Surprisingly Productive Drill/Practice

[Travtex]

Haven't had a chance to get to the range in a few days (Yay, workin' the night shift), though I've had a few gazillion swing thoughts and ball flight laws and etc. processing in my head. Anyway, with some feel-related help thanks to Mr. Stan Utley's short game book and the idea of Hogan's slow-motion drill popping up here, I did some experimenting.

Just took a plastic ball out into the yard and started what was basically slow-motion chipping. I'll freely admit this felt really stupid and pointless at first. However, I got pretty absorbed into it after a few minutes focusing on what happened with different feels, swing paths, ball positions, club face and alignments, etc.

By the time I got to... not even a quarter swing, really. Almost to parallel and at about half speed, the ball was zipping off the face with a pretty surprising bit of speed and with much better launch angles than I'd grown accustomed to.

I stumbled across a few tendencies and started to get a feel for what my particular body type and athleticism level needs to DO for particular swing paths and degrees of contact. I'm sure I'll immediately lose a lot of that feel the next time I hit the range or course, but it definitely felt helpful and I was wondering if anyone does something similar as part of their practice routine.

(Random Observations:

I really tend to shut the clubface, and have a tendency to swing in-to-out as a rule. My hips also tend to get a bit quick and forces the club over the top. My main misses are the seemingly unrelated duck hook or skyball push fade... slowing down and just playing with the impact zone seemed to show how both could be coming from the same tendencies.)

[Zeph]

Plastic balls are great for practicing ball striking, getting the swing bottom four inches in front of the ball. You can do the exactly same things to it as a golf ball, it will respond to different shots very much the same way.

[Robato]

Yep!
I have started to play all my short wedge shots at an almost-half reduced speed, and the accuracy I have is so superb.
This was my revelation: Slower is better for consistent wedge distances.
I found info about it from the David Pelz book about the short game.
He calls it the finesse swing, and its a completely different feeling swing than with your regular irons.
Its amazing how well the ball pops up even at slower speeds.
AND I found from another source that the more you try to hit the ball low, rather than scoop it,
even at these slow speeds,
the more the ball pops up in the desirable ways.

The short game's where its at!

[Zeph]

By "hitting low", I assume you mean hitting down on the ball with a forward leaning shaft. In my opinion, the most crucial part of the entire swing, is just that. It was quite a revelation once I started hitting the ball on the way down, in every aspect of the game really. Hitting down feels dangerous if you're not used to the feeling, but once you get it right, it is very predictable and will give good results. If you try to scoop the ball, you'll hit fat or thin a lot of the time. One will end up short and one fly the green. Hit down on the ball, and it pops right up in the air, what's better is you get backspin, so even if it seems too fast, the ball will check on the green. Everyone that has seen golf on TV knows this is what the pros do when they chip. The ball comes out fast, but the backspin breaks the speed once the ball lands on the green.

Finding the right feeling when taking full swings is difficult, so start with the short game.

[Travtex]

Got a chance to take my 'slow lazy chipping only' practice swing to the range today. Pretty damn happy with the results so far, definitely going to keep it in my practice routine for now. Found myself standing a bit further from the ball than I'm used to, but didn't have the usual toe hit problem pop up. Stock shot was a baby draw. Still fighting a tendency to pull the ball... Other than just being a tendency, I don't think my equipment is helping much. My sticks are probably a wee bit upright for me, and there's more offset than I'd like. Both help me right along in slapping the clubface shut at impact and I had the occasional bout of the Dreaded Pull Hook.

Tried some A3's at Watts after the range... Sweetness. The club looks almost intimidatingly small at address compared to my Nicks, but I popped a half-dozen 7 irons a straight baby-draw 160 and they felt pretty sweet at impact.

The bad news... I think I might have cracked my driver. After a few shots, I uncorked one and my driver said, "KWONK!" at an unusually loud and different pitch. Next few driver shots had lost about fifty yards of carry. This does not bode well for what I had hoped would be a cheaper golfing season than my first.