowball all of a sudden yeah a month after we started working together

I went out and it was I think it was the first tournament IID played first competitive round of golf had played since we started working together it was a corn fairy tour Monday qualifier it was technically that was the last web.com at that point but corn fairy now

And I remember I went out and qualified played great I don’t remember what I shot who knows I think I shot 64 was it 64 remember I Bogi the last hole and I still made it in by two and I remember I was like oh okay well that’s kind of

Cool and and that was only after three weeks something like that it’s a long time ago now but a short short amount of time a lot of work though a lot of work but a short amount of time so here’s a really fun look back at exactly what

Blake was describing on the left we have Blake swing from our first lesson and on the right we have a swing that he made I believe this was our second or third lesson probably a week to two weeks later so if we just look at the changes that he was

Making you can really see exactly what he was describing so he had more roll in his forearms going away his lead side was dropping a little bit more but you can really see the difference in the pitch of this shaft going back then versus by the second lesson it’s inside that

Ball and there up top how really laid off the club is so what you’ll see here from that laid off position with the handle here it’s more right on plane what you’re going to see is as he changes direction see how that shaft now steepens quite drastically the club is tumbling out and

Over where in the after golf swing we’re going to see that club shallowing out and staying more on plane so now it’s never really going to get outside the hands coming down so there you go it’s inside the hands and his arms won’t get so under

Him with the club tumbling so you can see how steep this shaft is let’s get rid of some lines you can see how steep that that shaft is by how down his arm his lead arm is hanging where in the after that shaft’s going to be more

Shallow and his lead arm is hanging a little bit more out away not so much down under him so it’s not handle not dropping down and the club head tumbling out which was causing a lot of his issues so though they have a lot of similarities just the general shap shape

Of these swings this one rolled and steepened and this one shallowing out somewhat and today it’s even doing a little bit more of that this made all the difference he went from struggling to control the ball to having almost complete control over it like let’s let’s show everybody from

Face on what this pattern looks like what the differences in the old and the new are so they can kind of see how everything looks from a forward on position position so from forward on my lead hip was dropping essentially creating a greater incline in my hips

Right and what I would pair that with is my forearms would roll in the club would come under so my takeaway used to look something like this now it’s pretty clear from here and it obviously wasn’t clear to me at the time but I can’t move athletically how I’d want to in the

Downswing I have to get back up out of the ground early and end up standing up and flipping it so bad and what it changed is feeling that hip Staying High and a little less rolling the forearms now it starts to in my practice swings if you actually watch me in my practice

Swings a lot my head is actually elevating yes it doesn’t happen real swing it doesn’t go up but so when I feel like I’m extending and getting tall I don’t do that and I go from instead when we first started working together I was maybe dropping two three inches in

The back swing for me to maintaining pretty level but the more important aspect of it is now my tilts were correct more important than just where what my head’s doing and it allows you to move differently in the transition phase of the golf swing where you can

Actually now have a little sink and unwind where before you were it used to feel down up so now what I like to feel is I always tell people for me if I’m hitting it really good I kind of feel like my hands are quiet I feel kind of

Up down up and it’s very fluid and smooth but that’s the sensation in my body if I feel like I’m down early for me I’m usually in big trouble so I’m always aware of that sensation and trying to make sure that I steer clear

Of it all right Blake so I want to I want you to show everybody what that sensation of up down up actually looks like when we get a golf ball well I’ll show you kind of my practice F swing and then we’ll see how much my head actually

Goes up in the back swing or in the real swing but you can kind of see I feel like my hips turning real flat I feel like I’m stretching up my left side and I think when I make this practice swing I probably do have a little bit of up

But it’s going to feel up down up that’s going to be my sensation now we’ll move in and I’m just going to try and recreate that feeling it’s going to be lead hip stays tall feel a big stretch okay so we can kind of see how you transformed your golf swing and you

You also mentioned that now it’s just maintenance how do you maintain it what is what are some of the things that you currently do to make sure that you don’t get off the rails and go back to the crappy pattern the first thing for me and you know this better than anybody is

To manage with my brain cuz I am a notorious Rabbit Hole Chaser you know I I’m like the fox out there in the snow like I’m always chasing rabbit holes trying to figure out always looking for something some way to become more efficient to become better to hit it

Better when generally speaking when I go back to just those simple things it always yields the best results what killed me over the years after we started working together is I’d come back to you and I’d have an idea a new ideas okay I think I need to do this the

Problem is it’s not even necessarily that what I was thinking was wrong but when I lost my core focus and I started working on other elements my golfing that really didn’t need the work that didn’t really impact my ball striking that much I would get sidetracked and fall back into making these same

Mistakes so for me it’s the first battle is just having the awareness to make sure that this is all good before I touch even think about touching on anything else that’s first and most important and then from there it’s have one or two simple drills feels that I

Consistent Implement into my practice my warm-up routine generally since I’m not playing competitively my practice isn’t nearly as extensive and thorough as it used to be just like it is for you it’s it’s not as much of a priority to to play as well

As it was when I when it was my living but I still want to play good golf so I what I found is when I go out if I just take 5 to 10 minutes early in my range session and I take the simp a simple

Drill like the one where we did the stick and just hit some Foundation one style shots with a stick boom and all I do is real quiet hands feel like my hip stays High using that stick in there and hit like five to 10 of those and then I

Just make it bigger so then I just take that swing and I just grow it grow it and that’s kind of how I warm up every day if I do that that’s really about all it takes me other than just managing my the simple things as my golf swing my

Alignment my ball position the stuff that all of us get off on if we don’t pay attention but if I just keep it that simple where it’s alignment ball position in those couple Fields I generally don’t find that I get too far off what I find with everybody myself

Included is my Tendencies are my Tendencies and I tend to fall back in whether I think I have or not I fall back into those patterns that kind of mess things up and if I just stay focused on the things that fix my Tendencies I stay on track so I think

There’s there’s two things to answer that question the first one is make make sure you have have good drills once you’ve accomplished the change you’re trying to make so that you can continually manage that and the second thing is this is something that just comes with experience of hitting a lot

Of golf balls too is being able to have the awareness understand hey if the golf ball is doing X Y or Z I’m probably doing what I used to do and the other I said I have a couple feels so because I can’t see the inclination of my hips I

Can’t even necessarily feel the exact inclination of my hip so what I can feel is if my takeaway gets really fast the sensation getting fast I know I’m probably going down that path so I’m just aware of a few things and if I start to hit it poorly I think like it

Might takeway feel like it’s flying off the golf ball because that’s what it used to feel like and then I know I probably go back to range do my drills and then usually I’m off and rolling again well looking back it was really fun to watch how you progressed it

Wasn’t exactly fun watching you go from hitting it shorter than me to driving me pretty consistently but you’re never catching back up either I’m getting old Blake turned into quite a ball striking machine for a period of time you were about as good as anybody I’ve ever seen hopefully you all like this

Video please come visit us at Miland golf.com where we can help you understand what your Tendencies are how to solve them and how to stay on the right track you can work with Blake as well here in Arizona or online you can find him at Milo lines golf.com