My Swing (cold)

Hi,

I would appreciate your help re. my swing. All comments are welcome, thanks.

This is with a 3 iron.



This is my driver:

Here is another driver swing where I am a little better balanced:

You've clearly got plenty of strength and power. Please post a face on view to better see set up and impact positions.

Had some difficulty pausing the video, but what I see:
3 iron swing looks better than driver swing, you go over the top with the 3 iron, but your backswing and top positions are better with the 3 iron.

You bring the club under a good backswing plane (especially with the driver). The club head goes behind your hands too quickly/ too early.
You then lift up, left arm bends, club goes across the line and down, then over the top move.

I'm guessing that you've learned to play with a power pull fade.

Take a look at the deep hands thread

Work on your posture first. Tuck that tailbone in at address, suck in your abs, and let your head hang down naturally. That will go a long way to correct any swing plane problems you have. Here's you:

Attachment 2572


And...well... let's call this one where we could all be:


Attachment 2573

Swing easy when making any posture changes to avoid injury. And give your body a few weeks to adjust, especially if you've been playing for a while. The change in posture requires a re-training of the musculature of the core. Since this is a necessary first step, I'm not telling you to work on anything else. Post some improvement videos in a couple of weeks.

You lose connection almost immediately. At the top the hands are high and the arms are off the body. From there it looks like you don't have enough lateral movement. The combination of high hands/disconnection plus a turn to start the downswing is a bad combo. It throws everything over plane.

You should try and keep the pressure points in your armpits intact (tee drill would fix that). You can't exactly see the lateral movement, or lack thereof, from the DTL view, but it looks pretty apparent to me. I would do the stop and go drill where you are working on pressing the left foot into the ground to get the hips to start moving left. That should get the hips moving better and help with synchronizing everything.

EDIT* Shoulder turn is a little flat as well.

Hi,

Thanks for all your input so far -- it is much appreciated. UTTexas you are correct that I tend to pull the ball, especially my irons. Often enough I hit it pretty straight but I can't confirm how I am aligned. I used to golf a few years ago a couple times a week and learned to hit the ball with the swing I have relatively well. I am starting to get it into again right now. My eye opener was watching a PGA Tournament in person. The ball flight and trajectory is a world apart. My sand wedge, for example, is extremely high. I would guess 10+ stories but that is probably an exaggeration haha. The consistency is lacking and I feel all over the place especially with my driver.

You bring the club under a good backswing plane (especially with the driver). The club head goes behind your hands too quickly/ too early.
You then lift up, left arm bends, club goes across the line and down, then over the top move.

1. When should the club go behind the hands?
2. If I shorten my back swing, would that help eliminate some of these issues? It does appear to me as well that I am swinging past parallel at the top which is really overkill.

Work on your posture first. Tuck that tailbone in at address, suck in your abs, and let your head hang down naturally.

1. Could you elaborate on what you mean by tucking in my tail bone?

You lose connection almost immediately. At the top the hands are high and the arms are off the body. From there it looks like you don't have enough lateral movement. The combination of high hands/disconnection plus a turn to start the downswing is a bad combo. It throws everything over plane.

You should try and keep the pressure points in your armpits intact (tee drill would fix that). You can't exactly see the lateral movement, or lack thereof, from the DTL view, but it looks pretty apparent to me. I would do the stop and go drill where you are working on pressing the left foot into the ground to get the hips to start moving left. That should get the hips moving better and help with synchronizing everything.

EDIT* Shoulder turn is a little flat as well.

1. This is the drill where you have a towel under your armpit and it does not fall off throughout the swing, correct?
2. High hands meaning that they should be back further behind my head, correct?
3. With lateral movement, do you mean that the hips slide forward during the downswing? Further do you mean my head should move backwards during my back swing?
4. Could you elaborate by what is meant by a flat shoulder turn? Am I leaning too far forward?

Thanks!

edit: I'll try and get some front facing footage, thanks for the suggestion.

1. I like something small better (ie: tees) because you can be more specific with where you want the pressure, but yes thats the drill.

2. Yes. Once you get the pressure in your armpits the hands will go more around than up. Your hands will finish more even with the shoulders. You can take a look at someone like Grant Waite or Charlie Wi on youtube for a comparison. 3. Yea, the hips should be sliding towards the target. Add pressure on the left foot as your taking your backswing and the hip movement will be a lot easier. You don't want a sudden shove of the hips towards the target. 4. -- vs \ The one on the left is flat and the one on the right is steep. You want to push your left shoulder down rather than across. However, it is kind of hard to tell. It could be that your shoulder turn is fine and the lifting of your arms makes it look more flat. If I had to guess though I would say its a little flat.

Thanks for the clarification. I will look at that when I make it out to the range this week.

In terms of a "connected swing" where the armpits maintain contact against the body... Is this how all good ball strikers swing or one of a few different possibilities? I ask because I always was told to "swing big" meaning that you should make your swing as long as possible, which appears (probably due to my limited understanding) to contradict keeping the arms close to the body (which is very compact).

Yes, Grant Waite has a beautifully connected swing. See how he starts the backswing with a steep shoulder turn (see video). It's almost all shoulders until the club is parallel to the ground, then right wrist hinges back and club head then starts to go behind the arms. If you haven't already good search "deep hands thesandtrap" and read the dead hands threads

Absolutely. Draw a line along your belt line when viewed from behind. This creates an angle with the horizontal. Tour players run around 18 degrees or so. For most amateurs, this is much higher, meaning there is some amount of "S" in the posture. For whatever reason, probably because it is slightly uncomfortable, maybe because we sit down a lot as a society, or maybe because some Golfsmith employee told them at one point to stick their butt out at address, the "S" curve is there. There is a relationship between the swing plane and the curvature in the lower back. When there is an S curve in the lumbar spine, it limits the hips' ability to drive the upper body on the downswing which generally results in the club moving left too quickly and you get steep and high pulls. Take a look at someone like Kenny Perry at address, who has been on the top of the ballstriking stats for a long time. His belt is nearly flat with the ground and he likes to work the ball right to left. Keep in mind when you check this that you should be paying attention to the angle of the waist relative to the spine angle and the ground and don't look at whether it looks like an S or not. Tour players have strong glutes, so they stick out a bit making it look like they are sticking their butts out. I can guarantee they aren't. Now, don't overdo it. You don't want C posture (google that) or S posture (google that too), but a neutral lumbar spine. Fixing that will go a long way to fixing a whole host of swing problems. Good luck and like I said, give it some time and don't swing hard at first.

Happy new year all,

I have attached two updated swings.  Sorry for the "suspense" on my drive video :p

I would appreciated any continued input; if there is any noticable improvement from your perspectives and any suggestions of what to continue to work on.

Some things I'm working on (in the following order):

1.  More relaxed posture and not pushing my butt out (I intentionally created the S shpae in my spine as I was told that is how it is supposed to be).  This allowed my to have the club closer to my body and I feel more comfortable.  I think I should excercise as I have put on a lot of weight in my mid section in the past year.

2.  Creating more lag on the downswing / staying more connected there.

3.  Shortening my backswing / plane on the backswing

4.  Slowing down my back swing.

Another thing: when I start my downswing with my hips, I feel like my right arm is stuck behind my body, which is why I feel that I come down over the top?  Maybe I should bend over more to leave more room for my hands on the way down?

Thanks!  (videos are driver and 6 iron)  edit: i want to get front video as well but it's ddifficult when the range is busy

Yeah, that and the over the top move.

Hi all,

Here is a recent swing.  I think there has been an improvement although I still am making this move where the angle of the club changes drastically on the down swing?  What do you think?

Thanks,

C

Still looks like your struggling to look at the ball....but much better IMO...arms are much more connected than your original post, and balance looks a lot better