Driver / Long Club Problems

[kc8kir]

Well, I have done a complete flip flop and gone from hooking the ball to slicing the ball, and now have developed another problem with the driver. Here's the synopsis. I am hoping someone might be able see what I am forgetting to check. New camera is coming next week, so I will try to get some sort of swing video up then.

I've always had a rather upright swing, but have been working on shallowing it slightly so the transition to on-plane is less dramatic. Usually preferred to play a fade, but could draw the ball when needed. Now though...

Anything longer than I five iron I am slicing horribly (or pulling). This of course tells me out-in path, with sometimes open face. Or occasionally hitting straight with open face.

The problem just gets worse the longer the club. Rarely hit the hybrids straight (off a tee or the ground). Taking very deep divots (ie steep swing path). 3 wood slices even more.

Then the driver. Now this is really new. I have starting hitting the driver constantly off the heel of the club (makes the slice even worse). When it doesn't hit there, I sky it off the crown, with the sky mark closer to the heel than the toe. Really strange as I never have had this contact problem before. Slice, yeah occasionally. Sky balls? Rarely.

Ok, things I have focused on (not cured yet!).

1) Grip .... I use an overlapping grip. I checked my Vs and made sure they were held together and both aligned to the right ear / collar. Placed the left hand more in the fingers to encourage releasing the club (right is always in the fingers). Problem there is that I am loosing my grip with the last two fingers of the left hand (large wear spot on the heel pad of the left hand glove).

2) Take away. This probably needs more work as I seem to be getting a bit fast with the hands on the takeaway. I have always bounced back and forth between feeling like I take it back square, or take it back and rotate the left forearm, opening the face like a gate (still preserving the toe up position at horizontal). Not really sure which is technically correct, and have read different sources that disagree on this.

3) Posture. Found a major error here (was standing about 3-4 inches too close to the ball on all clubs), but fixing it only reduced total horrible mishits, not actual ball flight patterns. Driver unaffected.

4) Top position. This is where the video will come in handy. I can't tell if I am getting to square consistently at the top or not. Sometimes I look back and its open, sometimes square, sometimes closed. Varies with the club. Really odd as I never noticed this before. Perhaps the right hand is twisting the club?

5) Tempo and downswing intiation. Tried going back to counting 123, 123, 123, 123 and slowing to 60% and building from there. So far unaffected. Really focused on itiating the downswing with the hips, releasing the club, and keeping the weight on the balls of the feet (not falling forward to the toes, which I have felt several times like I am falling forward out of my shoes). Not sure if this is making a positive impact or not.

Further ideas once I get some video:

Loss of spine tilt / posture angle through contact.

Arms getting trapped by excessive body rotation.

Shoulder spin out on downswing, not square at contact.

Trying to accelerate the arms too much and loosing connection (swing just feels downright disconnected right now).

I did notice that turning my head to the right on the take away improved ball flight a little, though the driver is still horrible. Some improvement when I lift my left heel on the backswing and feel I plant it on the downswing (could indicate a severe hip spin out problem, or weight transition problem).

Very difficult to play golf when you can't trust anything off the tee. My short game is getting great, but when you have already taken 5 strokes getting to the tee... well... you get the picture.

Thoughts? Ideas? If the video still doesn't help, I'll be seeing a pro at the end of this month. I'm not interested in grooving this slice pattern anymore. I get any worse and we're gonna start seeing shanks!

[CosmosMpower]

Let me preface this by saying I'm no pro or anything like that, most of my golf is self taught from reading/watching videos/tv although my fundamentals were developed in HS on the golf team. These are just some personal comments from my experience that have helped me.

I had something similar happen a while back. I had a big slice then I over compensated and had a bad hook on my long clubs. I sat down and read a bunch of articles, watched videos with tips/drills and it all seemed confusing. During a round my buddy noticed that on all my slices I was falling back on my heels on the follow through meaning I wasn't shifting my weight forward on the downswing and I was swinging too hard causing a lifting up motion which opened the face. This paired with my steep swing caused the big slice.

Once I started swinging easier on a smooth tempo and forcing myself to keep my weight down and forward everything started going straight again, from my 4 iron to my hybrids. I also tried an experiment with weight shift involving not shifting the weight back at all. I set up normally but instead of putting weight 50/50 I put the majority of my weight on the front foot and leaned toward the target a little bit and then kept it there during the back swing. In reality a little probably still shifted back due to the the weight of the club and shoulder turn but mentally I forced myself to keep it all forward on the backswing and subsequently the down swing and wow what a difference. I'm sure this is just a way of tricking your brain into making my body make a correct weight shift back and forward properly since in my mind on a normal weight transfer it was all staying back even though I thought it was coming forward.

As far as the driver goes I saw a tip on TV that I could relate to and it helped me a lot on golf channel one night. It was an idea thought out in Tennis terms. Basically a slice is created from an underhand motion from your right hand (if you're right handed) like in tennis slice shot or drop shot. So basically on the downswing before impact I could feel my right wrist dropping and opening the clubface. To hit a straighter drive you need to turn the wrist over at impact like hitting a top spin forehand. I'm a much better at tennis than golf so it really worked for me mentally and helped me square the face at impact.

So in summary...

1. Don't think too much and over analyze it without the help of a pro.
2. Force your brain to swing the long clubs easier throughout the whole swing not just the back swing (75% but make it feel like 30-40% in your mind like a nice easy practice swing.)
3. Make sure you shift your weight forward as early as possible. I start thinking about it right before the club reaches the top of the backswing.

Hope that helps