If you’re struggling with your golf swing, Wright Balance may be the solution
During the Toronto Golf Show back in February, I ran into Marc Ray, who teaches golf at Oak Hills Golf Club in Stirling, Ontario and is also President of the Canadian Golf Teachers Federation. Our chat started with the CGTF but eventually evolved into a discussion about teaching in general and what Marc was doing that’s different than most.
I learned a bit about the Wright Balance system that day and we agreed to dig deeper in a future conversation. Following is a transcript of our Zoom call, slightly edited for length and clarity.
Hi Marc, thanks for doing this. Can you explain Wright Balance and how it’s working for you both as a golfer and an instructor.
Well basically, the easiest way to understand Wright Balance science without being a scientist is to know it’s determined on how we swing the golf club by how much hip rotation we’re able to generate. That’s the one thing that really determines what we are as a golfer, whether we’re an Upper Core, Mid Core or Lower Core golfer. Anyone who’s over 50 years old, they’re going to end up being an Upper Core golfer. Even players like Tiger Woods who’s now turning 50, with his accidents, his whole body is completely changed and he’s becoming an Upper Core golfer.
The interesting thing I learned is that almost all golf instruction is geared to people with a lot of hip mobility, like the professional athletes we see on TV who are mostly Lower Core and Mid Core. But well over 60% of golfers that take lessons, especially senior golfers, are all Upper Core. And so, the bottom line is this: we’re trying to teach golfers what they should do but can’t do, because of what younger, fitter athletes are able to do on TV. That’s a failing grade, a failing proposition for most people. They shouldn’t be trying to emulate what the best athletes in the world do who have done this since they were 12 or 13 years old.
And the concept is that each type of player needs slightly different swing mechanics. And the problem is that over 90% of golf instruction is geared for Low or Mid Core golfers because that’s what we see on TV on a weekly basis, with the exception of maybe the Senior Tour.
I follow one of Dr. David Wright’s disciples, and his name is Larry Rinker. He played on the tour in the 90s and is a phenomenal golfer, but he’s turned out to be, in my opinion, the best golf instructor in the world because he has a science that works. I started following Larry a few years ago and I’ve been fortunate enough to do a couple of long Zoom sessions with him and got to pick his brain along with our Canadian Golf Teachers Federation members.
What makes Larry so exceptional is he takes this amazing rocket science and makes it easy to understand, easy to digest, and as an instructor, easy to apply. So, like I said, I probably started using Wright Balance three seasons ago and applied it to my 400 lessons a year, and my success rate was starting to climb exponentially with people’s enjoyment factor, with people’s knowledge of what they’re trying to do and people’s ability to swing within their own capabilities. That was the biggest change.
What are the keys to Wright Balance?
One of the big things is the grip. A lot of people are taught to use a very strong grip. Well, if you’re an Upper Core golfer and you rotate properly, you actually will hit the ball better with more of a neutral grip. And it’s hard for so many people that have sliced the ball for so many years to understand that. But in order to hit the ball straight, you need a square clubface at impact and to do that you need that club to release. And your release timing will be off with a strong grip.
Another big trait of an upper core golfer is their stance width. They need maximum amount of hip rotation – they need a lot of turn. So, to do that, we have to narrow their stance.
The other thing that happens as a byproduct of this weaker grip and narrow stance, once we get the golf club down to the ball and we make impact, the release point becomes very close to the golf ball. The golf club is released just past the golf ball, where if you looked at Dustin Johnson or Jon Rahm, both of whom are Low Core golfers, their golf club is extending well away from their body when it gets fully released.
That isn’t the case with an Upper Core golfer. So, it’s a major, major difference in philosophy of how you release the golf club. And then the next thing that goes right along with the release point is early extension. If you Google early extension, you’ll never see it as a positive. In Wright Balance, we see it as vertical force. So early extension is not a negative if you’re an Upper Core golfer because you’ve released the golf club early and you’re pushing up, almost jumping, to create power to maximize the distance you get.
That’s where people eliminate their slice. The hands are on a path that is going straight at the golf ball, and it creates a much better smash factor, a much better path of the golf ball that’s measurable on any launch monitor. And that’s where it all starts for my students: educating them on where their hips are pointed at impact, and then explaining, okay, the only way to square the club is by using your hands.
So, you’re going to load up like a slingshot or bow and arrow. But as you unload, the timing of it is different than you’ve ever realized before. The timing is that your hips are actually pointed at the golf ball. And if you look at video of Greg Norman who was one of the best players in the world in his prime, his hips are pointed directly at the golf ball. And if you find a Tiger Woods video from 2024, his hips are pointed at the golf ball. Great examples of Upper Core golfers.
And if you see Larry Rinker swing a golf club, his hips are pointed at the golf ball, and he goes into a jump instantly. And it’s really quite interesting to see how some of the best players in the world have changed their golf swing due to age and mobility ability, back issues, all those things. And it’s really an interesting transition for a lot of people.
There’s been a lot of talk for years about how you’re supposed to use the big muscles in your body to generate speed in your golf swing, which I was always puzzled about. When you look at guys who really hit the ball a long way, most of them don’t look like they’re using any muscles at all. Wright Balance doesn’t seem to be about the big muscles either.
That’s one of Larry Rinker biggest pet peeves – that big muscles control the golf swing. They definitely do not, it’s the dexterity in your hands. If it was big muscles, learning to play golf would be easy. You’d say to a student, okay, use those big arms and the trunk and turn away and then turn back. But that doesn’t square the club face. It doesn’t create any speed. And I’ll be honest, I taught people that big muscles will control your golf swing for 20 years and none of them were good until about 2021. When Covid hit, that’s when I started to really learn how to teach. There’s a lot of things that I taught that I should be refunding money to, but it’s true, the idea and the concept of the big muscles controlling the swing, that’s a dumb idea.
Is Wright Balance becoming more accepted or more known because until I spoke to you at the Toronto Golf Show, I had never heard of it.
I would say no. It’s really interesting, the people at Wright Balance are so science-based, almost like they’re engorged in learning the science and finding more and more information versus promoting what they have. So, Larry Rinker, in my opinion, is probably the most knowledgeable person on the planet when it comes to teaching Wright Balance. But he will not get in a debate. He won’t have a conversation about your system vs Wright Balance. You won’t see him on the Golf Channel promoting it. To him, there’s no debate.
Can you explain the difference in what you would tell a Low Core golfer versus a High Core golfer when they’re making a swing?
A Lower Core golfer is going to have a much wider stance, a much stronger grip, and their hips are going to be much more open through the hitting area, through the impact area. Upper Core is going to have a weaker grip and a narrower stance, with a lot of turning, but the waist is going to be pointed at the golf ball. Unfortunately, they’re going to be a little bit slower too. An Upper Core golfer just isn’t going to generate the same amount of speed as a Lower Core but if he’s doing things correctly, he’ll stop slicing and hit the ball further than he did before.
When we first talked about Wright Balance at the Toronto Golf Show, you said that people grasp it fairly quickly and can make adjustments to fix their swing.
Yeah. What’s even amazing is my best friend is now 77, and about four years ago, before I even got into Wright Balance, he started to do some of this stuff on his own, and his game improved so much. Initially, I would say to him, you can’t aim so far over there and expect to hit the ball over here. But now I realize his hips were getting out of the road and he was able to square the golf club up and jump. And now he shoots his age two or three times a month. And it’s all because of doing things he’s not even aware of.
I know when I struggle, my natural instinct is to go back to basics, just square everything up and start over. And a lot of times it works, but the things that we should do are often counterintuitive. You think, well, I’m doing this so therefore I should do that. And often it’s the opposite, but we don’t realize it. And instruction generally doesn’t point towards the correct fix.
One of the things I’ve learned about golf instruction is that people will have a headache, and we want to do brain surgery instead of giving them a Tylenol because it’s always been deemed incorrect or bad value to have a quick fix or a Band-Aid. Reconstructing something to me should be a last case scenario. When you have a little bit of back pain, you’re not going to go in and start fusing the vertebrae. And one of the things I find with the industry is we’re afraid to do a Band-Aid. I’m not really a Band-Aid teacher but with Wright Balance, I can usually identify the source of the problem and work on fixing it, without resorting to a complete rebuild. And I tell that to my students up front too.
For more information about Wright Balance, click HERE.
