timwat

Great contest! Here's why I NEED a Tour Striker. For the many years I've been a 13-15 index. Always short, high - and misses were badly right. A few months ago, saw my local highly rated pro - he looked at two of my swings and commented, "You're casting the club - we need to build more lag into your swing." And proceeded to do just that over the next several weeks. Trajectory lower, more distance, etc. Index drops to a 10. I'm happy. But over the next several months, my high, short trajectory is back. Contact is uncertain. Descending blow cannot be counted on. Scores are starting to rise. HELP! I need to get immediate feedback during my practice regimen whether I'm making proper descending contact or not... ...in other words, I need PRECISELY what the Tour Striker is touted to provide ! Please help! While I've made some progress, I'm reverting back! Help me, Obi-wan! You're my only hope! Regards, Tim W.

I know little about equipment choices except what's in the popular magazines, so here is today's experience and question: I'm currently an 11.4 index, been hitting an '09 Burner with stock regular shaft. Lessons have recently corrected a host of swing flaws, so now my normal driver ball flight is a gentle draw. Drives average to ~240 over last several rounds. Misses are still occasional weak, high right pushes of only ~200. Today I played the last 11 holes of the round with a brand new R11, stock S shaft (the Fujikura Blur 60). My son just purchased one and I started hitting it on number 8. First drive with the R11 is quite low, straight...and 282 yds. Every drive for the rest of the round was low, boring flight path...and long. 280, 276, 272...and about the only miss I could wring out of the club was a total overswing - which yielded the high right push. The R11 was set up neutral, standard lie, and the weights in "draw" config. At first the shaft felt as stiff as a 2x4 to me, but of course after hitting the first drive 282 I warmed up to it considerably. My question: Is the newfound straightness and length because I should now be using an S shaft? Is it because the R11 is that much a better club than the '09 Burner? Is it all just dumb luck and the stars aligned for 12 holes? I'm hesitant to give in to the temptation to immediately go out and buy a new driver, and unsure what the takeaway from today's anecdotal experience ought to be. Besides the fact that I still can't break 80 until I learn to putt.

Both Breed and Hall have given novel ideas which I've toyed with, with limited success. When I retell them to the pro I'm working with, he never directly calls it bunk...but provides direct instruction and exercises which do a much better job of accomplishing the intended result than The Golf Channel instruction does. At least for me.

This topic is the first thing my pro touched on when I started up a series of lessons with him recently (am still in the middle of it). I noted to him my irons were typically high and short, and he took a look at my swing and noted I was casting the club. First thing he did was have me slowly swing the club from top and guided the shaft through release to have me feel how different the correct swing felt - hands much closer to my thighs at impact, forward shaft lean and much different feeling of position of both wrists. He had me do the "pump" drill as well. After several weeks and about 1200 range balls (~400 a week), lag now feels to me to be as much a function of correct tempo. Swinging too forced and fast destroys my ability to "crack the whip" in terms of acceleration through the impact zone. The sense of "not flipping early" or whatever you call it isn't so much a conscious swing thought as keeping my overall tempo smooth. The "three balls on tees" drill to get my tempo correct seems to have done at least as much toward promoting better iron contact (divots in front of ball, lower boring flight, more distance) as the earlier stuff he originally showed me. And the "balls on tees" thing also straightened out my driving, as Tourspoon also suggested in the thread I posted a few weeks ago. Just my 0.0002 on the subject as I'm working on this very thing.

Now that I'm working with my pro, he's shown me (for my swing issues) how to practice, how to diagnose the results and work on corrections. All stuff I never knew before (and thus a bucket of balls was just mostly some pleasant exercise with no substantive improvement). So now I'm hitting 400+ balls a week, typically 4 to 5 days a week. Most days I'll hit through a large bucket, some busy days it's only a medium, and in the worst of the rain I won't make it out. Just trying to make the changes in my swing stick. I figure once we get to the topics of sand and putting, practice time will change and I won't be going through so many buckets, although I'll try to spend as much time practicing.

Hi, I'm new to this forum and this is my first post - I'm a 12.3 in the NorCal Bay Area and am in the middle of lessons with a local pro. I've been a long-time "weak, high slice" kind of guy, ball flight with irons and driver balloons. My pro told me essentially I was casting and thus adding loft. I was also too wide on backswing and really dodgy with contact. With a few key changes to my swing he has me hitting through the ball with much more authority. I hesitate to use the term "hitting down" for all the incorrect implications of that nomenclature, nevertheless forward lean and more compression, more boring ball flight, greater distance, a repeatable draw are all now part of my iron and hybrid play. I'm hitting 400+ balls a week on the range now that I know how to practice and what to look for. So I'm excited about the progress with my irons and hybrids. However, driver is still somewhat of a mystery. At my last lesson I just asked him about it briefly, and he remarked about "hitting through" and letting the clubhead naturally release. Also had me use a stronger right hand position. As you might expect, that worked perfectly when he's right there, but the very next range session alone - high and right. Haven't been able to schedule a lesson since due to the Bay Area rain, but what I've figured out so far is 1) concentrating on pronating my left forearm to set the clubface on plane in the backswing and 2) working on releasing the club to full extension after contact while clubhead is still below hands, are helpful in keeping the ball lower and straight or draw. What's confusing is in many ways it "feels" so far that the iron/hybrid swing and the driver swing are such two different beasts. I realize there will be some differences (due to ball on turf vs. ball on tee, hitting ball with iron behind lowest point of swing vs. driver at lowest point or on upswing, etc.), but am I feeling this correctly? If it matters, at present I'm using AP1 irons (1st gen) with S300 shafts, Adams Pro Gold hybrids (matrix ozik shafts) and 09 Burner driver (stock R shaft). Thanks for any insight you can lend. Tim