My Swing (dcs2)

[dcs2]

I've been Playing Golf for: 5 years
My current handicap index or average score is: 8
My typical ball flight is: Slight Fade/Straight Pull
The shot I hate or the "miss" I'm trying to reduce/eliminate is: Shank 🤒 and Pull Hook

This summer, I am looking to seriously work on my game for the first time in a couple of years. I will be tracking my progress in this thread, and if anybody would like to add their thoughts, I would be happy to hear them. I do not yet have any video of worthy quality to post, but I thought I would at least get the conversation started of where I feel my swing is at and areas that I think are my biggest weaknesses. I am hoping to get some good video of my current swing soon and see if you guys think I have identified the correct areas to work on, and other faults that I have not mentioned. I really enjoy learning about the golf swing, and part of what I am looking for out of this exercise is evaluating my ability to correctly identify what is good and bad in my own swing. I hope I am at least somewhat accurate, but I would also like to know where I am getting things wrong so that I can further develop my knowledge of the golf swing.

As of now, I feel that the orientation of my shaft at impact (specifically the vertical angle between the shaft and ground) is the change that will lead to the greatest improvement. I suffer from the all-too-popular "flip" of the club face at/around impact. This leads to a variety of issues--most notably my problems with a "weak" ball flight and severe low-point inconsistencies. I am hoping that by working on SK3, I will be able to produce a more consistent and powerful trajectory with my irons. I drive the ball pretty well off the tee and find myself failing to capitalize on good scoring opportunities by hitting an unfortunately low number of greens in regulation. A self-proclaimed "proficient" short game (relative to my overall ability haha) allows me to make a solid number of pars, but statistically, it is very difficult to get up and down enough to shoot the scores I would like to shoot.

Below is a screenshot of a low-quality video I took of my swing (the camera is not in the correct position and the picture is sub-par). The way my hands are oriented in this picture is really concerning to me. I have also input a picture of Zach Johnson that shows the opposite end of the spectrum of a similar position. I doubt I will ever achieve this position perfectly (not even sure if it is advisable to or not), but I think getting my hands closer to what ZJ looks like there would help my ball striking.

I realize the more important position in this sequence is where my hands are at impact, but I could not get a good picture of where I was there, and I believe the picture I have provided is indicative of the non-ideal position that the impact picture would show anyway.

One idea/drill I saw on this topic that really resonated with me is practicing by severely closing the face at address--the idea behind this being that by trying to start the ball right of target with these initial conditions forces you to open the face on the way down using a different wrist movement contrary to the "flipping" motion that I employ in effort to hit target with my current swing. In order to make that new wrist movement functional, my downswing and body movement would naturally adjust to produce a more optimal club path and AoA. I have not practiced too much with this, but it is something that intrigues me a lot. Feel free to comment your thoughts on this idea and its positive/negative influences on this part of the swing.

I know that without a full video of my swing, it is impossible to identify the part of my swing that is ultimately causing this "flip"--i.e. the move that causes my face to point right, which would in turn force me to flip my hands in order for my swing to remain functional--but I thought I would make the initial post in this thread anyways just to get me started. If you cannot help without more video, feel free to wait until I get that uploaded. But if you would like to comment on my thoughts either to reaffirm them or contradict them, I would love to hear your input, as this is my first real post other than my welcome thread. I look forward to logging my progress here.

*note: I tried my best to make sure I did not break any formatting/posting guidelines, but this is my first post, so I apologize if I did.

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Videos: No videos yet, but here are the pictures I referenced: