My Swing (divot dave) - Page 2

OK, back from taking the kids to breakfast and have a little more time to expand on the above.

Dave, you're one of those players that will most likely benefit from feeling (with the proviso that feel isn't real) like you keep your weight much more forward, generally. Your feels are going to be: Backswing -- "Weight Forward." Downswing -- "Push Forward." An effective drill for this is to practice with an alignment stick stuck in the ground and touching your right knee at address. Make your backswing -- keeping your knee against the stick, then push your right hip into it as you swing down. The purpose of this is to get your weight more onto your front foot at impact, and the purpose of that is to get the low point of your swing in front of the golf ball. Right now, your low point is behind the ball, which makes it really hard to consistently hit the ball first, then the ground. A related issue that this drill will help with is your right knee action. It's coming in (away from the target) too much -- and that's a big part of the reason why it's hard for you to properly shift your weight onto the right foot as you come down. Flare that right foot open a little more and practice flexing the right knee out towards the right toe, not in towards the left. From that position, the right knee then pushes outside the right ankle to start the downswing. That's what gets the hips moving laterally towards the target and that's what gets the weight onto the front foot at impact. Here's a video that illustrates the drill I'm describing. You don't need to add the second "gate" in this case, unless you find it helpful. Just getting the weight moving forward is also going to help you with your swing path and to get your right arm and club more in line through impact.

Dave -- Turn your right foot out (to the right) maybe 20 degrees, as shown at left. That's going to help promote the proper knee action, illustrated on the right*. Want that knee going out towards the right toe, not sucking in towards the left knee.

(* Slightly exaggerated for effect.)

Just watched the FO video, I still don't think you're getting your hips forward enough. If you watch the video, hold a piece of paper or the tip of a pencil at the edge of your lead hip, at impact and through your hips should be way past the tip of the pencil. Right now the never cross that line and I suspect your weight is still tending to be back too far. I would make that your main focus for now, forget everything else for the time being and just work at figuring out how to get forward enough so that you're hitting the ball on the way down and taking a divot(DAVE) after the ball.

Hopefully Stretch will pop back and give you some more pointers. I'm a hack myself (slowly improving) but I'm pretty sure that your weight transfer is causing most of your main issues right now. 

If you haven't already, read this: http://thesandtrap.com/t/29616/the-biggest-secret-slide-your-hips

For a while I was practicing with trying to ONLY slide my hips to hit the ball. This is, of course, impossible and you will need to turn eventually but it might be a good feel to work with in order to get some hip slide, drive or thrust happening. Once you start to get it the butt tuck will probably start to come more naturally, at least it did for me.

Good Luck.