My Swing (iacas)

[klineka]

5 hours ago, iacas said:

A little time lapse today.

Isn't practice supposed to be slow?? You hit like 15+ balls in 37 seconds! 🤣

[iacas]

9 minutes ago, klineka said:

Isn't practice supposed to be slow?? You hit like 15+ balls in 37 seconds! 🤣

Yeah, just bashing balls. A golf swing is only a second or two long, so… I figure I paused long enough between them.

[iacas]

[iacas]

Coming along.

• Backswing still a bit exaggerated.
• Swing is a little bit too long.
• Downswing is good.
• Was at about 70%:

[iacas]

Same old:

[iacas]

I've been enjoying practicing with the GCQuadMAX lately. I thought I'd take a little time to talk about how I use it during my practice. I practiced tonight with a 6I (my trust Nike VRII Pro/TW blade).

First, I'll just say this: it's not about the ball flight or the shot. I'll pick a target on the range that's close to the distance I normally hit it, but it's just… because hitting it into a field is a little boring. And occasionally I hit a "shot" but the bulk of my practice is not about hitting shots, but working something specific.

Here's the data in my default display (I'm using GSPro often for this type of stuff):

Clubhead and ball speed are self explanatory, as is smash factor and spin (this was a 6I with a lower spinning premium ball).

Club path is 4.3° right on this shot, with a spin axis of -6.9° (nice!), or a draw. The ball started 1.9° right, launched at 19.4° (a bit high, because…) AoA was 0.2° up. The ball reached a peak height of 117.2 feet, carried 183.1 yards, and was 5.7 feet left of the target line.

A decent shot… if the ball was on a little tee or was sitting up in a lush fairway. 😄  Anyway…

The only number I cared about for the first 20 or 25 shots today is the path. Since I care about the path, I use my alignment stick to make sure the QuadMAX is aligned, and I don't care much about what the face is, etc.

This shot, like almost every shot I hit today, was a two-step swing. I'd swing back, pause, then swing down. I'm trying to do two things: take it back without folding my right wrist back a lot, then throw the club "behind" me with the elbow pit staying facing out longer.

After my path was consistently 2-5° out, I'd start to care a little about the AoA. I moved the ball back a smidgen in my stance, and worked on feeling my chest stay down a little. I also slightly shortened the swing, as that would result in the hands getting to impact zone a bit earlier relative to the rest of my chest. Not surprisingly to me (but perhaps to others), my speed typically goes up when I do this.

Here's a fuller screenshot with the number son the left made larger (and replacing the mini map in the GSPro software on the right side of the screen):

As you can see, a similar shot. Path was still out, spin axis was still a bit left (barely), AoA was a bit better, offline was still pretty small… and the ball went a bit farther with more ball speed because I got up to 94.2 MPH clubhead speed with a still decent smash factor.

This ball was a slight push a touch toward the toe - if my path is 3.1° right and the start line is 3.7° right… and the ball draws, that's a slight toe hit. A look at the QuadMAX screen confirmed that.

At one point, I made the shortest swing I could, with the fastest downswing piece (what I'm trying to do) that I could. I really didn't care about the face on this one:

Path and AoA are good. Speeds are good.

Smash wasn't bad considering the face was wide open.

[iacas]

I wrote in the 5 Minutes topic about how I'd wrote more here.

Basically, I'm still doing a few things:

• Keep the backswing the right length. When it goes longer, the second bullet point is nearly impossible…
• Keep the left wrist slightly cupped (it feels like the right is arched and hinged) throughout the backswing.
• Throw the back of the club down toward the ground from the top. As in behind me, with the face wide open.
• Keep the face wide open (feels like 45°) until after impact.

I tend to reduce my AoA on mats, though later in the session I reduced a little right axis tilt at setup and got my AoA on mats down into the 2-3° down range. So those numbers are quite shallow for these shots, but I'm generally pleased by these: every path is right, to the point where I can start to work on the bullet point not listed because it's more of a bonus thing: I can push as hard to the left as I want, and the ball goes straighter and straighter.

The main thing I found today: I need to really feel the 45° right thing. My miss remains a big left-to-left shot.

These weren't entirely full swings, though they're close. I'll take these for a 6I and a 9I:

Good smash, good speeds.

[iacas]

Had a decent day of practice.

[Ty_Webb]

How do you find coaching yourself to go? I am sure that when you're working with a student, you might see a few things that need to be worked on, but you can filter it for them and have them work on one or maybe two of them at a time. Do you find it hard to do that with yourself? Or do you get Dave to look at you?

[iacas]

5 hours ago, Ty_Webb said:

How do you find coaching yourself to go? I am sure that when you're working with a student, you might see a few things that need to be worked on, but you can filter it for them and have them work on one or maybe two of them at a time. Do you find it hard to do that with yourself? Or do you get Dave to look at you?

I have had Dave look in the past, but… he isn't anywhere near as familiar with my swing as I am.

I have two main things that I've got to do. Occasionally while focusing on those things, I'll get something else small a little out of whack, but often that takes five swings to get back. For example, sometimes I'll forget to use my legs a bit because I'm focusing so much on what my wrists and/or arms are doing. So I'll make a few swings where I just "use my legs" again and it's fine.

In these photos above you can see they're not all hit with a great AoA. One was even slightly up. That's another example - because I'm pausing briefly at P4 on some of these, the timing isn't great because I'm still "right" then. So sometimes because I'm working on the arms, I don't get as forward as I do without pausing.

I know my swing well enough that I'm pretty good about doing it myself. Occasionally I have someone LOOK at something (because I can't look in a mirror and make a full speed swing), to provide the instant feedback you can't get recording it on your phone and looking ten seconds later.

[iacas]

I wasn't "playing." I was practicing on the course rather than just hitting balls on the GSPro "range." This was a mis-hit 6I (note the smash is only 1.27 at 94.5 MPH CHS).

[billchao]

1 hour ago, iacas said:

I wasn't "playing." I was practicing on the course rather than just hitting balls on the GSPro "range." This was an mis-hit 6I (note the smash is only 1.27 at 94.5 MPH CHS).

Nice miss.

[iacas]

Heeled it. 🙂

[iacas]

These were all 6I (I sometimes forget to change the "club" at the bottom):

Not a bad day.

[iacas]

Put myself on GEARS today to check my backswing stuff. Left wrist cupped, right arm not bending too much. That kind of thing.

I can take about 5% off, and I squared up my right foot again…

[iacas]

[iacas]

I'm not too displeased with that one. Got a little help from my Spin Axis pals, too.

[iacas]

This has to feel SO drastic.