My Swing (talismand)

Hello all. I'm a recent convert to this wonderful game we call golf, started about a year and a half ago now. I don't really get the chance to play/practice as much as I'd like, but I try to go play a round at least twice a month, and I try to swing a club at least once a day (indoors, with soft foam balls).

Anyway, I haven't really had formal instruction for any extended period of time (I took 4 half-hour lessons maybe a year ago), so I mostly try to learn via youtube, forums, books, and friends. Not the most efficient way, I know. I would like to say that I'm trying to do a S&T; swing, although the S&T; folks here will probably ask me not to tell anyone that after seeing these videos ;-) I have the book, and bought the DVDs from ebay, and have been using those in conjunction with Youtube/golf forums to try to learn.

My main problem on the course is hitting it fat (or thin, but I'm pretty sure the same errors cause both), and it seems to get worse the more I try to put my weight on the front (left) foot. My main miss is a straight push, with a good amount of push slices mixed in. I tend to get around a golf course by aiming my stance about as far left as I'm willing to let the ball go, on the off chance I hit it straight, or a push draw, but I'm playing for the push/push-fade for the most part.

I've been meaning to post videos of my swing, but didn't have the time or equipment. I finally had both, and it was a nice day last Saturday, and I managed to record my range session. I'm going to post a series of swings with my 4 hybrid which I feel were representative for my entire session. There's a straight shot, a worm burner, a push and a push/slice. I have two DTL and 2 Face-on.

This was my first time with this camera, so the framing is all out of whack (future videos will be better), and I recorded with the camera on the wrong orientation requiring me to rotate the video, hence the excessive black space. I don't have a good enough video editing program to crop these and fix them. I'll try better framing for any updates.

Any and all comments are welcome. I know that there is probably a lot of things I need to fix, but I'd really like to hear the biggest flaws that I need to work on first, so that I have something to concentrate on so I can improve incrementally instead of trying to fix 10 things at once.

Ok, so I'll take the lack of comments as a "you should stick to tennis", haha.

Two things I saw right off the bat that I could start working on immediately was standing up more and tilting less in the backswing (I looked like the "D" picture from the S&T; book in the section where they describe levels of side tilt in the backswing), so I wanted to start working on being more centered. The other thing was  didn't like the position of the club at the top of my backswing. It looked like either my wrists were overhinged, or I had turned too much. Either way, it looked nothing like any of the example pictures.

I spent the week at home working on those two things, and made it out to the range today to see how it looked while hitting actual balls. It ended up being one of my worst range session ever. I hit just about every type of fault shot imaginable, with one a few "good" ones. Below are two of my "good" shots, one from DTL and one face on. Any and all comments are welcome. I really need some feedback or guidance though, as it's starting to get really frustrating trying to figure out why I can't hit a nice push draw with any consistency.

Also, since I believe in the notion that the same faults in a swing can lead to all types of misses, here are two videos with several swings from today's session in succession. I figure that seeing many of my swings back to back like this can help someone see a fault pattern quickly. The resulting shot shape is described at the top of each swing. If anyone wants to see a particular swing in a separate video, I can do that as well. Also, if this is something that's frowned upon here, I won't post more videos like this (I'll stick to single swings).

One thing, I'm still working out the kinks on how to align the camera just right for these videos, so the face-on ones ended up at a slight angle. It makes the ball appear further back in my stance than it was. For these shots, the ball was either in the middle of my stance, or one ball forward from that (from my perspective).

The first thing I would work on is the placement of your ball. In the second view it is too far back, it should be in the middle of your stance or a little forward of middle for short irons wedge thru 7 iron. Most of your shots where pushed with some sliced and the ball being to far back could cause this. Also the right arm in the first view is too low it should be closer to the white line. This might be causing you to come to much from the inside and causing the pushed shots as well.

Clearly you are athletic,  it will come to you .....I see from your head on shots...that your front leg seems to be loading about 99% of your weight.  What I think then happens is that there no more weight to bring to the downswing.  I am no golf pro..but in my swing I feel like there is more weight "loading" onto the back leg at the top and that weight transfers down and thru the ball much like a baseball player transfers his weight forward when making a throw from the field.  With the weight ending towards my target..into my front leg.

I assume you meant left arm in the comment about it needing to be more in line with the white line, and if so, I agree. I have to admit this is a problem I'm struggling with though. If you look at the swings in my first post, I feel my arm positioning was much better, but in order to get there I either turn my shoulders too flat, or (as can be seen on the face-on view), I loaded too much on my left side, and over rotated on the back swing.

In my second range session, when I try turing my shoulders more steeply, I find it very difficult to get my arms back onto that line, without artificially lifting in the backswing. It feels like the Stack-and-tilt steps of shoudler down, hands in, arms connected to body always produce the lowered left arm for me at the top of my backswing.

Any other S&Ters; out there struggle with this? And if not, how do you manage to do it?

The ball placement is actually pretty much where you suggest. I mentioned it in my second post (right before the very last video) that I'm still trying to figure out how to correctly frame my video taping, so the camera is actually at a slight angle, making the ball appear further back than it was. For the face-on shots, in reality the ball was in the middle of my stance, or 1 ball forward of that (from my perspective). But it's definately something I should continue to pay attention to, because sometimes "feel" like its too far and that probably makes me release my hinge too early in an attempt to compensate.

Thanks for the comments!

The front loading was a huge eye-opener for me when I finally video taped my swing. It didn't feel that drastic at all, but the camera doesn't lie. In my second range session I was consciously trying to get more toward the 60-40/55-45 split the S&T; book recommends, along with less side tilt. This will give me more room to shift weight forward on the downswing. I still think I probably shift too much weight too early in the downswing, or I overcompensate and shift almost nothing. I just can't seem to find the right timing/feeling.

My friend, you swing like a baseball player. I know your pain as I had the same transition...

Address: Buy two of these (you can use clubs too) Use them for alignment in the shape of a "T". Your ball position is too far back. That looks like a wedge to 8 iron. Your stance is way to wide. That is about how wide your driver setup should be. Your swing is throwing you off balance and the wide stance is compensation. If you truly are a former baseball player, you'll be fighting the urge for a wide stance as I still am... Your left foot needs to be rotated out more. Your right foot is fine. You should try to setup with a more narrow stance and more bowlegged (knees and toes out). Also, the ball needs to come forward. Use clubs or driveway makers as a guide for ball position.

Your first move is more down and forward than back. Look how much you come down before the club comes back more than a few inches. Just like wrestling, fielding a grounder, or playing linebacker, footwork is key. You need to stay more centered and balanced. Your left knee should come perpendicular from the target line. Your right shoulder should turn down, but your head and core should stay put.

This is where it starts to get rough. Look how far down and forward your head has come. Your hips are already sliding forward (a little too soon) and outpaced your left knee. If you actually slid you hips forward from here you'd fall over. You need to turn around your center and less down.

Your left knee is in. It should be bowed out (rotating the left foot out will help a ton) and you've over-rotated your shoulders. I have the same problem... If you can get your hands to the same place, but not let your shoulders turn past 90, you're going to be in a really good place. Take more of a "half swing" Y ou can see you're still moving down with your torso and your hips have already slid forward. Same as before, turn around your center

Look at the blue lines I've drawn. The top one is at address, the middle at the top, and halfway down at the bottom. The inside red lines are your hips at address. You really haven't slid you hips forward. You're so far down right now, you're going to have to manipulate the club or stand up ... If you don't you're going to hit it REAL fat. This is the reason you feel more comfortable with the ball back in the stance. Your torso being so low with your weight not moving forward from here is why you're inconsistent. You have to do a lot of things to be able even put the club on the ball...

Look what happens at impact. In a fraction of a second you're back to where your head was at address! Pretty athletic move to do that... The blue lines represent you at address, and you from the previous picture. Also look how little your hips have slid forward (left red line is you at address). Your hips should be out over a bent left knee, and your head should be in the same place, leaving you with a torso that's slanted backwards.

Last is the most telling result: you're so off-balance you have to step out. Be able to hold your finish until the ball lands.

Summary

1. Left foot rotated out
2. Narrow your stance
3. Feel a bit "bowlegged" in your left knee throughout your back swing
4. Keep your head level
5. Turn your shoulders to 90 degrees, but not past
6. SLIDE your hips forward in the down swing

Here are some videos to help with the head and the hips:

You're standing straight up on the follow through. Also the swing's a little flat, work on getting the club a little more vertical and that should put you on a good swing plane coming down.

A lot of great stuff in here:

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Gill

My friend, you swing like a baseball player. I know your pain as I had the same transition...

Address: Buy two of these (you can use clubs too) Use them for alignment in the shape of a "T". Your ball position is too far back. That looks like a wedge to 8 iron. Your stance is way to wide. That is about how wide your driver setup should be. Your swing is throwing you off balance and the wide stance is compensation. If you truly are a former baseball player, you'll be fighting the urge for a wide stance as I still am...

Good call on the sports. I'm a recovering participant in the all-American trifecta of baseball, basketball, and football. I didn't realize my stance was too wide. I just kind of choose a width that makes me "comfortable", but as you say, I probably feel uncomfortable with a narrower stance because I end up off balance at the end. If this is too wide, then trust me, you don't want to see my driver stance...

Any quick rule of thumb for good widths?

I have a yardstick with a perpendicular slide attachment that I can probably use for this. I'll line up my heel on one end, and lock the slide attachment in a position where the ball should be. The attachment is about a foot long, so it shouldn't interfere with my swing path.

Do you find that you always keep the ball about two balls inside of your left foot, and then vary your right foot positioning to make that more towards the front or middle of your stance? Or do you keep your stance width more or less constant, and actually move the ball in relation to your left foot?

Roger that on rotating the left foot ot more.

Yep. I've been trying to do this, but it's hard to feel when my head dips on the backswing. When I'm at home, looking in the mirror, I can do practice backswings and my head stays just fine. I'll continue to work on it.

Yikes. This is why it probably feels awkward for me to move my hips laterally on the downswing.

I'll use the thought of more of a half-swing then to try to limit how much my shoulders are turning.

Nice thoughts here. I think this demonstrates the danger of learning a pattern on your own, without getting feedback or instruction. When reading the S&T; book and posts on the forum, I keep hearing about the need to "jump" off of the front leg, as that's the power move for the S&T; pattern. I guess in reality I have literally built my swing around the idea of the jump, with everything done up to this point lending itself to that (over-loading on my left side, dipping way down for a huge jump).

Are there any threads here that really get into the jump concept properly? Or should I shelve this part of the swing until I get the rest in order?

Quote:

I'll start working on these this week. Thanks for the effort you put into that post, that was really helpful/eye-opening.

Gill/Erik, this is the only thread I could find that focuses on the "jump" topic(addressed Erik as well since he is the one who started that thread):

http://thesandtrap.com/forum/thread/41932/ground-reactive-forces-and-jumping-for-power

From Gill's stills of my swing, I'm still certain that I've perverted this concept, so I'm wondering, what's a good middle ground for this idea? I've hit a few balls this morning trying to not dip at all on the backswing/downswing, and the few times I've made decent contact, I get much less distance, and overall the swing feels "wimpy". I know that 99% of that "wimpy" feeling is because I'm getting out of my bad habit comfort zone,  and part of the distance discrepancy could also be due to the fact that I'm really trying to limit my backswing as well.

Not going to post a video yet, I'd like to work on some of Gills suggestions for a week or so, and post results after that. Just wondering about the thoughts of that jump thread, and what concepts I should really be taking from it.

Edit: Also, Walk18, I didn't want you to think I didn't read your relply, thanks for the comments. Getting my arm/club more on the shoulder plane is a must, and I think that the hip sliding should take care of the standing up bit. There's just too much to work on!

You're an athlete, your idea of jumping is different than the next guy's. Ball distance isn't going to come for a bit as I used to “jump” a bit as well... Before my SaT swing changes I used to hit my 8-iron about 150-155. When I first started sliding the hips it dropped to about 140. Now my 8-iron is 160… That’s all over the course of about 1.5 months.

Keep in mind that this is a process. I’m sure the first time an old coach changed your throwing mechanics the first one bounced in the dirt or sailed on you. Keep in mind the long view.

Stance:

• As you probably recall from the SaT book, there isn’t a “perfect stance”.
• Instead think of it as two extremes: (1) If your feet were together you could slide your hips left and right with ease, but you’d be off-balance. (2) If your feet were as wide as possible, you’d be very stable left and right, but you couldn’t slide your hips more than an inch.
• Your job is to find the right balance of the two extremes for your swing. It depends on your balance, hip width, leg length, etc.
• Practice drill. Hit 20-30 balls with your feet together. Feel how your butt acts as a counter balance to your torso as you slide it forward. Make sure you don’t loose your balance. Stay in position until the ball hits the ground.

Ball Position:

• Again this is different for everybody. Personally it depends a little on the shot and club. For normal shots my wedges are just forward of middle and my driver is inside my left foot (this is where your T-square will help.
• The further forward the ball, the more aggressively you have to slide your hips and maintain your lag (flying triangle)
• For now, you should focus on incrementally moving the ball forward.
• Practice drill: When you practice at home forget the foam balls. Practice your swing on a carpet and keep trying to get the spot where you hit the carpet further and further forward. Do this with you lag (flying triangle) and sliding your hips. Don’t cheat and lunge your torso forward.

Jumping:

• Think back to the SaT book. There were a lot of different swing thoughts in there. If you incorporated all of them, you’d be a mess. Keep in mind that a middle aged guy’s concept of “jumping” is a stark difference to your idea of jumping. Most people starting golf need to turn their torso more, but you do not… Take swing thoughts with a grain of salt and only use one at a time . Until you get your hips sliding, shelf the jumping.
• What jumping really means: First slide, then tuck your butt… Assume for a moment that you really got your hips out over an athletic left leg. If you “jumped” with the left leg your but would tuck and your hips would push open and further towards the target.
• That is what you need to feel. First, with your head not moving forward your hips slide over an athletic left leg. Then that leg “extends” which in turn tucks your butt. You should feel a nice stretch in your left oblique. This is also covered in both those videos I attatched.

Yeah it's easy to get overloaded. Don't work on more than 2 things at a time. I also just wanted to add that your swingplane is actually pretty darn good before it gets a little flat at the top, so I wouldn't mess with your initial takeaway. Keep us posted, you're obviously very athletic and I'm sure you'll improve quickly.

Ok, work in progress update.

I tried focusing on the first 4 things in Gill's response:

Trying to tackle all 6 in 1 week was just asking for too much. Already I can tell from these new videos that I stopped concentrating on a shorter backswing, so you will see me over-rotated again. I think I'm just going to have to work on a few things until it's fully ingrained, then go on to the next so that I can treat the previous changes as a "given".

The other thing is that I still move my head down on the downswing (although I feel like I do manage to keep it more level on the backswing at least). It looks like it's going to take a while to get out of that habit. I purposely taped a few swings (not included here) where I consciously attempted not to move my head down on the downswing, and wouldn't you know it, when I played it back at home, I still did it!

Anyway, let me know what you think of the progress. Good news is that I hit a lot more decent shots. Lots of straight and push draws, with and even 1 hook! The main misses are still pushes and push fade/slices (and the occasional fats).

This week I'm going to continue with #s 1 - 4, and try to work in #5. I know that I don't slide my hips forward nearly enough, but at the moment, when I try to do this I think I overdo it and I hit all kinds of terrible shots.

DTL - Pitching Wedge followed by 5 Hybrid

Face On - Pitching Wedge followed by 5 Hybrid

You're making really great progress! Really incredibe. The dipping is much better. Keep doing what you're doing! Focus on pushing your hips forward more. As you do this you will "stay down" on the ball a bit more. Keep you chest down as you hips slide forward.

Are you making more consistent contact with the ball now?

Thanks for the kind words Gill! It's reassuring to hear that there is noticable change. Unfortunately, none of these improvements have translated to my driver. I won't even subject you all to a video of that yet, but needless to say, I've got the driver yips for the time being.

I'm currently working on getting the hips forward (but always checking the previous flaws, as they tend to creep back in when I soley concentrate on the hips). I'm in the process of trying to determine the best "feel" to use for getting the hips forward.

When I think about actually sliding them over, I tend to overdo it (i.e. I get to the top of my back swing, then attempt to bump my hips far out, THEN try to swing). This causes me to spin out more than anything and throws me off balance. I need some other key to keep my arms/shoulders in sequence with the hips.

The feel I am currently focusing on is concentrating on making sure my shoulders rotate back around my spine on the downswing, before opening my hips. What I find is that this is keeping my hips from firing too quick (they do open, but not nearly as fast, keeping me more on plane), and when I look at it on camera from the face-on view, I see that my hips move laterally on their own (I'm going to work this a couple more weeks before posting an updated video).

The biggest thing I am struggling with right now is figuring out what my weight distribution should be between my heels and toes throughout the swing. I bumped a thread about this, but have yet to get a response:

http://thesandtrap.com/forum/thread/18580/how-much-weight-what-percentage-weight-on-the-balls-of-your-feet#post_581866

I wanted to encourage you as well... the changes you'd made in this thread alone are great.

From a DTL view, your mechanics on the way back are looking very good.  You're building a solid foundation here.

I'd suggest you make sure and keep a bit of flex in your right knee during the backswing.  Think of pinching a beachball between the knees, keeping a constant pressure on the inside of your right foot.

Second (as mentioned) hip slide.  Once you get the ball position forward and your weight moving through to your left, you'll see big results!  Try and imagine a rope looped through your belt.  As you start your downswing, someone is tugging on this rope, and pulling your weight through to the outside of your left foot (feel it roll a bit) as your hold your finish.

Once again, great, great work.  I'm excited to track this thread.

So only a quick update today, but I'll just go ahead and put it out there, today felt like a total set back for me in terms of ball flight and contact. My warm-up went pretty smoothly, and I was hitting the ball fairly well by my standards. Then I got into the "meat" of it, and basically hit only a couple of decent shots the rest of the day...

I was really trying to focus on figuring out how to get a good hip slide, concentrating on various "triggers". I took video samples of each, but most were terrible looking. I am sharing two samples though here, to get your thoughts.

This first video is where I focus solely on trying to turn my shoulders back down perpendicular to my spine. When looking at the video, it looks pretty close to my "normal" swing, with very little hip slide, but this was the only swing type where I could make decent contact with the ball and get a playable shot out of it:

This next video is the one that "looks" the closest to what I think it is I should be doing, but unfortunately after about 20 straight mishits using this "idea", I gave up. What I was doing here was at the top of my back swing, I focused on moving the center of my pelvis towards the target laterally, without turning the hips, then letting my arms drop in front of me. It looks so much closer to what I think I need to do, is there anything you can tell me about what could be causing the mishits here (main misses were fat/thin, weak slices to the right). Is it sequencing (i.e. am I firing the hips too soon verse dropping the arms)?:

I can definitely see a significant difference in impact position, and I like the position I'm in with the second

video:

vs

I should mention that throughout the range session I was going back and forth between two types of postures as I was fighting fats and thins. The first is my "standard" posture, where I feel more bent over at the hips (think: Jim Hardy 1-plane swing posture). When I'm set up like this though, I get a lot more fats and slices. The second posture was a more upright feeling, Although the screengrab doesn't show it, I felt almost like I was standing straight up, with very little bend (we all know feel isn't real), however I tend to hit thin often from this position. It felt very awkward trying to turn my left shoulder down in back swing from this position, and my videos showed that I tended to dip my head way down in the back swing when I attempted to turn the shoulder down.

Since I don't want to continually switch back and forth, I'd like some comments as to which looks like it's the better posture to be in, and I'll continue working with it. If the answer is neither or a blend, let me know that as well:

vs

My previous question still stands as well, regarding recommended weight distribution in a swing (between toes/heels). No idea where to go with this and I think that it's affecting my swing as well.

You have to remember that this is a journey and each positive swing change won't have immediate results. You're on the right path, don't forget from where you came. You've made loads of progress since you're first post. I'll post some analysis tonight.