steventimothy

Has the contact or direction (pulls or pushes) of your shots changed? Hooking or slicing? Don't hit 100's of balls and groove a mistake at the range, whatever you do! Play with the swing you have for now, and try to discover the cause of your problem and fix it before you develop bad habits at the range. Also, hitting lots of balls with bad mechanics can lead to an injury, especially if you're trying to swing harder to find the distance you used to have. If, for example, you're also hitting big hooks, then you might! be sliding too much on the downswing instead of turning your hips. If your lower body stops turning near impact, then you'll flip the club with your hands and pop it into the air. You'll tend to take deeper divots and hit pull hooks or high shots. The odd fat shot is not out of the question either. There are different ways to correct that (if that's your problem) - for me, I try to straighten my left leg at impact, which forces me to turn & not slide.

I play better when I just think about my swing, watch video of it, and then just work on the swing without a ball, watching where the divot is. If I spend too much time at the range, it just makes my swing worse. Compensating for the wrong thing, getting too focused on power & distance, hitting the driver too much, etc. So I fully agree, in other words. Hitting a ball in a net is better, of course, but swinging without a ball can be OK too.

I meant to put 15 degrees and not 45 degrees after impact but I couldn't edit the post :) I do agree that the best way to get lag is to have the hands relaxed and not active during the downswing, but I also think that habitual casters of the club need to have more drastic action to try to develop lag. I know, because I was one, and am always struggling with it, or my index would be lower than 12! Thinking of the full release being well after impact has definitely helped me not flip too soon.

This is obviously clubhead lag.... And then... This is a good place to think of the maximum extension of the swing, where the lag should all be released. NOT at the bottom of the swing or at impact Even if you try, you probably won't get to Rory's position in the full swing, but it's a good image to shoot for, to help prevent flipping.

There's no question that the pros have got way, way, way more lag in their swings than most amateurs. Show me a pro who doesn't have at least 90 degrees of angle between the arm and the club when the left arm is parallel to the ground on the downswing. Almost no medium to high handicappers achieve that. And of course, all the tour's longer hitters have much more lag even than that. So it's absolutely ridiculous to say that you can get (big time) distance without lag. The more cogent question is, how do you get lag like that? And more importantly, how can poor ballstrikers or short hitters learn to get that lag? Most instructors understand how to get lag but have trouble training students on how to do it. It might be because they are athletic, and underestimate the athleticism and coordination of their students. Also, no decent ballstriking pro ever flips his hands or loses his right wrist angle at any point during the swing. Maybe sometimes when they really get the club stuck behind them they do a little flip, but if they did that and you saw a still image of their swing just after impact, it would still look nothing like the flipping that a poor playing amateur does. Most good ballstriking pros, 45 degrees of swing arc or more after impact, still have their left arm straight, left wrist flat, and their club shaft parallel to their left arm. Almost no amateurs can do that; their club will have swung past the angle of their arm, usually by a lot, and their left wrist is no longer flat. IMO that, more than anything else, is the secret to long hitters' distance. I think it means that, first of all, they started with lots of lag on the downswing, and second of all, they kept their hips moving forward and turning, and their shoulders turning all the way to the finish of the swing, the club always being towed behind. Maybe one mental image a person can have to help lag and distance is to think of the maximum extension of the swing being well after impact, maybe 20-30 degrees after impact. That would keep the club acclerating through the impact zone, and might help get rid of some of the flipping.

On the other hand, since most high-handicappers flip the club and lose the correct right-wrist angle, it might not hurt them to think about lag, and then work backwards to see how to swing in order to avoid casting and have the shaft leaning toward the target at impact. They might then realize the impact that overactive hand action has on the club position at impact, and try to take steps to get rid of it. I think a lot of players would be amazed to make one-half or three-quarter swings, absolutely as stiff-wristed as they can, with no wrist cock at all. If they can manage it, they might be surprised to find that they are hitting the ball as far as they do with their normal full swing, because they're making solid contact with the ball, while compressing and flighting it better, and not adding loft to the clubface and making terrible contact with their flippy full-swing. Feeling what proper contact is like, that's a good way to start making the journey towards proper hand action.

Speaking from personal experience, I think most poorer players have bad (terrible) hand action. That is to say, the hands are much too active in the swing (and in chipping, and putting). If you tell most amateurs to swing the arms faster, they'll probably cast the club even more at the top of the swing with their hands, trying to get speed. For me, what turned it around was thinking of the first part of the swing as being a "gravity move" as Johnny Miller puts it. That is, the hands, arm and club just drop as a result of gravity during the beginning of the downswing. Then, I try to think about just pulling the handle, the butt of the club, towards the ball on the downswing for as long as I can, in sync with the lower body. The release then takes care of itself at the correct time, as the weight and the inertia of the club build clubhead speed and force the hands into a good release.

Putts go offline with (bad putting) amateurs probably most often because their left wrist breaks down at impact, causing pulls (and then later all kinds of bizarre compensations). If you're a poor putter, particularly with short putts, you're definitely doing this. Left hand low putting is one fix for that. Cadence is the other big problem for amateurs. Pros always have the same tempo (usually a 1-2 count on backswing and followthrough). They just vary the length of the stroke depending on the length of the putt, but if you put a stopwatch on the stroke, it would always take, say, two seconds. Poor putters are all over the place, and so have no distance control.

I just got the s&T; book, which is great. Lots of pictures! The best thing about S&T; for me is that they really focussed the discussion on what happens at impact. After drilling myself for months to not let the left wrist break down, keeping the "flying wedge", I've noticed that I can use a variety of swings, some even ridiculous, and if the left wrist stays firm, I'll still make good contact with the ball. That's helped my chipping & putting as well. It's definitely the biggest error most bad players make. The other thing is that S&T; is easier on my back. It's just obvious if you think about it. If you move your head off the ball on the backswing, then leave it in that position on the downswing, the transfer of weight will bend your back more and put more strain on the lumbar.