Boyes golf academy

Struggling with shaft lean? ⛳

The right amount can make a huge difference to your strike, launch, and consistency.

Watch this video to learn how much shaft lean you should have with each club—and why it changes throughout the bag.

Driver Lesson

A new pupil came to me struggling with a low hook off the tee.

The first thing we looked at was his setup. He had too much shoulder tilt and a closed stance, which encouraged the club to work too far from the inside. On the backswing, the clubface was also very closed.

Rather than jumping straight into changing the clubface, we first improved his setup. This helped create a better swing direction, preventing the club from getting too far inside and too shallow on the downswing.

Interestingly, we actually kept the clubface feeling quite closed on the backswing. Instead, the focus was on making a stronger body turn through impact and getting his pressure moving more onto his lead side. Those changes allowed the clubface to return much squarer at impact without having to manipulate it.

A great example of how the root cause isn’t always where the ball is telling you to look. Sometimes, improving the setup and body motion is the key to fixing the clubface at impact.

Working on improving my pupil’s lower-half stability.

On the first swing, you can see his lead knee collapsing inwards too much. This was causing him to lose ground force and reducing the power he could generate from the ground up.

To fix this, we widened his stance and focused on keeping the lead knee from moving inwards towards the back knee. This created a much more stable lead side, allowing him to use the ground more efficiently and produce a stronger, more consistent lower-half movement.

Small adjustments like this can make a huge difference to both power and consistency.

Plugged Lies

For a plugged lie, set up with a little more weight on your front foot and tilt your shoulders slightly forward. This encourages a steeper, more up-and-down swing.

From there, your main focus is to hit the sand firmly just behind the ball. The goal is to drive the club under the plugged ball, allowing the sand to lift it out of the bunker.

⛳️ Struggling in the bunkers?

Bunker shots don’t have to cost you strokes. The key is learning the correct setup and making the right contact with the sand—not the ball.

Our coaching will help you:
✅ Improve your bunker setup
✅ Make consistent contact with the sand
✅ Get out of the bunker with confidence
✅ Hit your shots closer to the hole
✅ Save strokes and lower your scores

Ready to turn those tricky bunker shots into scoring opportunities?

📩 Get in touch today and start improving your bunker play!

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Bunker Lesson Recap

We focused on improving the consistency of your bunker play, as you were seeing a mix of fat and thin strikes.

The main issue was that the leading edge was entering the sand first. When this happened, the club would either dig too much (fat shot) or skip into the ball without taking enough sand (thin shot).

What we changed:

* Opened the clubface at address to expose the bounce.
* Squared your stance and posture instead of setting up too open.
* Worked on feeling a flatter shaft and club on the backswing, rather than getting too steep.
* On the downswing, we used the feeling of hitting a draw, which helped the bounce enter the sand first instead of the leading edge.

The result:

Using the bounce properly allows the club to glide through the sand rather than dig. This gives you much more consistent contact and makes it easier to let the club splash the sand, allowing the ball to pop out softly and land on the green with greater control.

Going forward, trust the bounce and commit to letting the club enter the sand. With this technique, you’ll become much more confident in bunker shots and see far more consistent results.

Been working with Tyler for a while now, and his swing has come on leaps and bounds.

In our latest lesson, we noticed he’d stopped turning his hips properly during the backswing. This meant he wasn’t completing his backswing, which led to inconsistent contact and increased shot dispersion.

We focused on reactivating his hip turn in the backswing, allowing him to move much more freely and complete the swing more efficiently.

We also worked on reducing some of the early shoulder tilt in the downswing. Tyler was tilting too soon, which kept too much pressure on his back foot and made it difficult to transfer his weight onto his lead side.

By improving both the hip turn and the sequencing in the downswing, he’s already striking the ball with much more consistency and efficiency. Great progress, Tyler—keep it up! 💪🏌️

Are you sliding your hips and creating a C-shaped body position during your backswing? Or maybe you’re putting too much weight onto your front leg?

Here’s a simple fix.

During your takeaway, gently move your lead hip towards the target while turning your shoulders. This helps keep your spine in a better position and allows your upper body to stay behind the ball.

The result? Better contact, more consistent strikes, and a more repeatable golf swing.

Here’s Dan demonstrating it perfectly

Here’s Lee, a new client who came to me looking for a more reliable golf swing.

His backswing had become too long, causing him to lose width. To compensate, he would cast the club early in the downswing to recreate that width, making it difficult to strike the ball consistently.

We focused on creating a wider, shorter backswing, allowing for a much smoother transition into the downswing. This gives him a stronger foundation to build a more efficient, repeatable swing that’s built to last.

There’s still plenty of work to do, but this is exactly where the process starts. Step by step, we’re building a swing that will lead to greater consistency, more confidence, and ultimately, lower scores.

Getting the Correct Ball Position

Having the wrong ball position can negatively affect all your fundamentals — including your ball striking.
Understanding the correct ball position for your swing is one of the most effective ways to improve your consistency and hit better shots.

Here’s a video showing how I like to work on my ball position.