My Swing (Darkfrog)

[Darkfrog]

Lesson 9/25:

Some bad things had crept into my swing, and I think I have the tools to fix them.

Setup:

• I was setting up a little to close to the ball. Not sure what precipitated this, but as soon as instructor pointed it out, I stepped back maybe 1/2 to 1 ball and right away addressing the ball felt more comfortable.
• I've started fidgeting with my right hand grip at setup again, resulting in an overly strong right hand. This seems to happen when I stand over the ball too long, maybe because I am not committed to the swing. Worked on increasing grip pressure with this hand through backswing. I'll need to work on this.

Backswing:

• Need to get a little more depth, but otherwise okay. Might have been I was focusing too much on downswing that I short changed backswing. Nothing major to work on right now.

Downswing:

• Clubhead exit was too much up and out, and not enough left. Worked a bit with a PVC/pool noodle plane thing in front of the ball to get a feel for the clubhead exiting more around and left, and less up, after impact. Might pick up some PVC pipe, elbows, and a tee-fitting at a hardware store, or maybe order a Pure Plane Pro device for this.
• Everything in the downswing looked pretty good up until club delivery, where I was shoving/flipping my right hand pretty hard. Right before delivery, clubhead was in a good position, but I was still shoving/flipping it closed through impact.
• Tried out a feel/thought of holding the face open through impact. Initially instructor just had me try to hit the ball with an open face and hit a push-slice way right. Even though it felt like I was leaving the face wide open, the ball was not atrociously offline right. After a few balls of getting used to the concept, I backed off the feel a little bit and was hitting the ball pretty straight. It'll take some work to deprogram my right hand/arm for this one.

[Darkfrog]

Had what I felt was a pretty good practice session today - going to note this so I don't forget. Feel/thought for downswing was; right shoulder down/around, pressure into left heel/lead foot "roll" a touch, hold clubface open through impact. Seems like a lot for one thought/feel, but I have a good rehearsal that incorporates all three, so my brain isn't trying to process three separate motions.

I hit balls in sets of three. The process is to address the ball, make a backswing, and then do a downswing rehearsal; then go back to the top and repeat the rehearsal two more times (total three rehearsals). Then address and hit the ball. Worked with a 7-iron, and measured my swing speed with Mevo warming up at about 80 MPH (Typical 92-93 MPH). The point of measuring swing speed during warmup was to make sure I was not working at full speed.

I used impact tape to see where ball was contacting the face. I did the first four sets with "Almost Golf Balls", which makes a barely noticeable mark on the tape. For the last set I hit three real balls. I was practicing in near dark, so had to bring the impact tape inside the garage to see. I think this was the most centerface contact I have ever made - basically all 15 balls off the center.

Not expecting to hit the ball this well all the time, but this is promising. All the balls started on target or right, which is what I want to see.

[Darkfrog]

Lesson 10/28:

All setup and backswing stuff to work on this time.

Setup: 

• Feet migrated into a very closed stance, exacerbating hook/overdraw. Feet corrected to neutral alignment. Feels wide open, so need some time to adjust so this feels normal again.
• Addressing ball with lead shoulder/chest too far forward. Corrected back to neutral, and feels kind of like a driver setup with shoulders back, but it's actually neutral on video. Again just need time to adjust to this so it feels normal.

Backswing:

• Face super shut at P2 and clubhead too far inside. Need to feel toe up to get to a neutral clubface at this position, and also feel like the hands do nothing to get to P2, to not go inside.
• Shoulders not turned enough at P3. Self-check for this is to see hands somewhere around my right pec at this position, but without cheating with arms. Feel like shoulders are what is moving the club (used this before with some success).

Once these things were corrected, I hit the (simulated) green, or landed within 5 yards from 185 yards out on about 10 straight shots, so I'm feeling pretty encouraged about this.

Coming into the ball with a neutral/square face means I don't need to fight/hold off the club to get the ball to go somewhat straight. But I do need to remember to release, especially with longer clubs, otherwise the ball goes right. I will take an occasional and consistent right miss though as opposed to an unplayable pull hook.

[Darkfrog]

Yesterday I watched one of the recent AMG YouTube "shorts" on waggling. I had an epiphany about this - I usually address the ball, and then just stand over it dead still for a couple seconds before swinging. Today's round I tried to add a little bit of waggling before taking the club back, and just a few minor motions seemed to help me feel more dynamic/athletic at the start of the swing. Haven't totally settled on how much waggling to do, but I think I need to incorporate some sort of waggle into my swing going forward.

[Darkfrog]

Lesson 11/24:

Club head getting a little inside on backswing, so made an adjustment of feeling more lead wrist cupping until about lead arm parallel position. Got comfortable with this pretty quickly, but will continue to work on this.

Downswing work focused on path and clubface. Path was a touch outside>in around 2 degrees, when typical is 2-4 degrees inside>out. Club was also coming in too steep with a slightly open to wide open clubface, causing the wipey fade right miss.

Tackled path first, which was a simple fix. Turns out my club path is strongly influenced by my eyeline, so made some adjustment to head position during the swing so eyeline is maybe 30 degrees right of target line when transitioning (hard to measure or describe how this feels, but almost feels like a Rory or Joachim Nieman head move, but nowhere near as extreme as the latter). This had an effect of eliminating the steepness, and path instantly changed to about 2 degrees inside>out. Also dropped dynamic loft of the club ~4 degrees, lowering launch.

Clubface piece is just adding the right amount of palmar flexion. Feel is to go from cupping lead wrist (backswing feel), and palmar flexing starting after lead arm parallel through downswing and not letting up until after impact. I really need to exaggerate this to get it ingrained.

[iacas]

Can you post some good FO/DL video? Slow-mo?

[Darkfrog]

2 hours ago, iacas said:

Can you post some good FO/DL video? Slow-mo?

Yeah, should have plenty of daylight to get decent videos over the 4-day break. 

[Darkfrog]

Recorded some DTL swings after my round today. Need to figure out how to upload videos from the Live View Pro app on my tablet to youtube. I think the Live View Pro camera works great as a digital mirror, but video quality is pretty low on recorded swings, especially on downswing. I'll try to find the highest quality video and post it here.

Will get FO view later this week, and may get DTL again using my iPhone.

[Darkfrog]

On 11/28/2021 at 7:13 PM, Darkfrog said:

Will get FO view later this week, and may get DTL again using my iPhone.

Also this from my post in the 2022 goals thread:

Quote

Record swings to post in my swing thread at least monthly:

Sh*t, I'm 2.5 months late. I did figure out how to get LVP videos off my Amazon tablet but it is tedious. I think I'll just film with iPhone, and use LVP as a digital mirror device. The story I make up in my head is that the month of December was due to holidays and weather, January to a household with Covid, and February thus far due to work being busy. But I'm in swing video debt, so I'll take any public shaming I'm due.

Got a lesson coming up on 3/2, so I am going to get at minimum DTL swing before the lesson so I have a reference point for improvement/regression. I'm going to either have to move my net/mat setup, or move a grill to get FO because of how we have our backyard setup right now. The weather has been great, yard is finally dry, and plenty of daylight after work, so I have no excuses anymore.

• Lesson in December focused on hip turn during backswing. I wasn't even that close to the low end of the range in my facility's GEARS data of tour pros (not a lesson on GEARS, but we did make rough estimates). That one was pretty easy to address.
• January lesson we worked on not turning the clubhead inside in backswing, which is a common regression of mine (guess I need to practice better). Also worked on transition - the feeling is that the clubhead gets lower than the hands quickly. Lately I have been striking the ball well, and shot a personal best 77 last week, so I think I'm going in the right direction.

Today worked with Mevo+ to get a a current shot zone for my 7-iron. For some reason the Mevo+ wanted to be a PITA to connect to, not sure if my iOS update this afternoon had anything to do with the app not authenticating my login, and difficulty connecting to the radar.

After eliminating outliers I was left with 25 swings, and I just used the  grouping button on the FS Golf app. The pattern looks pretty close to what I see in lessons, and practice sessions in the lesson facility, so I think it is pretty reasonable to assume it is accurate. The data doesn't seem to want to sync to myflightscope.com, so I'm posting a screen shot for from the app for future reference. I'd like to think in 6 months this will be a little tighter, with fewer 20 yard right misses, maybe GIR:nGIR ratio increases a little bit.

 

[Darkfrog]

Finally getting around to making meaningful update to my My Swing thread. This was one of my 2022 goals, but of course I've waited until there is only a quarter of the year left being the serial procrastinator that I am.

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Figure I should update these details first:

My current handicap index or average score is: Handicap is 10.7, feels I am playing more in the range of 13-15. Shotscope tells me my average score relative to par is +15.2 this year, but over my last 10 rounds is around +13.2, so I guess I am trending in the right direction.
My typical ball flight is: When playing well, ball flight is a high draw, which is a little push-y moving into longer clubs. A good miss is a push that doesn't draw at all, or doesn't draw enough, or sometimes a bit of an over draw.
The shot I hate or the "miss" I'm trying to reduce/eliminate is: Pull draws and violent pull hooks, like left of the world type hooks. Also anytime a 2-way miss comes into play also; sometimes I can hit a pull hook off the planet, tee up again, and hit a push slice across two adjacent fairways.

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A recurring theme for me in lessons is correcting inside takeaway and all of the downstream issues it creates. I am realizing this is something that I just always need to stay on top of. After addressing this in a recent lesson I have been using an exaggeration during practice that I call my Matt Wolff-ish feel on the backswing, basically feeling like the club head stays outside my hands as long as possible, and the shaft is matching my spine tilt. My teacher said she thinks that it is better for me to err on being too outside rather than too inside, at least for now.

In addition to the compensations of a mid-handicap player from transition through impact, I think my biggest issue in this area is flipping/shoving. It isn't too noticeable when I am playing well, other times it can be really bad. I assume this is a compensation arising from things prior to impact.

I practice daily, and generally 90% of my practice is full swing. I'll do some short game drills from time to time, and putting even less frequently. I often regress into poor practice habits, mostly going too fast, which is something I need to work on. I also do a poor job of tracking my progress or lack thereof with video. For awhile I have been using a Live View Pro camera, but frankly it sucked at capturing swings at normal speed because the shutterspeed was god-awful and everything was just a blur (it is fine as a digital mirror paired with a tablet), and I never really figured a user-friendly way to get video out of the Live View app into the tablet file system. I use an iPad/iPhone combo with Mirrorvision now, and tracking progress on video is easy.

I have a bunch of Mirrorvision footage to trim and upload to YouTube, so I will have a DTL and FO swing posted in a day or two.

[Darkfrog]

These videos are from a series of swings working on a feel to not take the club way inside. The thought, or thing that I am trying to feel is a little Matt Wolff like, struggling a bit to describe it other than that. This is really the only dynamic thing that I am working on right now. I feel like I am swinging about 80% in these swings, but usually when this is what I "feel" when I measure, it is closer to 95%.

I usually practice in my Crocs, which I would wear everywhere if I could. Hitting Almost Golf balls because there is a hole in the net.

The FO video is a little cramped, need to figure out a better spot to setup for this angle.

Mute the sound on the DTL swing, there was either a helicopter or plane overhead, and the sound in slow motion is grating.

 

 

[iacas]

Gonna work on that grip some? 😄

[Darkfrog]

16 minutes ago, iacas said:

Gonna work on that grip some? 😄

Yeah, I know. I feel like at address the club is in my fingers and I don’t know where it goes off.

[iacas]

7 hours ago, Darkfrog said:

Yeah, I know. I feel like at address the club is in my fingers and I don’t know where it goes off.

Important to figure that out IMO.

[Darkfrog]

2 hours ago, iacas said:

Important to figure that out IMO.

I'll set up my phone to film taking my grip, and see if I am even starting off gripped right, compared to the videos you have posted. I can tell by the way the butt of my 7-iron grip wears that I have issues with lead hand, but then I feel like I get it corrected, but it is either not corrected at all, or regresses.

[iacas]

45 minutes ago, Darkfrog said:

I'll set up my phone to film taking my grip, and see if I am even starting off gripped right, compared to the videos you have posted. I can tell by the way the butt of my 7-iron grip wears that I have issues with lead hand, but then I feel like I get it corrected, but it is either not corrected at all, or regresses.

[Darkfrog]

Filmed myself (hands at least) gripping the club last night.

I usually grip the club with my left hand while holding it in the air in front of me with my right hand because I can view the grip better that way. But in this video I gripped with club on the ground since it was easier to set up camera for this. Struggling a bit with the long thumb - it feels weird (which is okay), but results in some physical discomfort in my hand, maybe because I have zero hitchhiker bend in my thumbs so it puts some strain elsewhere. So I tried as long a thumb as possible.

Looks like the grip lies across where the fingers/palm meet - does this need to move more fingery?

I have a bunch of 1/2-inch PVC left over from installing irrigation system, so I am going to cut a piece and take it to work to practice.

 

[iacas]

Yeah, that's not much of a long thumb - the left hand wraps too much toward the butt of the club and doesn't keep the fingers "perpendicular" enough.

Actually grip it in the air, with the shaft horizontal.

Hold your right hand down on the shaft where the grip ends when you put your left hand on.