Hitting fat?

[kleraudio]

I dont have a problem with this on the course, thankfully, but on the range 80% of my shots are fat....

What is the leading cause of fat shots? I really get annoyed everytime I go to the range... because I cant concentrate on working on things because I cant even hit a ball over there.

Thanks!

Jim

[TempoIsKey]

For me, it's head movement. If I start hitting it fat, I'll really concentrate on keeping my head in place.

[kennay92]

these should help

[kleraudio]

Those links took me nowhere Kennay??

Tempo-thanks man, head movement is a big thing for me too... I tend to move my head toward the target on my downswing and I have been working on that as well.

[kennay92]

Those links took me nowhere Kennay??

fixed, i forgot about the video coding on here.

[kleraudio]

Right on thanks man, gonna watch those right now.

Appreciate it!

[Zeph]

Without a video it is very hard to tell, but if you head moves towards the target, that may be the reason. If you are at the range, hitting it fat, try moving the ball more forward in your stance, maybe all the way to the inside of your left heel. See if that does anything.

I have the same problem of the head moving towards the target, if I place the ball in the middle of my stance, I have to cast the club in order to hit the ball, leading to a lot of fat shots. I discovered it by moving the ball more forwards, suddenly I was hitting it great. The reason was my head moving forwards, by doing so I moved the bottom of my swing arc way forward, outside my left foot actually, with the ball sitting in the middle or slightly more forward of my stance. No chance to hit a decent shot from there.

If you can, try getting a video, preferably with the best camera you have available.

[bunkerputt]

You have to hit down on the ball. This is by far the biggest cause. A lot of people are convinced they are really doing it, but you still see cupping with a somewhat vertical shaft at impact, followed by a slight chicken wing. Get on camera and look at your hands at impact. How far in front of the ball are they?

Some big reasons for this casting of the clubhead are:

1. Downswing starts with arms and shoulders
2. No lateral move towards the target while the club is still moving back
3. Setting the wrists too early in the backswing
4. Left wrist doesn't roll towards the ground through impact

Check all of these in your swing. If you've got any one of them, you are going to hit a good plenty fat or thin.

[TempoIsKey]

You have to hit down on the ball. This is by far the biggest cause. A lot of people are convinced they are really doing it, but you still see cupping with a somewhat vertical shaft at impact, followed by a slight chicken wing. Get on camera and look at your hands at impact. How far in front of the ball are they?

Would you elaborate on this point a little? I'm assuming that you mean that there should be NO lateral move toward the target while club is going back but it sort of reads like "If you don't move laterally backward, then you will cast the club".

[kleraudio]

I think your hips are supposed to start moving toward the target at a millisecond before the hands and upper body gets to the top....

[Zeph]

You have to hit down on the ball. This is by far the biggest cause.

True, but at the same time you definitely don't want the swing arc to bottom out at the ball, which is an easy mistake to do by trying too hard to hit down on the ball. You shouldn't put an effort into hitting the ball too much. The important is to have the bottom of the arc be in front of the ball by 3-4 inches. When the ball is in the area behind the bottom, you will hit down on it. Everyone swing the club in an arc, the point is really to get the bottom of it ahead of the ball.

Would you elaborate on this point a little? I'm assuming that you mean that there should be NO lateral move toward the target while club is going back but it sort of reads like "If you don't move laterally backward, then you will cast the club".

He means that you should not move laterally on the backswing, it's only a turn. Not only horisontally of course, more along the angle of the spine. On the downswing, the lower body moves laterally towards the target, that's where you don't want the head to move forwards.

Well, not really the head, it's the shoulders that matter, but since they are linked together, they usually work together. The bottom of the swing is, when standing with a club in your hand, in the middle of the body. That's the place where, when the arms are fully extended and wrists unhinged, the club will be at the lowest point. But we don't want the club to bottom out in the middle of our stance, then the ball should've been closer to the right foot. That's where lag comes into play. On the downswing, the arms gets fully extended on the way down, but the wrists does not unhinge. By not letting the wrists unhinge, we move the bottom of the swing forward. If you cast the club, the bottom will be too far back and many of the shots will be fat. Lag give us greater clubhead speed, but it's also very important to get good impact. So, let's say you have positioned the ball 1 inch to the left of the middle of your stance. You're using a 7i. The bottom of the swing will ideally be 3-4 inches in front of the ball, so we use the lag in the wrists to move the bottom of the swing forward. We always make sure the ball is in the right position before initiating the swing. Then at the top of the backswing, the head (and shoulders) move 3 inches to the left. This is devastating for the swing. The time spent on a good set up and proper ball position is suddenly wasted as you have moved the position of the shoulders. If you go on and swing the club with proper lag in the wrists, the club will reach it's bottom 6-7 inches in front of the ball. Meaning the clubhead have no chance of making good impact with the ball. You might miss the ball alltogether, or hit on the top of the ball, punching it down into the turf. Our body is the finest machinery on earth, so naturally it will do some quick calculating and realise that this won't end well. It then proceed to send a signal to the wrists telling them to release the clubhead so we can hit the damn ball! The wrists are releasing, the rest of the body is rotating and increasing the speed. We got the clubhead coming in fast and impact is in the hands of...your hands! The timing of the wrists decide wether you hit the ground first or the ball. You have lost all the speed needed to a good shot by releasing the wrists early to make sure the clubhead hits the ball. That is why keeping the head and shoulders in a pretty much fixed position is so important. Some players move them backwards in the backswing and forward again on the downswing, but that's not really necessary as you gain no more speed and just add another variable to the equation of hitting a ball perfectly. You do not want the head and shoulders to move towards the target at all. If anything, it would be better if it moved very slightly back. This would move the bottom slightly back, but you'd still need the lag to hit the ball. On some videos of Tiger you can see his head move slightly more back than it was at address. The best way to identify this is by using a video camera to record your swing.

[TempoIsKey]

Some big

Zeph, that's kinda what I thought he might have meant but it reads like: Some big resons for this casting of the clubhead are: 1. No lateral move...... meaning that you need to make a lateral move in order not to cast the club. I just didn't want beginners to possibly think that you need to make a lateral move going back. It's just me being analytical as usual.

[Zeph]

Aha, I didn't see that "reasons for" line until now.

Well, I don't agree with him there. What he mean is the little space of time on the top of the backswing. Some players start the transition with the lower body slightly before the club has reached it's peak in the backswing. It's still not something everyone does, some even have what we can call a pause at the top. There are some variations there among the top players you can find on youtube. Some have a pronounced move with the lower body before the club is at the top, some starts simultaneously, some have a pause.

Those that do start the motion before reaching the top is really just adding some wrist cock. Something you can see clearly on Sergio Garcia. I would not say he starts moving forward before the club is at the top, but when he starts the transition, the wrists cock even more.

I think that casting and hitting it fat are very related problems. Trying to fix casting by focusing on the wrists is not right in my eyes. The casting is something the body does as a necessity to hit the ball. It can also be something that was done conciously in the beginning. But casting is absence of lag, and lag is something you don't "work on", it's a result of other swing fundamentals. So you don't work on not casting, you work on whatever the problem is that cause the casting. Which could, as I explained above, be a totally different part of the swing.

When you throw a ball, the wrists don't release until they have reached maximum speed through the kinetic chain. The mind is telling the wrists to cast. It can be conciously because the player is trying to do so, or it can be unconciously, a move done by the mind so quickly we have no chance of realising it or preventing it. Lag happens all by itself.

So my best tip is to move the ball around with different clubs and see if you can find a position where the impact is better.

[bunkerputt]

Zeph, that's kinda what I thought he might have meant but it reads like:

Sorry for not seeing this reply for a while. What I mean is that in the longest hitters, you see a little bit of lateral motion towards the target while the clubhead is still moving to the top. It's kind of a "falling towards the target at the top" move. If you pause at the top, you disrupt the torque and sequence created by this kind of athleticism. I think my recommendation should have been "Don't pause at the top" instead because it's a bit clearer. Take a look at Bubba Watson's swing. You'll see what feels like a rocking motion throughout his swing. This is largely because he has a great fall-in move during the transition. The danger here of course is that the head will move too far forwards as well. That's the tendency for beginners who start to do this move. In analyzing 3d motion capture of some skilled golfers from various angles, I notice the following:

1. In the backswing, the hips rotate only, no slide to the right. The shoulders rotate in a 90* orientation to the spine. Since the player was leaning forward at address, this creates a "reverse K" position at the top of the backswing. 2. There is no clear discernible "top of the backswing". It's one big blur where the club and shoulders are moving back and just before they start to move forward, the player falls towards the target. I notice that EVERYTHING falls including the head what seems like about an inch. Then the head just stops in space, but the hips continue a shift-rotation move towards the target. 3. The shoulders are still wound up at this point and should be until well down in the swing and just get carried along until later. Then they start to rotate so that the angle of separation between the shoulders and hips (X-factor) begins decreasing. The fall-in move that I referred to as lateral motion is a big key in preserving lag because it gets the swing started with lateral motion and a lower body move. The big reason this is important is because once the shoulders start turning on their own, the club will start to release. You want to eliminate the early rotation of the shoulders UNDER THEIR OWN STRENGTH which causes the club to release early and leads to hitting it fat or thin, depending on how much you shifted your swing center and how aggressively you unwound the shoulders. The shoulders will of course start turning once you start turning the hips because you've eliminated the slack between the two with your coil (unless you are super flexible). When I say under their own strength, I am referring to the muscles that you use when you reach for a cup of coffee sitting at your desk. If the mug is out of arms reach, you have to turn your shoulders to reach it. These are upper abdominals and middle-upper back muscles around the scapula. It's EXTREMELY critical that these muscles remain disengaged until late in the downswing. How late you and hard you engage them depends on what trajectory you want. If you engage them early and aggressively, the shoulders release early, the club catches up and you hit a high shot with the hands carried high due to the aggressive rotation of the shoulders. If you engage them late and non-aggressively, you carry a lot of lag into impact, the club is delofted and the ball goes low with the hands finishing low since the shoulders weren't supplying any force to carry them higher up into the air. Hope this help clarify it. Most people don't swing like this which is why most people don't have lag and hit a lot of fat or thin shots depending on their lateral timing.

[bunkerputt]

...Some players start the transition with the lower body slightly before the club has reached it's peak in the backswing. It's still not something everyone does, some even have what we can call a pause at the top. There are some variations there among the top players you can find on youtube. Some have a pronounced move with the lower body before the club is at the top, some starts simultaneously, some have a pause.

You are right that some may put less time in between when the hips start and when the backswing completes making it look like a pronounced pause (Villegas comes to mind). Whether on not this is an actual pause where every part of the body stops moving, I'm not sure. I've never seen motion capture where everything stopped. I wouldn't trust cameras on figuring that part of the swing out because it's too highly dependent on the video resolution and camera angle. 3d motion capture and sports science research is really the only sensible way to go. Unfortunately it's few and far between.

Those that do start the motion before reaching the top is really just adding some wrist cock. Something you can see clearly on Sergio Garcia. I would not say he starts moving forward before the club is at the top, but when he starts the transition, the wrists cock even more.

That's partly right. Any move down with a late set of the wrists will add wrist cock. But not all moves down are correct. Upper body dives are a move down, but the shoulder turn speed (angles/second) will peter out too soon causing the clubhead to release before it hits the ball. The lateral motion from the top helps to get things started with the lower body. I don't know anywhere in sports where a motion through is preceded by a complete standstill. When Quarterbacks pat the ball repeatedly looking for an open receiver, they are doing it to keep things moving while they are buying time. They don't just run around with their arms cocked backwards. If a pause at the top was acceptable, why don't baseball players just stay in the completely wound position before swinging? It's not just the angle in the wrist we are concerned about but the amount of torque in the torso. Try this experiment: Sit on a chair holding a medicine ball and turn and hold your shoulders as far as they can go, then pause. Check the angle between the shoulders and hips. Now stand up, grab the same medicine ball and swing your shoulders around, but before they get all the way back, turn your hips in the opposite direction. See what the maximum angle between the hips and shoulders is. 1000 to 1 it's way more than it was when you were "paused" on the chair. I'd also bet it feels way more comfortable and athletic.

I think that casting and hitting it fat are very related problems. Trying to fix casting by focusing on the wrists is not right in my eyes. The casting is something the body does as a necessity to hit the ball. It can also be something that was done conciously in the beginning. But casting is absence of lag, and lag is something you don't "work on", it's a result of other swing fundamentals. So you don't work on not casting, you work on whatever the problem is that cause the casting. Which could, as I explained above, be a totally different part of the swing.

Right on. Lag happens because of supple and loose wrists combined with the correct sequencing of lateral motion followed by lower body shift-rotation followed by shoulders unwinding (Reaching for that coffee cup

as I take a sip of coffee)

So my best tip is to move the ball around with different clubs and see if you can find a position where the impact is better.

That's a good tip, but you'd better work on your sequencing first. Try taking small shallow divots (away from golf course police) with the leading edge of a 3 wood and a very smooth swing at first. The divots should be about the size of a business card with only the middle revealing sand, the perimeter showing grass roots. Since the faces are somewhat deeper these days, you'll have to hit the ground with lag if you want to make a divot with the leading edge. If the divots are deep, try again because you're cheating by getting steep instead of hitting with lag from a shallow attack angle. Then you can just look at the divot and put the ball behind it.

[Fatphil]

I believe lag and casting are related. For me the hardest thing to do is to lock in the wrist cock from 12" before transition to 12" past transition. When I can do it,,,I get a clean hit with decent lag. I think the avg player has a tough time with holding the wrist cock thru transition is that it's physically difficult to do and it puts a bit of strain on your leading lat muscle as well as your hand an forearm muscles. While I have never been successful at "creating" lag, I have had some luck at controlling casting by focusing on transition which seems to help the lag issue.

[FindItLocal411]

Those videos posted by Kennay92 are phenomenal. Very helpful to see it in action

[bunkerputt]

I believe lag and casting are related. For me the hardest thing to do is to lock in the wrist cock from 12" before transition to 12" past transition. When I can do it,,,I get a clean hit with decent lag. I think the avg player has a tough time with holding the wrist cock thru transition is that it's physically difficult to do and it puts a bit of strain on your leading lat muscle as well as your hand an forearm muscles. While I have never been successful at "creating" lag, I have had some luck at controlling casting by focusing on transition which seems to help the lag issue.

Not to criticize because I'm only just now getting all of this, but if you're really creating lag, it requires no forearm effort at all. In fact, my right palm is nearly off of the club through impact now. The only thing I feel in my hands is a lot of pressure on the pad of my right hand trigger finger. You definitely don't want to try to manufacture lag with a wrist lock. The reason it's hard is because the club has already released and you are fighting that release with forearm strength. By definition, "Lag" means a late release. It is created, as Zeph pointed out, with body motion and sequencing the lower and upper body turns. What you are describing is "Casting" and "Casting with a band-aid".