My Swing (Mordan) - Page 3

I haven't posted in a while as I've been working with James via Evolvr. Here's my latest videos:

Not a swing video but I thought this was the best place to put this, my first round in the 70s (at least on a genuine par 72 course).

The FIR and GIR numbers aren't that impressive but they were nearly all small misses (first cut, fringe etc), not the big ones that are so costly to your score. And I scrambled well and holed most of the putts I'd expect to make and one or two that I might not on another day.

So thanks to the evolvr guys for the help they've been giving me. Having both the "what" and the "why" of the changes you're talking about so clearly explained makes it very easy for me to go out there and work on them, and gives me the confidence to know that I'm heading in the right direction.

Now to do it again...

Well it didn't take me too long to do it again. I got there via a somewhat different route but the same result, another 78. Holing out on 10 from about 160 yards to go back to 1 under really should have set me up for a lower round but I lost concentration a little and my score drifted from there.

And here's a latest video. I've been working on retaining flex in my left knee longer to allow the hips to continue forward longer. Definitely looks better with the irons although I haven't yet been able to do it as well with the driver (one of the reasons for lots of misses right in the round above).

I've made the move back home to Australia after a little over 5 years in the UK so it's taken me a while to find somewhere to practice and I haven't joined a club yet. But I've had a pretty productive last few weeks working with James again on evolvr and thought I'd share some vision from my practice session today.

James wanted me to work on shortening my backswing, and keeping my right heel down until impact. My backswing has lengthened a little recently due to another change that has seen me increase my hip turn. So the plan was to continue to make the full hip turn, but restrict the arms a little to keep better control of the club. And trying to keep my right heel down has been a constant fixture of what I've been working on since I joined evolvr. I've never quite got it right.

So off I went to the range with both these ideas in mind after a bit of swinging in the backyard with no ball to get the feeling. And I hit the ball great immediately. It felt like about a half effort swing but the ball was still going almost as far as I'd been hitting it and it just felt like I couldn't hit a bad shot. Perhaps 20 balls with wedges up to 6 iron and clean contact on all, plus great control of the shape. What an easy game hey?

And then I stepped up to a 3 hybrid and couldn't quite replicate the feeling with the longer club. I just kept hitting pushes. And then I lost the feeling altogether. And hit the last 25 balls of my bucket as a mix of fats, thins and shanks. Luckily I captured a down the line video both when I was hitting it just like I wanted to, and one when it all went wrong (it was a semi shank). It's amazing to see how little difference there is between the two videos, although at the time I couldn't feel any difference what so ever. But the reality is that my backswing has crept back up almost to it's old length, and my right heel just wasn't staying down quite as long. Plus I've got a suspicion that my tempo has sped up a bit too, which seems to happen when I'm playing poorly. Although I'm not sure how to measure the timing of a swing from a video, I'd be interested to know the timing from address to the top of the backswing and back down to impact of the two videos.

So here are the two videos, the first I think was a PW and the second my semi-shanked 8 iron. It's interesting how much better my balance is at the end of the first video.

Quote:

Originally Posted by logman 

Hey welcome home man. Yarra bend's my local too. Nice looking swing, Isn't the brain a sneaky bastard the way it wants to go back to what it's used to.

Cheers, it's good to be home. Yarra Bend is a fairly distinctive range, I've been doing my best to put as many dents as possible in the roof of the shed in the middle. Drop me a message if you want to have a hit sometime, I'm always up for a round with another sand trapper.

You're right the brain is very sneaky. Mine tends to like to wait until I've got the swing down to something simple, then add in an extra complication or two to keep me on my toes.

The swing changes I've been making have been positive but not really showing up on the score card until yesterday. We played off the yellow tees so not the full length that's on the score card (it's meters not yards), and the bunkers had been damaged by some heavy rain and most were GUR but I'm still counting it as my low round on a full par 72 course (I've shot a 71 on a dinky short par 68 before).

I didn't hit the ball very well at all on the front 9, I just managed to stay out of any real trouble and chipped and putted well. I couldn't get the ball started far enough right with the driver, they were starting straight and drawing too far left. Luckily they were all playable and the 6th was the only hole where I couldn't at least get it up to the green.

I started hitting the ball much better on the back 9, and my scoring got worse. A few losses of concentration I think. A silly 3 putt on 11 and had my yardage completely wrong on 1. I hit good drives on the shortish par 4 13th & 14th and had less than a full wedge into both and airmailed the green on 13 and chunked my pitch on 14. I hit two great shots to reach the par 5 15th but it just trickled off the green into a bunker and I failed to get up and down. And a brain fade on the 18th meant I hit the line I'd normally hit from the back tees and blasted my drive straight out the other side of the dog leg into the long grass. I had to punch out and while I hit a great 9 iron in I couldn't quite save my par.

The best thing about the day was no shanks! They've been haunting me for a while and can be a real score card wrecker.