My Swing (Colonel Camp)

[ColonelCamp]

Hey Everyone,

Hope everybody's hanging in there and staying safe through all of the craziness happening right now.

I've improved my swing a lot over the last year, but I'm struggling with one particular part that I think is the key to carrying my 7 iron 190 as opposed to the 165 I carry it now. I am really focused on having my hips opened at about 45 degrees and I feel like I am turning my hips way more, but when I view my swing on slo-motion video, I can see that my hips are open maybe 15-20 degrees at impact. This is causing me to flip the club just before impact releasing the club way early and losing power (I’m also having to come up out of my posture a little to compensate for this lack of turn). On the follow through, I do continue my hip turn but it’s not fast enough as my hands and shoulders get ahead of my hips causing the dreaded chicken wing with my lead arm.

Do I need to slow my hands down? I don’t feel like I can turn my hips any faster than I already am. If I do slow my hands down a little, I’m thinking about the loss of distance this might cause. But then I also think about my hips being more open and my arms being extended and I figure this will give me back that perceived loss of distance and then some, as I’ll be delofting the club face that much more at impact. My head is full of so many thoughts. I guess it’s the excitement I feel at seeing my progress and wanting to hurry up and get to a better place.

I've attached a couple of links to videos of my driver swing that I uploaded to YouTube, front facing and rear facing.  They are of two different swings, but are pretty much the same.

Please excuse the quarantine belly in the videos!  🤓

What do I see as problems besides what I mentioned? (Please let me know of the others you guys pick up.)

1.  I'm sometimes not shallowing the club enough which produces a little bit of an unwanted fade ( slightly over the top downswing).  I really try to get that back elbow tucked down.

2.  My backswing is too short with not a lot of natural wrist hinge.  Believe it or not, I used to be way shorter than this.  I've made it longer by flaring out my back foot allowing my hips to turn more, which leads to more of a shoulder turn.  I've got shorter arms than most I think, so this doesn't help.  Also, I have to drop a few pounds and work on my flexibility.       

As far as my hips, I think my shorter backswing might be what's causing this out of synch condition.  If my backswing were longer, maybe I would have more time on the downswing to swing my hips open so that by the time I get to the ball, they're more open and cleared out of the way.  This is the case with my driver, which when I make decent contact, I'm carrying about 240.  I carry my 5i about 195, 6i about 180, 8i about 150, so on and so forth.

Thanks so much for reading all of this!

 

Danny

I've been Playing Golf for: 25 years
My current handicap index or average score is: Average score at home course is between 90-93
My typical ball flight is: straight
The shot I hate or the "miss" I'm trying to reduce/eliminate is: hook

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Videos: 

[https://youtu.be/-2CL_6646Ks]

[https://youtu.be/nH8vWKjzbD0]

 

Edited June 27, 2020 by ColonelCamp

[ColonelCamp]

I screwed up the embedding of the videos.  Sorry about that!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[klineka]

The camera angle for the face on view needs to be much lower

https://thesandtrap.com/b/playing_tips/filming_your_swing

Also, if your average carry distance with a 5 iron is 195 and 7 iron is 165 and you are a 22 handicap, there's a really good chance there are a number of other aspects of your swing/game that need to be fixed first before you worry about trying to add another 25 yards onto your iron distances.

There are very few PGA tour players who can carry a 7 iron 190 for their stock yardage. In 2019 according to Trackman the PGA Tour average for a 7 iron was 172, which means there were a decent number of players who hit their 7 iron less than that. 

I were you, I would focus more on improving your swing so that your accuracy, consistency, dispersion, etc all improve rather than trying to add another 25 yards to your irons.

I'm not a golf coach so I typically don't give too much actual swing advice, but one thing I would at least start by checking is your grip, it looks like the shaft is too far in your palms with your bottom hand, it should be more towards the fingertips like in this topic

https://thesandtrap.com/forums/topic/75436-how-to-grip-a-golf-club-commonalities-of-a-functional-golf-grip/

Edited June 28, 2020 by klineka

[ColonelCamp]

Great points.  Around and on the green is a work in progress.