The Brick Wall Impact Drill

Place the pathpal on your lead side — to the left of a right-handed golfer — at approximately hip height, positioned to create a visual line that defines where your upper body should be at impact. The hips are allowed to move past the pathpal going through the ball, but the upper body and head must stay at or behind that line at impact. Janean calls this the "brick wall" concept: the hips clear it, the upper body doesn't. The pathpal serves as the physical reference for that boundary.

Sway gap is a launch monitor metric that measures the horizontal distance between the center of the pelvis and the center of the sternum at impact. When the upper body gets too far in front of the ball — stacked over or past the lead foot — the sway gap closes or inverts, meaning the sternum has chased the hips rather than staying behind them. From that position, the hands and club arrive at impact before they've had the chance to square the face, leaving it open and producing pushes, blocks, and weak shots to the right. Staying behind the ball keeps the sway gap in the correct range and allows a natural face release.

A proper weight shift moves the hips laterally and then rotationally toward the target — the pelvis drives while the upper body tilts away from the target, maintaining the tilt established at address. Getting too far in front happens when the entire body — hips and upper body together — lunges toward the target, eliminating that separation. The result looks like a weight shift because the body has moved toward the target, but the absence of hip-torso separation means the face can't square. Janean's brick wall cue gives golfers a precise reference: hips through the wall, everything above it stays back.

A controlled stay-behind position produces a square-to-slightly-closed face at impact — which can produce a draw or, if overdone, a hook. Janean's prescription is to stay "at or behind" impact, not dramatically behind it. The goal is restoring the correct separation between pelvis and sternum — not manufacturing an exaggerated reverse pivot or a tilted C-posture. For a player who has been getting too far in front and blocking shots right, a small amount of increased upper body tilt away from the target immediately feels dramatic but is actually closer to neutral. The pathpal reference prevents overdoing it by giving a fixed visual line.

Launch monitors like TrackMan and Foresight measure sway gap as part of their body position data — typically showing the horizontal displacement of the pelvis relative to the sternum at impact in inches or centimeters. A positive sway gap means the pelvis has shifted toward the target while the upper body has remained behind — the correct position. A neutral or negative reading means the upper body has kept pace with or passed the pelvis — the fault Janean identified in her student. The pathpal translates that data measurement into a physical reference the golfer can see and respond to in real time, without needing to read numbers between every swing.