Cure for Casting? - I Give up - An Essay

[xrayvizhen]

It’s been two years or so since I discovered, to my chagrin, that the reason for my loss of distance hitting my irons over the previous 10 years was due to early release; aka: flipping, casting, whatever you want to call it. This was all revealed to me in a high-speed/slow-motion video recording of my swing my son made for me at the time and weirdly, really didn’t manifest itself as much with long irons or woods, mainly 6-PW. For those shots my hands were aligned with my right pants pocket at impact and with the longer clubs, aligned with my belt buckle. I couldn’t get any “shaft lean.” I posted the video to the “My Swings” forum, got a couple of hints and ideas on what to do about it but the fact of the matter is, despite the swing fault, due to pretty good hand/eye coordination, a reasonably competent short game and the fact that I hit the ball pretty straight most of the time, I have been able to maintain a reasonably decent handicap and been a consistent golf league winner, year after year.

I recently came upon an old 8mm home movie of me playing golf when I was around 22 years old and saw that I definitely didn’t cast back then. I also found a VHS camcorder video of me taken when I was around 50 and saw that I didn’t do it then either. So what changed…and when?

And then it hit me. 10 years ago I had a back injury, a herniated disk that was the most painful thing I had ever experienced in my life. I was able to avoid surgery via a series of epidural injections but nevertheless, I couldn’t do anything physical for a full year. Just bending over at a sink to brush my teeth was difficult. When I returned to golf the following Spring I didn’t consciously change anything about my swing but even so, there was a significant loss of distance with every club but more so with the shorter irons, which I attributed to the injury, even though my back no longer hurt. My swing was no longer a tight coil at the top and then a powerful release. It was more flowing and actually, pretty nice looking, except when viewed in slow motion video, when the cast would be revealed.

It's my belief now that I simply can no longer delay the uncocking of my wrists at the top or make a full hip turn down and through the ball. It’s as if my brain is telling my body, “You better not do that old thing anymore so we’re going to have to start releasing the wrists a bit sooner in order actually to hit the ball”. It's like I have no control over it. I’ve tried all sorts of drills, bought a couple of training gizmos, took some lessons, made countless videos with my phone to see if anything worked and the results were exactly the same.

So, you know what? That’s it. I surrender. I cast. So what? I’ve made a compensation, ball placement at address farther back, more centered between my feet. The club connects with the ball at its low point in the arc of my swing and so my 7-iron only carries 135. My drives go about 225-230. I’m 72 now and so I’ll live with the cast. Yeah, I’ll have days when my timing is off and everything goes to shit. But that’s golf. That could happen whether or not I cast. Another pro, a guy on the Satellite Radio golf channel who I called in desperation, suggested that I throw away my camera, or at least stop with the videos. That was probably the best advice I could get.

[Carl3]

Give a super strong grip a try. It has helped me to stop flipping.

[iacas]

Hmmmm.

Give up if you want, but there's undoubtedly a thing you do that leads to this, and it has a fix.

[xrayvizhen]

It was 2017???? Jeez, I really thought it was much more recent than that. Time flies, I guess.

Regardless, if I posted a video of my swing now, compared to then, it would look just about exactly the same, except it's probably a couple MPH slower. The "fix", so I've been told, is to "shallow" the club a bit at the transition and then turn more aggressively into the ball through the impact zone. The turning part is what's difficult for me, due to the old back issue.

My swing is fine (I think) from A1 to A5, however, something happens between A5 and A6 where the wrists start to unhinge & release. As I wrote earlier, lessons, drills, practice...nothing's worked. Chips, pitches, half and 3/4 shots are fine...I get good compression with those. But on full swings, I find when I try to hold off the release, with the clubhead toe up or just a hair closed at A6, the clubface remains wide open at impact resulting in an ugly shank.

So, am I really going to give up? Nah, probably not and I'll keep at it, I guess, but whatever the "fix" really is, it's not simple, that's for sure.

[iacas]

23 minutes ago, xrayvizhen said:

The "fix", so I've been told, is to "shallow" the club a bit

According to who?

I don’t think it’s fine from 1-5. Everything after 5 is a reaction to how you got there.

Plus, if you’ve been told the fix is during the transition then that’s before 5 also.

[ChetlovesMer]

On 2/19/2022 at 2:06 PM, xrayvizhen said:

I recently came upon an old 8mm home movie of me playing golf when I was around 22 years old and saw that I definitely didn’t cast back then.

Dude, Get that converted to digital and post it. 
8 mm film, that's awesome! 

[pganapathy]

2 hours ago, xrayvizhen said:

Chips, pitches, half and 3/4 shots are fine...I get good compression with those. But on full swings, I find when I try to hold off the release, with the clubhead toe up or just a hair closed at A6, the clubface remains wide open at impact resulting in an ugly shank.

Perhaps a simple suggestion, if you can manage it, is swing shorter.  I know in my younger days, my swing almost went so far over parallel it resembled John Daly's swing.  These days I get it up to parallel at best, thanks to loss of flexibility.  However, I find that if I am able to reduce my backswing a little, I tend to get better contact