Steven Joseph

Looks to me like you lose the connection between arms (particularly left arm) and torso very early. You're basically only using your arms and hands to swing. I suspect you struggle with distance? There's an awful lot of wrist action and very little turn in shoulders. I suspect simply using your bigger upper body muscles more to rotate your body on the backswing will solve a lot of problems, including your pull. A good drill is to stick a glove/headcover under your left armpit and feel the pressure of your arm on your body as you try to keep it pinned there on backswing. Keep your hands light and passive on the club and let your wrists hinge naturally instead of putting it in very early as you do. The greater turn in your upper body will hopefully help stop you coming over the top on downswing and pulling.

Mixed feelings towards him these days. I enjoy the course vlogs and some of the Q&A;'s and techy talk stuff, but his ego is through the roof these days, his club reviews are all exactly the same, predictable and repetitive and his social media conduct (especially twitter) is rude, cocky, condescending and annoying to say the least. If you dont agree with him or offer another opinion he openly mocks you and belittles you (believe i know). What annoys me is he mocks 'old school' methods, teachings and teachers for their 'out of date' approach. I just wish he was a little more respectful and his #originalcontent hashtag is b.s. and petty.

I had 4 seperate club testing sessions each with a different pro and each reaching the same conclusions.

Several reasons really: 1) The main one. The pro who did my fitting said my swing speed and tempo dictated I need said shafts in said flex. They had a little shaft flex determining gadget on the club. Who am I to argue with the expert? 2) My swing speed allows me to get the ball up with ease anyway and when we tried stiffer shafts I got better, more controllable trajectory and straighter shots. On a windy day I'd like to be able to hit lower shots. 3) Too light a flex/weight can cause hooking. 4) The clubhead itself is designed to get high launch. The shaft is designed to boost that. I should say I opted for the middle ground of Dynamic Gold S300 SL's, which are 105g, as I feared if I went too heavy I would lose the power they delivered with the 85g shaft. I should also say I was so close to getting the Taylormade CB irons instead of these, but I have to have clubs which are ideal for my game as it is right now. In a few years time no doubt I will need different irons, possibly lower launching and more workable. thanks

Ha! Guys, you're missing my point! Firstly when I say 'cheating' I basically mean it in a good way. Taylormade, like most other manufacturers, are kind of deceiving us about the true power of their forgiveness irons. The reality is they take a 6 iron, add a half inch to the shaft and then wack a number 7 on the head and gleefully tell us their irons are 10-15 yards longer than other irons. Is there anything wrong with this? No, not really. Its only a game. And heck, if I feel mentally more at ease hitting what i think to be a 7 iron than I do a 6, then great! My only issue is if you improve to a single handicap, when you come to 'upgrade' to more of a players iron, suddenly you've lost 10 yards of carry off your yardages. Again, is this an issue? no, just take a club extra. My issues with the shaft are personal really. My swing speed is such that I need a stiff shaft around 115-125g. But the Speedblade only has two stock options and the stiffest/heaviest shaft is 85g, which means the ball flight is too high for me. I guess I wish they had more shaft options, but I obviously see that they put that shaft in for a reason as its ideal for their target market. The KBS tour shaft they put in the CB tour preffered iron would be ideal, but it was a very pricey upgrade for the speedblades.

Taylormade are basically cheating you in many ways with these irons. The shafts are incredibly light and whippy, which creates more clubhead speed, height and distance. Theyre also half and inch longer in standard setup and the lofts are very strong. I dont mind all that at all, as it works, but I do mind having to fork out and extra £70 on actual stiff shafts because of the old man shafts they have fitted.

So I've been doing a lot of iron testing at the range lately looking to get a new set. I tried out all the top brand game improvement irons; Callway X2 Hot, Ping G30, Titleist AP2, Nike Covert 2.0, Ping i25 and a few more whose names escape me. To say the Taylormade Speedblade blew them out of the water is an understatement! So much height, so much carry, so easy to hit, so consistent, so straight. They are amazing! After 3 seperate days of testing I found myself always coming back to them over and over. There was even a slightly amusing/awkward moment when a Yonex demo guy was there with new Yonex clubs and trackman and he invited me to pit them against his clubs and they comprehensively out performed them in every department. He tried to diss them by saying something about the speed pocket creating distance inconsistency if you hit an air pocket (even though the dispersion on accuracy and distance was excellent) but frankly I think even he had to aknowledge how good they were eventually. Don't get me wrong, they have flaws. The feel off the face is a bit dead, in that its tough to feel were out the face you struck it. The sound is a bit hollow and plasticky. The material also feels and looks a tad cheap, the 'brushed metal' look not doing it for me. Also the stock 'stiff' shaft flex is a joke. 85g is not stiff. But all this doesnt matter when you hit the things! Am waiting for my custom fit set to arrive (with dynamic gold shafts)!

Look at the top of your backswing with your iron. See how you're leaning over to your left? Which causes you to collapse into your left side on downswing rather than rotate and power into it from right foot. You also scoop your hands through impact as your hands arent far enough in front of ball at impact. And as i said before you're swinging too much across your body on the backswing which causes you to cover over the top on the downswing, hence the slice. From the front angle it looks like the ball is too far back in your stance, especially in the driver. The further back the ball is the more likely you are to slice as your hands dont have time to rotate back to target line and/or you're more likely to hit steeply down on it. Try putting the ball further foward in your stance. This will encourage you to sweep at it more from the inside, give your hands time to return to neutral before impact and also encourage you throw your weight forward more. As for your swing plane, try doing an exageratted Jim Furyk swing, whereby you swing the club way outside the line on backswing and drop it way back inside on downswing. Chances are you'll hit lots of low hooks and thin shots for the first few dozen balls, but you need to get used to the feeling. Another good feeling to help fight a slice is to imaging you're trying to hit a topspin forehand in tennis, flipping the wrist through impact. Again, feel and real arent the same.

Three things spring out to me: 1) club taken too far inside on backswing creating very flat plane 2) swinging over the plane/'over the top' on the downswing (hardly surprising as your backswing is so flat) 3) early extension other than that its a decent looking swing. try feeling like your backswing is really outside the line on the backswing by pushing the club out along the target line as long as possible. on the downswing feel like your right elbow is going to graze your right hip. google early extension for a million drills.