My Swing (DeadMan)

[DeadMan]

New videos! Was focused on posture/set up and keeping head still on backswing.

Hope you like my pants!

[Hammer 4]

Ha...at first I thought those " pants " were your pajama's...

[mvmac]

New videos! Was focused on posture/set up and keeping head still on backswing.

Hope you like my pants!

Feet/knees look better! Next piece is focusing on the turning rates. This pic will make more sense after you take a look at the video below. Also at address, aim the shoulders parallel with your feet, you have them aimed too far left. The shoulders will feel more "closed" to you at address.

[DeadMan]

Ha...at first I thought those " pants " were your pajama's...

I don't wear them as pajama's, but they certainly are pajamas. One of the great things about being able to set up a net in my garage is that I can practice golf in my pajamas!

@mvmac - thanks for the video. I can't watch it at work, but I will be sure to check it out when I get home.

[DeadMan]

Cross post from the 2015 golf goals thread:

Quote:

My #1 goal is to play in the gross division of my men's club championship. To do that, I need to get my handicap below a 10. My other goal is to finish the handicap year with a single digit handicap.

How I plan to accomplish this is by working with evovlr in the winter doldrums. I think I've already improved a bit with just one video lesson, believe it or not. But I can see on video that I have a lot to work on, and it will be a long, hard slog.

I honestly think I could get below a 10 if I just went and practiced on my short game a lot in the spring. But I think if I put in the work on my full swing instead, I have potential to be low single digits and be in the thick of the gross divisions in my men's club (usual winners are in the 3 handicap range). That's my long term goal.

I also was able to get out and play twice this weekend. Shot a meh +16 (86), and then a decent +8 (43) on nine. I was struggling with hitting greens in regulation, but that was because ... I was hitting it longer than I normally do. I think my contact has been more consistently on the center just with these small changes, believe it or not. I was consistently a club longer than usual, and my drives were on average about 15-20 yards farther. There were many times where I would be in great position off the tee and then air mail the green on my approach shot.

The one thing that has happened to me in the past is that I occassionally got these shots where it was 10-15 yards longer than my average. My theory is that this happens when I actually hit the sweet spot. This weekend, I think I was hitting the sweet spot more often, which resulted in that. It's hard to explain otherwise - it was somewhat chilly (50 degrees), and this did not come from the ground being hard - except for my drives, I was measuring carry distance. I'm really curious to see if this continues.

[DeadMan]

Haven't posted to here in a while.

A bit of an update since starting evovlr. I can tell I'm hitting balls a lot better. My contact is a lot cleaner and I'm hitting the sweet spot a quite a bit more often. This has resulted in me gaining somewhere between 10-20 yards a club. I also have now been hitting a baby draw fairly consistently, although not as consistently with my driver than with my irons.

Anyways, I'm currently working on shortening the backswing a little bit, and keeping my head more still on the downswing. It's a long process. In practice swings, my backswing is shortened enough. In actual swings, not as much as I would like. I'm going to focus on trying to do 10-20 minutes of mirror work a day to fix this. I normally hit once or twice a week and that's it. A little mirror work on the side should make that go faster.

I did struggle with a case of the shanks for about a week. But, with a little help from Brian at evovlr, I was able to fix that. Thank god. I can go into a little more detail if anyone really wants to know, but I'd just assume leave it at that. No worse feeling than shanking every. single. f-ing. ball.

The videos:

[DeadMan]

My latest swing videos:

I got my analysis back from Brian ... and he said that what I needed to work on was maintaining this. Felt a little weird not have anything new to work on. But, the main thing I need to do is to keep ingraining that hip turn. It's much better than it was even a week ago. Other than that, Brian said what I would need is smaller tweaks to improve my ball flight. So that feels a little odd, but at least the swing is apparently in good shape for the golf season.

Now that the golf season is more or less here now, I'm starting to get a little more focused on improving my scoring instead of just improving my swing. I took the aimpoint express clinic, which immediately paid off for me on the course this past weekend. My reads were so much better, and I was giving medium putts a run at the hole. Putting is something I struggle with - the biggest thing I need to improve on is my putting speed. Starting on the proper line is also something that needs work, but more important is speed. So I have drills I want to work on, along with practicing aimpoint:

1. Drill - 5 foot gate drill. 5 foot putt - set up a gate just slightly bigger than the ball around 2-3 feet away from the ball on the line of the putt. Make the putt with the ball going through the gate. Make some amount of putts in a row (I'm thinking 10 or 20). This is mostly to ensure I'm starting it on the correct line.
2. Distance drill. I haven't yet fully devised this drill yet. But I think it will consist of me taking one ball, moving it to random distances in excess of 25 feet. I'll make it a game - +3 for making putt, +2 for tap in, +1 to within 3 feet (which is my make 90% of the time distance, I believe), 0 points from 3-6 feet, -2 for anything else, -3 for anything egregious. See how many putts it takes to make it take to 50, try to beat that next.
3. Practice aimpoint. This is calibrating my feet for 5-10 minutes every week or so (could also be done right before a round). And then practicing the reads for a bit. I'm good on the medium range and short range putts. Still need work on the long putt reads. This shouldn't take too long. I think I've got a good handle on it, but I just need to get in a bit more practice to be completely competent.

That said, the biggest thing that I can do to improve scoring is keeping my tee shots in play. It is extremely rare that I don't get a nGIR if my tee shot is in play. And my short game is good enough that an nGIR means a bogey at worst 95% of the time. I struggle the most on the golf course when I can't keep the ball in play. So what I'm going to do now is to focus on my driver swing more. I've been filming my 6 and 7 iron swings for evovlr to fix whatever is necessary. Now I'm going to film my driver swing and see what's going on. I also have an adjustable driver that may not be fitted to me well. I'm thinking that I will try to go into golfsmith or somewhere to see if I can tweak it to get the proper launch angle and spin.

The other thing you can probably deduce from that is that I can improve my scoring a good amount by working on my short game. I probably get 8-11 nGIR in a round that aren't also GIR. If I can improve my short game even a little bit, I can save strokes. The main I need to work on for that is lofted/pitch shots out of the rough. I find myself with a lot of those. I will go practice that, probably with the same drill I'm using for long putts. The key for me with that is also distance control and judging the ball's reaction out of the rough. I would obviously prefer to hit the green, so I will continue to ingrain my swing in the videos above. But as that improves slowly, I can also improve my short game quickly.

So that's my early season update, basically. As far as recent scores, I've been doing pretty well. I've played 45 holes since 3/15, the start of handicap season here. I shot an 80 on a 7000 yard course as a highlight (5.8 differential). Also shot an 85 on a shorter course (12.8 differential), and a 47 on 9 where I couldn't keep the ball in play off the tee. My handicap is projected to go down to 11.1, assuming I'm not able to get out and play this weekend. So I'm already within 1.2 strokes of breaking into the single digits!

I've also started an excel stat sheet that keeps track of a lot of stuff. I don't have it handy right now, but I'll probably come back and post it later so you all can use it if you want.

[mmoan2]

Nice swing. One thing I noticed that I learned from my Evolvr coach is that your stance may be a bit wide, especially for irons. I was told that a wide stance makes it difficult to turn the hips, and after narrowing mine, I agree.

[b101]

The work you've put in your swing is definitely paying off; it looks really good and based on your analysis, clearly you're seeing the results with your irons and know what you need to focus on. Keep it up!

[iacas]

I got my analysis back from Brian ... and he said that what I needed to work on was maintaining this. Felt a little weird not have anything new to work on. But, the main thing I need to do is to keep ingraining that hip turn. It's much better than it was even a week ago. Other than that, Brian said what I would need is smaller tweaks to improve my ball flight. So that feels a little odd, but at least the swing is apparently in good shape for the golf season.

It looks like a pretty nice swing. You shouldn't be an 11.8 for long…

[DeadMan]

It looks like a pretty nice swing. You shouldn't be an 11.8 for long…

Pressure is on now!

[DeadMan]

Here is that stat sheet I was talking about. Includes all my rounds this year so far.

[DeadMan]

Played twice this weekend, and struggled to rounds of 90 and 94 (70.8 rating, 131 slope, par 71).

The round of 90 was frustrating because I hit the ball pretty well (no penalties, not in trouble off the tee), but my putting and short game left me. And twice I bladed a shot out of a fairway bunker beyond the green, resulting in double bogeys because of trouble back there.

The round of 94 was even more frustrating because I wasn't hitting the ball well at all, and my short game still sucked. And, really, I wasn't in that bad of shape until I hit 5 shanks in a row, resulting in two 7s in a row (one on a par 4, one on a par 3). I actually hit 8 GIR in this round. And 14 nGIR. Ugh, ugh, ugh.

So, two things I need to work on from this round. First, I think I'm hitting the ball consistently, but consistently too close to the hosel. I'm going to investigate further this week with impact tape and such. And double check that my swing isn't falling apart.

The other thing is that I have to improve on my short game. I've had way too many double bogeys with a nGIR. I think this is because, too often, my mindset is saving par when it's really tough. A lot of these seem to happen (probably 60% of the time or so) when I'm short sided and try to stop the ball really fast. That's a tough shot. I CAN pull it off, but it's a stupid play. I should be focusing on just getting the ball on the green. So here's my mentality change - when I'm short sided, I want to land the ball at the pin, instead of between the fringe and the pin. And then I need to work on my short game more. Still need to work on lofted shots from greenside rough. That is my most common short game short by far.

[mmoan2]

Here is that stat sheet I was talking about. Includes all my rounds this year so far.

You should pick up an app that does all of this for you. Many even have the ability to download your stats into Excel, I believe. Some are not too expensive. A few minutes google searching will find one for you. I used oobgolf last year.

[DeadMan]

Wanted to post this in here as well. Link to the thread about slumpbusting: http://thesandtrap.com/t/81513/slumpbusting/0_50 . But I wanted to put this here so I can get my plan into my swing thread as well.

I am currently mired in a slump. After starting out with two solid rounds in our handicap season, I've been struggling. Went from 5.8 and 12.9 differentials to 21.2, 16.6, 20.0, 15.4, 21.2. Yikes.

So here is what I'm going to try to do to get myself out of this slump:

• I lose a lot of my strokes off the tee. I'm going to start using my 3 and 5 woods off the tee more often. I don't lose enough distance with those clubs to really hurt me too much.
• The thing that turns a below average round into a bad round for me right now are the shanks. I need to continue to work on my swing changes with evovlr to help avoid those.
• No double bogeys from a nGIR. That has been happening to me too much. If I'm in a bad spot around the green, just give myself a 2 putt.
• Sort of in that vein, I need better focus when I'm around and on the green. My scrambling percentage has been alarmingly low recently. I think a lot of time that's due to me rushing a bit and not being completely focused when I face what should be an easy short game shot.

That's my plan. The 2nd bullet point is probably the biggest thing I need to focus on to bust out of the slump. Unfortunately, I'm not going to have a ton of time practice in the near future beyond hitting some balls at the range here and there. I would really like to take half a day and just work on my short game. I'm just not pleased with my scrambling percentage. 25% is a good percentage for me, and I often have rounds at 0%. If I can eliminate the shanks and improve on my short game just a little bit, I'll be fine.

[DeadMan]

Well, unfortunately, my progress has stalled quite a bit. I've been dealing with a case of the shanks, and I haven't really had much time in the past month or so to fix it. My latest analysis targeted my lower body as the problem - I was moving my front knee too much inward and creating an unstable base. I was able to actually fix that for Saturday and shoot a decent round - coming in 3rd for a tournament I played in. And then they came back today. I wanted to ingrain the progress ... whoops. I will let you know what my analysis says, but here are the videos:

I think I've fixed some of it, but still need some work.

[b101]

Well, unfortunately, my progress has stalled quite a bit. I've been dealing with a case of the shanks, and I haven't really had much time in the past month or so to fix it. My latest analysis targeted my lower body as the problem - I was moving my front knee too much inward and creating an unstable base. I was able to actually fix that for Saturday and shoot a decent round - coming in 3rd for a tournament I played in. And then they came back today. I wanted to ingrain the progress ... whoops. I will let you know what my analysis says, but here are the videos:

I think I've fixed some of it, but still need some work.

I'm no expert, but from the top video, even when you are hitting it, you're not far away from hitting the hosel... May just be as simple as setting up a tiny bit further away from the ball?

[DeadMan]

I'm no expert, but from the top video, even when you are hitting it, you're not far away from hitting the hosel... May just be as simple as setting up a tiny bit further away from the ball?

Yeah, I've had the exact same thought. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to help. I also may have messed up my posture trying to fix this - it seems a little off - but I've been focusing on quieting my lower body.

I can make my swing playable before a round with some drills, but it doesn't address the fundamental underlying problem that I have. I think it's a problem with key #1. My head moves and it obstructs the space I have for my arms. I'm going to keep working at it and update you all on what my evovlr analysis shows. It is definitely frustrating to have this problem, but it's really not any different from hitting a big slice/hook - the resulting shot just is a lot worse.