What Are You Working On? - Page 42

Currently working on shortening my swing. I've got a weak left arm so it's causing me to over swing and therefore the club on the down swing is out of position.

I consciously try and shorten the swing but I'm still over swinging.

It's annoying and something of course you think is easy to fix but it's a habit that I've had for years so I need to just work on keeping my left hand solid.

Anyone got tips?

Working on a better take-away and backswing. Club less deep and hands a little higher at the top.

I'm am working on ingraining the feelings of a correct takeaway.  It is also tied in with my posture...some days i find myself leaning over the ball.  When that creeps in my takeaway feels too "under" instead of "around", my shoulders get too steep, and my downswing turns into crap.  I can still score alright some days like that but it is nothing like when i have my posture and takeaway grooved.

changed my grip from the baseball bat (10- finger) to the traditional overlap.      not truly comfortable yet - but already see a significant decrease in hooking the ball, which is what drove the change.   

So after 20 years, I've finally bit the bullet and hooked up with a golf instructor.  The progress I've made during two months of lessons is unbelievable compared to the progress I made on my own during those 20 futile years.  Obviously, I'm working on a bunch of things simultaneously, but here's the two I've worked on most recently:

 

1) Working on removing all extraneous independent hand and wrist movements from my putting stroke.  I just discovered that I'm way handsier than I realized with the putter.  I've started staring only at my hands (not the ball) to make sure that they don't break at all during the putting stroke.  It forces me to initiate my putting motion with a movement of the shoulders and it has been working wonders for keeping my putting stroke on line.

 

2)  I've recently ingrained a proper one-piece takeaway (I used to be an insider yanker) and now I'm working at developing a feel for the proper moment to begin the upward move with the right arm to the top.  I struggle with delaying it and allowing the club to swing back inside, which gets me laid off at the top and leads to a nasty hook.  I'm doing a lot of mirror work at night and have been playing around with a Medicus iron at the range.

 

My goal for this season is to break 80 more often than not.  My longer term goal is to shoot even par for 18 holes from the blue tees.  My previous best round was 2-over.  That was 19 years ago, so I figure that I'm due at this point.  :)

Finally got the feel of releasing my irons, so now I'm working on grooving a driver swing.

 

Since my stock driver shot is a push slice, I've been working on getting the club faced closed at impact (moved the ball a hair forward in my stance and moved to a bit stronger grip) as well as closing my stance a bit. Seems to be working so far....Next will be getting my driver to carry more than 175 yards :/

I'm working on getting my swing back in order: I've not been playing golf for 6 years now. I wasn't very good back then, but my swing was a lot more reliable and predictable. With all the tweaks I've been making right now it's pretty much a gamble as to what'll happen when I swing. I was just breaking 100 when I stopped.

 

I've just started recording my swing on video, and I noticed I've been taking the club WAY inside, and coming over the top in the downswing (surprise surprise). I can recognize it in the takeaway now, but I still catch myself doing it, so I'm assuming I've always been like this before (with the woods at least I could always see the tee streak going center to out).

 

At first I couldn't hit any iron past 150 or 160, and I now realize it's because I'm not hinging/releasing my wrists properly. So, I'm working on fixing that and flattening my plane, and I think I got most of it this weekend with quite a few choice shots (no video for confirmation though). Just need to grind at the range for a good couple months to really get it ingrained in my muscle memory and stomp out the bad habits.

 

I really miss hitting the irons well, to me solid iron contact/hitting a green is the best feeling in the world: better than sinking a long putt, and better than a long drive. I especially love hitting the longer irons, it feels like I accomplished something. I managed to hit a couple greens this last weekend and I can feel it all coming back to me.

Got to work with and see a seminar from a guy named Jason Guss. He made Golf Digest's top 20 teachers under 40 list. One of my problems is that my follow through was terrible. I wasn't turning through the ball and kept my head down through impact. In his seminar he talks about how keeping your head down is really kind of bad advice. So he had me made some small swings while working on getting my body and especially my head through the ball. Got to see it slowed down and I went from having my left wrist bent in slightly and never releasing the club to a nice full release with a good amount of forward shaft lean. Anyone in Michigan, especially northern Michigan should look into taking lessons from this guy. He works out of Gaylord.

 

http://www.golfdigest.com/golf-instruction/teachers/teacherstop20_under40

Getting accustomed with my new set of irons, and am beginning to get the hang of it. The driver is another area that needs attention: have yet to hit a decent drive this year.

Working on cleaner ball contact (I'm a picker), swing plane (backswing on plane, switches at transition to downswing, comes over the top) and bringing my practice swing to the course... So basically working on learning how to play golf. :)

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I'm currently working on two things:  Tempo and lag pressure.  When my tempo is good, I hit the ball pretty well, but tend to rush my shots.  Second, as a lot of amateurs do, I'm casting the club in an attempt to create club head speed and am not hitting the ball cleanly enough.  

I am working on not swaying. Almost all my misses are because I have swayed ever so slightly. It usually results in a low draw, which I think is a terrible shot ( when you aren't doing it on purpose)

Making my full swing more technically correct, curing the hacker slice off the tee, learning to putt well, learning to hit greenside bunker shots

 

the process is actually going quite well and fast since I'm playing 4+ times a week

 

edit:

Quote:

I agree, I do it all the time. Really ugly shot!

I just bought some new (to me) clubs from eBay. Callaway 4,5,6 irons. Taylormade RocketBallZ 3 hybrid and a Taylormade Burner Superfast (1.0) driver. First thing is to head to the driving range this weekend to get the feel of my newer clubs. I might hit the PGA Superstore out here so I can see some numbers vs my old driver and hybrid since my wife has a lesson there on Saturday.

 

But long term...putting. That's easily the worst part of my game right now.

I'm working on hitting the driver straight. I'm new to golf, and relatively speaking, my irons are fairly decent. I have a respectable amount of accuracy and distance hitting them. My objective is to get out on the golf course for the first time and not lose all my balls... however, the way i hit the driver, that doesn't seem likely.

 

So I was at the driving range last night and a gentleman offered me some great advice to help establish a feel for my swing that would generate more consistent results. The drill he suggested was to practice hitting balls starting from position where the club is parallel to the ground, toe up, and pointing to the target line. From there, take the club back and swing thru the ball trying to return to that same starting position during the down swing. 

I tried it out during lunch today and I went from consistently slicing the ball out of play to slightly pulling the ball but overall hitting it much straighter. 

 

I plan to take a couple lessons soon, and i'm hoping I don't develop any habits too severely before then. In the mean time, this little drill may help push me over the hump and try out an actual golf course... lol

I'm a noob, needs to be said. But my first few tries I went with the interlock grip - or whatever it's called - because I thought it was better for control. Changed to the overlap grip and it felt much more comfortable. I have quite long and slender fingers.

More consistency and course management.

Nothing wrong with being a picker.  Look at Tom Watson.  Plus, you don't have to clean your clubs off quite as often, :D.

 

At the range today, I discovered something.  I've always hit my driver/3 wood trying to kill the ball, and subsequently, having to stand a ways back from the ball.  Today, I decided to approach these two clubs like I approach my irons.  I've never hit my 3 wood so well, and my driver was going much straighter than usual.  My misses weren't huge arcing slices, but moderate fades.  So from this point forward, I'm working on using the same swing for my woods as my irons.