Kevin Roman, PGA Professional

Cherokee Town and Country Club

IMMPROVE YOUR BALL FLIGHT AND IMPACT IMMEDIATELY

My teaching philosophy follows the wisdom of John Jacobs who said “the sole purpose of a golf swing is to produce a correct and repetitive impact; the method employed is of no significance as long as it is repetitive.” Whether I’m working with a PGA Tour player or a club member I always start by analyzing their impact and ball flight. Every golf swing has a tendency to either be too steep (choppy) or shallow (level). All golf instruction has a fifty-fifty chance of making you better or worse depending on what your tendency is.

If your golf swing tends to be too steep you will have a tendency to slice, pull, and chop down on your golf shots. A simple way to make your shots straighter and improve your consistency is a backswing drill where you imagine a ceiling on top of your head. On your backswing try and keep the club from crashing into the ceiling by swinging your left arm low and across your chest as seen in the photo below. The more your arms swing around you on the backswing the more you will be able to have the correct angle

If your golf swing tends to be too shallow you will tend to hit the ball fat, thin, hook and shank. A drill to fix the shallow impacts would be to swing the club around to the left keeping the grip as close to the left front pocket as possible. Keeping the grip close to you as you swing through will move the bottom of your swing forward and create a more stable face at impact. The picture below shows the gate drill where the hands and grip swing in the space between the stick and my left hip before the head of the club. It will feel like you are going to hit your left leg with the grip.

On all golf shots you want the club to approach the ball on an angle similar to a landing airplane. If it’s to steep on the way down it would crash into the ground and if it’s to shallow the airplane would touch down to early or not at all. Remember all instruction has a fifty-fifty success rate and if you figure out which ones are for your tendency you will see immediate improvement.


Kevin Roman Biography

Kevin Roman is a teaching professional at Cherokee Town and Country Club. Kevin has participated in both the 1993 U.S. Open at Baltusrol NJ, and the 2009 PGA Championship, Chaska MN. He has played in six other PGA Tour events. Additionally, he was a local qualifier for the last four PGA National Club Professional Championships.  He is a Plane Truth and Titleist TPI Certified Instructor. Kevin is a PGA Tour Instructor who has worked with PGA tour winners Matt Kuchar, Scott Piercy, Olin Browne and Scott McCarron.

Kevin Roman
Teaching Professional Cherokee Town and Country Club
Plane Truth Certified Instructor
Titleist TPI Certified Professional