My Swing (Zeph)

[bunkerputt]

Keep up the work.  I feel for you, for sure.  The reflex to hit is difficult to overcome, right?  Two things have helped me significantly in putting a practice swing on the ball:

1.  Practice swinging in really heavy rough.  You still get the feel of a hit, the feel of various pressures in your hands, the feedback of your clubface control and orientation through impact, but it's not so ballflight centric that you do things to compensate.  You have to be able to swing without caring what will happen when you get in front of a ball.  Swing in the foreground, ball in the background is your mental goal.

2.  Practice #1 a hell of a lot more than practicing hitting balls.  Overload your body with practice motions.  This just seems to help ingrain habits.

[Zeph]

If today's front nine is any indication, I'm closer to handicap 36 than 10 at the moment. 15 over par! :-P A 9 and an 8, sprinkled with missing most greens, losing 3 balls, bad short game and putting. Sounds worse than it looked out there. Hit some good shots, but I'm left puzzled at times. I'm standing at the tee, 180 yards to the flag, hitting 6 iron. Shot feels, sounds and looks fine, but drops down at 160 yards. I find a new ball, do the same swing, feels, sounds and looks the same, but the ball lands pin high. I know my clubs are not very forgiving, but I always get surprised when I'm 10-30 yards short. Could of course be a combination of things. A little more flip, perhaps a bit fat, off center etc. I thought I'd be able to feel the difference, but apparently not. Ball flight is a bit here and there as well. Most shots are somewhere around straight or a pull-draw, but suddenly I push-slice one. Irons are usually manageable, but driver and especially 3-wood is really a lottery. I hit two shots off the tee with the 3-wood. One was pull-hooked into the deep marsh. The other push-faded into some trees and bushes. The third went straight down the middle. That's the most annoying part. I can hit a perfect shot, then chunk, shank, slice or hook the next. Too much going on in the swing, making it unpredictable. I kept the forward pressed punch shot though, and it worked great. Don't know how long my backswing was, but I don't think it was as long as usual. When I hit the ball good, the distance was there. After 18 holes, I've pretty much covered all the nine shots you can hit. With the flipping and other stuff going on, I have precious little control over the clubface. One of the things that help is using pressure point 1. Takes away some of the flipping and rotating I guess. With my current swing path, it's a bit erratic since the path is sometimes in-out and sometimes out-in, but when I get the path consistently in-out again, it'll be easier to fix the clubface. Also, I'm getting new clubs soon, something a bit more forgiving. If I can't tell the difference with my current clubs, I don't really need the feedback either.

[bunkerputt]

Originally Posted by Zeph

Hit some good shots, but I'm left puzzled at times. I'm standing at the tee, 180 yards to the flag, hitting 6 iron. Shot feels, sounds and looks fine, but drops down at 160 yards. I find a new ball, do the same swing, feels, sounds and looks the same, but the ball lands pin high.

I know my clubs are not very forgiving, but I always get surprised when I'm 10-30 yards short. Could of course be a combination of things. A little more flip, perhaps a bit fat, off center etc. I thought I'd be able to feel the difference, but apparently not.

Ball flight is a bit here and there as well. Most shots are somewhere around straight or a pull-draw, but suddenly I push-slice one.

Emphasis mine obviously.  You can't control distance without controlling trajectory.  You can't control trajectory without controlling ball speed, spin and loft at impact.  If you're distance is off, it's one of the three.  30 yards is less than two clubs.  It's not uncommon at all to lose more than a clubs distance by flipping it.  Just keep grooving that practice swing, keep the left shoulder and left knee "down" longer until you can put a ball in front of it and do the same thing and I think you'll see the results improve.

[Zeph]

I see what you mean, but I've been hitting it my maximum distance for a long time with that flip. If anything, I'm flipping slightly less at the moment. It must be poor contact, as the swing usually looks the same every time, if I'm not doing something different. Not that I'm worried about it though. I just keep working and see where I end up. When I compare distance, it's always on shots where the trajectory is somewhat similar. I obviously can't compare a big slice to a small draw.

[nevets88]

I'm guessing you already tried this, but did you try practicing with the ball way way forward in your stance?

I remember when I first made a concerted effort to get rid of the flip, it was replaced by the shanks. At least you're not shanking.

[Zeph]

I'm guessing you already tried this, but did you try practicing with the ball way way forward in your stance?

Yeah, but I'm not that big a fan of it. The problem is that you really can't get in a good position with the ball that far forward. So it's easy to make compensations in other ways. I'm already working on not moving my head forward. Combining the two doesn't sound like a good idea. I have moved the ball a bit forward though. I'm pretty much playing every iron around two balls inside the left heel. One thing I thought about while reading about it in another thread, the TourStriker. Is that something I could benefit from? The concept is to get the shaft leaning forward and hit down on the ball, so it sounds like a good match, but I have never tried one.

[iacas]

Originally Posted by Zeph

One thing I thought about while reading about it in another thread, the TourStriker. Is that something I could benefit from? The concept is to get the shaft leaning forward and hit down on the ball, so it sounds like a good match, but I have never tried one.

You should get one. Just don't let the head go forward as you use it. You will still have to worry about that part.

[bunkerputt]

Originally Posted by iacas

You should get one. Just don't let the head go forward as you use it. You will still have to worry about that part.

+1 on both counts.  You can fake it and come in steep by moving the head forward to hit this club, or you can keep the head back and get the hands forward to hit this club.  It's a great tool, but like all tools, you can cheat.  And you don't get the benefit from it when you do.  The thing I love about this club is that it makes itself irrelevant pretty quickly like a great training aid should.  Once you get nice impact alignments, it's like hitting any other club.  In fact you may as well hit your playing clubs.

[Zeph]

7 months (and counting) since I last hit a ball outside, on grass. I've hit some indoors on a simulator. Not very much, but I've picked up the pace lately. I have moved since then and will join a new club soon. It's a more expensive one, but also better, and it's got a driving range with grass! In a few weeks I'll be fit for new irons and order the tour striker. I'm bumping this thread mainly because I wanted to post this video, which I really like. I've done something similar before, with good results IIRC, but I'm not sure if I've done both feet at the same time. I've mainly focused on one at the time. Been working on this drill for some days and like what I see and feel. Only simulator feedback so far, but the numbers looks good. Perhaps most importantly a lower launch angle. Can't get any video at the moment, I'll get there when spring arrives. Anyone struggling with getting the weight forward, try this. Helps me a ton on contact. [VIDEO]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqEQRRzsrfM[/VIDEO]

[Zeph]

Time to get the season going. Joined a new club and had a quick visit today to hit on the range. They got both mats and grass, which is a great improvement from the other clubs I've used. Ballstriking is pretty much how I left it last year. I tried the Tour Striker, which was an interesting experience. First hit some balls on my mat, where the ball flight didn't seem to bad, but I had a theory about why. Went over to the grass range where I first hit some 6 irons. Managed to hit 6-7 balls from the same spot before the divot started creeping onto the spot, so I felt confident enough to try the Tour Striker again. I didn't get the ball three feet off the ground. :-P The balls went flying horizontally and bounced around, looking for rabbits to kill. I hit some shots with better trajectory, but I believe that was a because I digged a hole behind the ball to get the clubface low enough. :-D I'll probably be throwing some money at Evolvr again and see where that can get me.

[colin007]

Did you get the regular tour striker or the pro version? I have the pro version and find it hard to hit off of grass...

[JetFan1983]

Good luck this season, Zeph!

[Zeph]

Did you get the regular tour striker or the pro version? I have the pro version and find it hard to hit off of grass...

I got the pro version. Thought I'd get the hardest one so I really had to get that shaft forward, going to the extreme end. I didn't expect that I would be able to hit it at this point. [quote name="JetFan1983" url="/t/38285/my-swing-zeph/126#post_850289"]Good luck this season, Zeph! :beer: [/quote] Thank you!! I'll sign up for Evolvr again and try to be a [URL=http://thesandtrap.com/t/67401/the-virtue-of-being-stupid-and-how-it-can-help-your-golf-game]stupid monkey[/URL]. I'll probably take a lesson or two with the pro at my new club to see if hands on instruction can amount to something. I can always find things to work on in my swing, but taking the monkey-see-monkey-do approach is probably better. Current swing: [VIDEO]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dQt0v1CZf8[/VIDEO] [VIDEO]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFAnUmitUe4[/VIDEO]

[iacas]

I wonder what Zeph will be working on…

[Zeph]

I don't even know at this point, but the positions on that picture looks familiar. Perhaps I could put a bullet in my spine and hope that prevents me from rotating so much. :-P I can't stop myself from thinking (I've tried), but I can do my best to just follow directions. Just realized last week's round was the first since July last year. :-O

[iacas]

Originally Posted by Zeph

I don't even know at this point, but the positions on that picture looks familiar. Perhaps I could put a bullet in my spine and hope that prevents me from rotating so much.

I can't stop myself from thinking (I've tried), but I can do my best to just follow directions.

It's more the lack of rotation or, more specifically, WHEN you rotate that is at issue.

[colin007]

It's more the lack of rotation or, more specifically, WHEN you rotate that is at issue.

Are the arms getting stuck? Could he be getting the arms down faster?

[Zeph]

It's more the lack of rotation or, more specifically, WHEN you rotate that is at issue.

Just realized I uploaded a different swing. That one looks like some punch kinda swing with the grip farther down the handle. This is a more realistic view from a normal full swing. I guess it's more of an arm folding than rotation I'm talking about. With the arms not getting there early enough from the top, it just becomes harder. I suppose it's possible to play with if the rest of the sequencing is right, but I don't think it's helping. On the other hand, with that top position, I have to exaggerate the downswing even more to make a difference, which might be a good thing. :-P [quote name="colin007" url="/t/38285/my-swing-zeph/126#post_851238"] Are the arms getting stuck? Could he be getting the arms down faster?[/quote] You could say that, yes. Arms are so far behind, I don't really have any other options but to flip. I'm assume that Erik is talking about rotating the arms/hands faster on the downswing, so they don't arrive late to the party. Erik provided some [URL=http://thesandtrap.com/t/38285/my-swing-zeph/108#post_734107]good insight[/URL] on the previous page in this thread. I tried straightening out the right arm earlier and faster one day, which felt better. Don't know if there was any difference, but I think it was working in the direction I want to.