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Just Do It!


TourSpoon

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It's been a while, but I haven't had a lot to write about. Until Saturday. It finally happened. The hip pivot showed up. It's been my number one thing to fix for a long time and I finally had enough. 

Two weeks ago, I took some video and just realized that if I am ever going to get to the next level of consistent sub 5, I need to fix 2 things. The hip pivot and the overswing. So I decided that I would do the damn wall drill and turn the right cheek towards the target a few hundred times until it became habit. I did it, I exaggerated it, I did it at the office and at home.  It's part of my pre-shot.  It finally showed up Saturday and off the tee I only hit one ball right of target slightly. I hit some bombs, hit a couple hooks, but more importantly didn't hit one block right. 

The second thing I need to nail down is the overswing. I get to a perfect backswing position and in the last 3 inches my arms keep going moving my spine and head forward. I kept thinking 90% swing.  Again, with the proper hip pivot, the 90% swing feel produced penetrating ball flights that I haven't seen in years. I have to keep these 2 things going and really ingrain them before moving on. 

With my commitment to change my swing, I haven't really been scoring well. The handicap moved up a smidge with a lot of 81s lately, but I will get back there. From the back tees, that's a 7.5 but I have some better scores still hanging around before anyone starts giving me more strokes. 

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klineka

Posted

I have battled on and off with the overswing piece especially with my long irons, personally even a "90% swing" feel didnt work for me, I needed to feel even less, my thought was a "Finau swing" or basically "waist high" and surprisingly what felt waist high to me actually was a normal looking swing length and resulted in very solid iron shots without any distance loss.

I would make sure you get the proper pivot piece fully down too, my overswinging was drastically reduced when my instructor got me to finally start pivoting properly, so it's possible that once you get the pivot piece fully dialed it will make the overswing piece easier to change.
 

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SEMI_Duffer

Posted

I can't speak to the back-swing, because I'm still working on that, myself.  But the hip pivot thing I can.  After reading on another forum a couple extensive threads about the biomechanics of a good swing, and related articles: The penny finally dropped.  This happened post-season.  Then we had a nice day in January where I could throw the mat out back and give it a try.

Holy smokes!  I hit about three dozen balls out into the woods.  Instead of my normal fade or slice, I was now getting a lot of very straight hits.  My misses were draws or hooks.  I think I had only two I hit thin and a couple slices.  And distance?  Wow.  My next door neighbor found one of my balls about 150 yards out.  That's 150 yards out going through trees.

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TourSpoon

Posted

1 hour ago, klineka said:

I have battled on and off with the overswing piece especially with my long irons, personally even a "90% swing" feel didnt work for me, I needed to feel even less, my thought was a "Finau swing" or basically "waist high" and surprisingly what felt waist high to me actually was a normal looking swing length and resulted in very solid iron shots without any distance loss.

I would make sure you get the proper pivot piece fully down too, my overswinging was drastically reduced when my instructor got me to finally start pivoting properly, so it's possible that once you get the pivot piece fully dialed it will make the overswing piece easier to change.
 

Thanks for the response. Yes, I have seen people swear they are waist high and they are so far past. The correct pivot is the starting point for sure and working on anything past that is just a compensation move to correct for a poor pivot. I plan to really nail it down.  

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