My Swing (RIduffer)

[mdl]

Two things stuck out to me. First is your swing is really narrow. You can see it through your movement but a good indicator is your right arm is super folded at the top:

Right arm should be at most 90˚ bent at the top. You can see your left arm is really bent too. The drill that really helped me was putting one of those kids inflatable arm floaties (the ones from when we were young) just above the elbow on your right arms. Inflate it to the point that at 90˚ bent you're already starting to make a good press, and beyond that it's really blocking and obvious. Swinging like that will feel like you're taking something like a 40% backswing!

The second thing is you barely get your hips open by impact at all, and as much as you can tell from DTL it doesn't look like you get your weight forward much either.

I don't have any drills that worked wonders for me here. But one thing that has helped me (I'm still working on this for sure) was learning that the pros actually don't have much pelvic tilt at impact. They keep their hips away from the ball by controlling their pelvic center, not by maintaining spine angle through hip tilt. That freed me up a ton.

[RIduffer]

Here are a couple slow motion swings 

[saevel25]

1) Set up, the ball is to far back in your stance. It will make it difficult to want to get your weight forward at impact. You really hardly ever want to play ball in the back half of your stance. 

2) be more mindful of your camera alignment. The DTL view looks like it is aiming to the left. 

3) You could maintain width in your swing more when your hands reach your shoulder height. Keeping your left arm straighter, and your hands further away from your body. They break down at this point. 

[iacas]

1 hour ago, saevel25 said:

1) Set up, the ball is to far back in your stance. It will make it difficult to want to get your weight forward at impact. You really hardly ever want to play ball in the back half of your stance. 

This x 100. That's WAY back.

[mdl]

On 6/4/2022 at 5:53 PM, iacas said:

This x 100. That's WAY back.

Wait. Low spinny trap hooks aren't what we should favor in our setup?

[RIduffer]

Couple swings from today. Is the camera angle on DTL better? I tried following the camera angle advice from this forum. 

I attempted to move the ball position forward in my stance. Looks like I’m only about middle of stance from FO view so I will keep working on that.

I tried adding more width in my swing (not over folding right arm) and hit a bunch of real wonky shots, so I decided to just focus on ball position for today.

 

[iacas]

16 minutes ago, RIduffer said:

I tried adding more width in my swing (not over folding right arm) and hit a bunch of real wonky shots, so I decided to just focus on ball position for today.

You probably just "tried" to do this at full speed or something.

Learn how to practice. Learn how to make a change.

[RIduffer]

1 hour ago, iacas said:

You probably just "tried" to do this at full speed or something.

Learn how to practice. Learn how to make a change.

Yes, I wasn’t saying, “I tried it 5 times and it didn’t work so forget it, lol.” Just wanted to focus on one thing at a time and the ball position seemed like a good thing to start with.

Point taken though, as I sort of abandoned the arm width for this session because I didn’t like the immediate results.

 

Edited June 7, 2022 by RIduffer
Rethought my response

[iacas]

43 minutes ago, RIduffer said:

Yes, I wasn’t saying, “I tried it 5 times and it didn’t work so forget it, lol.” Just wanted to focus on one thing at a time and the ball position seemed like a good thing to start with.

Point taken though, as I sort of abandoned the arm width for this session because I didn’t like the immediate results.

I didn't assume that you had.

But you can change the ball position (a "static" thing)… and do something dynamic, too. Do it slowly, with short swings. Be specific, keep it simple, and you'll have success. Oh, wait! 😄

😉

[RIduffer]

@iacas that’s funny…I was just reading that thread! You’ve posted lots of great info on this forum since I last frequented TST.

As a musician, the 5 S makes total sense to me (I appreciated your violin analogy.) I could benefit from taking this approach to many aspects of my life.

Edited June 7, 2022 by RIduffer
Clarity

[mdl]

I fully dislocated my already congenitally loose left shoulder for the 2nd time in December and had labrum repair and stabilization surgery in Feb. I can't just put golf away for 6-8 months, so I spent a lot of time watching (good) instruction and practicing with no club and left arm in a sling, then a club but never going past A2.5, eventually A3. Then the past month as I was getting closer to being able to hit balls I'd practice the things I'd decided I wanted to fix with dry swings up to like A3.5 but forced to be slow so as not to stress my shoulder.

Recovery has gone well so I got to go to the range for the first time last weekend. The picture is totally changed! The biggest change is that I have my hips more correct (hip center staying same distance from the target line, more forward, and more open at impact) than I ever have! I'm totally going to come out of an injury and a long layoff a better golfer! Maybe you don't want to go quite that slow But it'll be an investment, and given you probably won't do only dry swings for months, your ball striking will be bad for a while!

[RIduffer]

Angle is not great but I wanted to upload one swing from today. I did a bunch of slow motion practice before doing any full speed swings. Trying to see if I can make a swing with less bending/collapsing of the arms.

[mdl]

Not 100% sure because of the angle but looks to me like a step in the right direction! The fact that your club stopped a bit sooner supports the hypothesis that this is a real improvement and not just a trick of the camera angle.

[iacas]

11 minutes ago, mdl said:

Not 100% sure because of the angle but looks to me like a step in the right direction! The fact that your club stopped a bit sooner supports the hypothesis that this is a real improvement and not just a trick of the camera angle.

They're different clubs from different angles.

I wouldn't try to deduce anything from these two images.

Good camera angles are important. This is another example of why.

[mdl]

1 hour ago, iacas said:

They're different clubs from different angles.

I wouldn't try to deduce anything from these two images.

Good camera angles are important. This is another example of why.

Yeah good point

[RIduffer]

@iacas

@mdl

Thank you both for the comments. Looking back at the swings I labeled 6.6.22, were those camera angles ok? I did those at a range with mats and I think it might help me with the visual alignment and flatter surface for tripod.

That 3h swing I just had the phone propped up on my golf bag and no points of reference.

[iacas]

27 minutes ago, RIduffer said:

Thank you both for the comments. Looking back at the swings I labeled 6.6.22, were those camera angles ok? I did those at a range with mats and I think it might help me with the visual alignment and flatter surface for tripod.

I don't know. If you followed the instructions I'm sure it's fine:

https://thesandtrap.com/b/playing_tips/filming_your_swing