My Swing (saevel25)

[saevel25]

10 minutes ago, klineka said:

I've played Mid Pines before but not SP or PN. How does SP compare to Mid Pines? 

Here is my quick rundown. 

Hole 1: Mid Pines
Hole 2: Southern Pines
Hole 3: Southern Pines
Hole 4: Southern Pines
Hole 5: Mid Pines
Hole 6: Mid Pines
Hole 7: Mid Pines
Hole 8: Southern Pines
Hole 9: Southern Pines
Hole 10: Mid Pines
Hole 11: Southern Pines
Hole 12: Southern Pines
Hole 13: Mid Pines
Hole 14: Mid Pines
Hole 15: Mid Pines
Hole 16: Mid Pines
Hole 17: Southern Pines
Hole 18: Mid Pines

So, 10 to 8 Mid Pines over Southern Pines. Some of those are close to 50/50. 

Edited April 21 by saevel25

[iacas]

[saevel25]

Some notes on what worked for my driver….

1. Firmer grip pressure
2. Fling club back feeling like it’s left arm only. Right arm is along for the ride. *Kind of my go to for everything right now. It keeps the hands in, and allows me to feel like I can put the brakes on the backswing and swing the arms down. Also feels easier to get the right arm up off the chest. 
3. Fricken rip it.

If I do that, and I don’t lower the club with my body, I am stripping it. Biggest misses are maybe a slight pull or maybe a straight draw if I toe it.

 

[saevel25]

Went up to Erie, PA.

1. Shorten backswing and control the right elbow
2. Way more wrist flexion from top of swing. Feels like I’m hitting the ball with the toe end of the club. Club still travels back and behind me.
3. In the downswing, the right hip needs to travel down towards the ball as the left hip goes up. Right knee needs to gain more flex as the left loses it. Gain right side bend with hips not upper body.

[iacas]

But overall, you're in as good a place as you've ever been.

Keep measuring.

[saevel25]

To put into more context

Shorter backswing helps me set up everything I need to do in the downswing. If the right arm beds 100+ degrees, it makes it nearly impossible. 

Currently, I am not delivering the correct dynamic loft at impact. My vertical launch angle for a 6 iron is around 22 degrees. The PGA Tour average for a 6 iron is around 14 degrees. This is due to a few things. First, not getting open enough at impact. The more I can get my right side forward, the more the hands can get forward at impact. Currently my turn stalls. That goes into hip movement stuff. Second, I go into left wrist extension through impact. This adds loft. I need to go into left wrist flexion sooner and add a bit of wrist rolling over to square the face. This lowers the loft by shaft lean and closing the face. When I do my wrist stuff the VLA gets down to about 19 degrees. I still got a bit more to go. 

We worked on some distance wedge stuff as well. More of a clock system. Position 1 is hands about waist height. Position 2 is between position 1 and 3. Position 3 is hands about shoulder height. Set up with weight on front foot. The backswing is a lot of torso pivot only feel. Speed in the downswing comes from torso pivot. Right side turns through, keeping and increasing pressure under the front foot. Don't slide the hips forward. It is more pivoting around the left leg. To help with smash factor and launch angle, add in a bit of wrist stuff and hitting the pitch like a draw shot. That is more something I need to work on. 

 

[saevel25]

I am going to try to try to have more intent with my shot routines. I saw this process in a YouTube video I watched last night. 

1. Decide what you want to happen - Yardage, shot shape, start line
2. Visualize what you want to happen - Straight forward, but one tip he suggested was while focusing the shot take in a slow deep breath (like 4 seconds in duration), hold for 1 second, then exhale slowly (like 4 seconds again). There is some evidence to show that this rhythmic style of breathing can help in calming heart rate and improving focus. 
3. Feel what you want to happen. - Your 1-2 practice swings. Like if you need to hit your PW at 90%, feeling that. 
4. Commit to what you want to happen on the ball. 
5. Post-shot routine, where you either gain confidence from a good shot or learn from a mistake to foster a growth mentality. - If it was a good shot then give yourself some good vibes/feedback. If the shot didn't turn out, then access why to learn from it. I am going to add, don't get negative. 

[TN94z]

20 hours ago, saevel25 said:

I am going to try to try to have more intent with my shot routines. I saw this process in a YouTube video I watched last night. 

1. Visualize what you want to happen - Straight forward, but one tip he suggested was while focusing the shot take in a slow deep breath (like 4 seconds in duration), hold for 1 second, then exhale slowly (like 4 seconds again). There is some evidence to show that this rhythmic style of breathing can help in calming heart rate and improving focus.  

It is a known technique, similar to the armed forces box technique. They use a 4x4 , in through the nose and out through the mouth. I use it to go to sleep fairly often. It works for me

[saevel25]

I haven't been able to practice like I wanted and won't for the next week. 

1. The weather sucks in Ohio this year. I have been mostly inside hitting foam balls. Just kind of my basic stuff. 
2. I woke up last Saturday with a left side rib muscle on fire. If I turned or leaned a certain way it would spasm that almost buckled my knees. I have been taking a break to let that settle. I don't want to get a long term injury. I think I pinched a nerve or just aggravated a muscles.  
3. I am going on a mini-vacation to Florida (screw you Ohio weather) with a friend, and rolling that into a work conference I have next week. I will be with out my clubs for a week. 

I will be back next in two Fridays to hit the ground running with some warmer temps and better weather in Ohio, hopefully. I would really like to get more out on the course and the range. 

 

 

[saevel25]

To get some more motivation to practice and play better. I've signed up for 4 tournaments between now and my trip to Wisconsin in August. Plenty of reasons to practice more. 🙂

 

[saevel25]

Yay, back at it! Just a short practice session in doors today. Somehow it is 30+ degrees cooler today than it was yesterday. Though, I am not sure I am in for 89 degrees!!!! I probably had heat exhaustion yesterday playing volleyball. 

Just getting stretched out today. Getting some feel back. Mostly feeling like the club works down behind and then out to the right as I do my wrist stuff. Just need to do turn and hip stuff better to get a bit more right side forward at impact. 

 

[saevel25]

Not a bad 9 holes after not touching a club for two weeks. I finally found the feel, or I finally is sticking, for getting better internal hip in the back hip. Once I got that, I was making much better contact. Especially off the tee. I am amazed I can still rotate thru impact with what feels like no hip turn in the backswing.

 

[saevel25]

Struggling a bit to wrist flex the right way to square the clubface. Right now, I can’t even exaggerate it enough to hook the ball around an alignment stick.

The hip piece is a struggle as well. If I try to get the arm swing speed ramped up then I tend to have older patterns. Mix of either high right hip through impact, early extension.

I can do arms down and right hip down more if I swing at like sub 70%. It’s not like I’m not trying to do the wrist stuff. My forearms got the workout today. 🤣

I would like to be able to swing 95% and not hit a big high push cut. It is such a weak shot. 

I probably should have had the phone camera recording. I just wanted to see if I could hit push draws. I had the alignment stick up as a reference. I will look at some video tomorrow. 

[iacas]

3 hours ago, saevel25 said:

I probably should have had the phone camera recording. I just wanted to see if I could hit push draws. I had the alignment stick up as a reference. I will look at some video tomorrow. 

FTFY. 😄 

[saevel25]

After video review. I need to keep the backswing length to 3/4. I need to do more left arm scrapes down the chest with much more wrist roll.

I am 100% certain I was using a longer swing length to give me time to feel arms down and wrist stuff. Which was to my own detriment. I also think the reason why I over swing is becauseI I feel that the club is deeper at the top of the swing so it feels like it’s more behind me, which is where I want to get the clubhead going. Again, that only facilitates me steepening the club.

I will say, I had my alignment stick pointed at the left edge of these two flags down range. Those flags are a good representation of a realistic size of a green. For most of my shots, the ball would land on or near the green. Except for the 1-2% shank rate, just because. The ball wasn't doing crazy stuff. 

 

 

Edited May 27 by saevel25

[saevel25]

DTL view

 

[saevel25]

Strange round today. I haven’t played a round of golf where everything went left off the tee. I was hitting my irons fat. 

I am 99% sure it’s because I am not turning properly through impact.  I made it a focus to keep the swing short and try to get my arms downs. It’s just I can feel everything turning late with the hips. They just felt locked up. 

Edited May 28 by saevel25

[saevel25]

Worked on some distance wedge work today. Spent most of the time just trying to hit the same launch angle. It is all over the place. Either I overdo it and flight things down to like sub 25 degrees (for a 60 degree wedge), I hit my 30 to 35 degree window, or I just let out all the wrist angle and hit 45 degrees. Let's just say it is very annoying. The random shank decides to show up, yay!