My Swing (fr0sty)

I've been Playing Golf for: 25 years

My current handicap index or average score is: 6.6

My typical ball flight is: Straight-ish with severe departures left and right

The shot I hate or the "miss" I'm trying to reduce/eliminate is: Wide dispersion (mostly right, some very far left)

Where I've been (1990-2014):

I learned the game from my father when I was young and supplemented with some golf camps and a few lessons here and ther. I am largely self-taught outside of that. I played varsity golf in HS and was shooting in the low-40s with the occasional 39 (and 49, tbh). I got my HDCP into the single digits about eight years ago and kept it between 6-10 pretty much ever since.

What I'm doing now (2015):

Previously I had been living the "Drive for show, putt for dough" mantra and had been dedicating what practice time I had into scrambling and putting better. Two years ago I started to read/think/analyze my swing a bit, started taking some video, and reading material from this site and others. I bought LSW last fall and after reading that decided I needed professional help. I've been working with an instructor (indoors using FlightScope) over the winter to rebuild my full-swing into something more repeatable.

Goals for 2015:

1. Lower index to 5.4 or better* (previous best 5.7)

2. Play a round at -1 or better on my home course(previous best +1)

3. Play a round with a zero (or negative) differential on any course (previous best 2.3)

4. Break 70

* 5.4 is the max handicap allowed for competing in the IL Amateur

Videos: (Coming soon...)

This is from the summer of 2013. A 5wood, I believe.

This is pretty typical of my 'before' swing.

According to the filename this was the 4th video I took with my little Kodak camera and it was taking videos like this that motivated me to start tweaking my swing.

Here is a swing from one of my recent lessons.

Copied from my post in the 'April 2015 Practice Challenge Thread' :

I've been doing mirror work with a 5i for a few minutes a day in conjunction with my lessons for the last two months or so (not every day, but close). Being able to see what's going on has been invaluable in developing the feel of certain movements/positions.

Most recently I've been working on keeping my weight back (toward my heels). Formerly my hips would move toward the ball during the downswing causing me to get all bunched up at impact. This stopped my hips from rotating, and would cause my arms to flip through the swing since my body basically stopped turning.

Next up is getting my shoulders to rotate a little more around my spine rather than just tilting up as I come into the ball. I'm working on getting the feel of having the left shoulder coming around (rather than being pulled toward my ear) without also pulling the swing path sharply left.

New Video:

Was noticing on 4/11 I still had the severe arching of the back coming into impact. Looking at the 4/11 video you can see my eyes staying still and my shoulders leaping away from the ball (and also my hips moving towards the ball way too much.

I did my 5 minutes/day and got back out this morning and things felt much better though the video evidence is not as clear as I was hoping it would be. My hips are still coming towards the ball and there's still a bit of a 'pulling up' at impact instead of the rotation I would like to see.

Played last Saturday and nearly missed the ball a few times on the tee so not quite sure what is going on there. I have one more lesson (and hopefully a few range sessions) before heading down to Florida this weekend.