My Swing (fersman4)

[fersman4]

At the advisement of iacas, I took the plunge and signed up for the evolvr.com monthly subscription. I uploaded a couple videos I recorded today to get the ball rolling (pun intended). So I wanted to share a record, a blog so-to-speak, of my progress, in case someone else who visits these forums was interested in the journey and the results.

I'm 33, I've been playing for 14 years. I'm 5'9" and 100 pounds overweight, which is probably causing my back pain, but I'm on a diet and exercise plan, so hopefully that goes away soon. I have had only a handful of in-person instruction sessions with a few different instructors, but it's been at least 8 years since the last one. Other than that I've tried to improve my game piecemeal through putting knowledge (occassional watching the Golf Channel, reading forums, books, and magazines) into practice. Though I'm not really hard-core about all that, I can be seen on the driving range with a video camera from time to time.

My index is 17.4 right now, the highest it's been in 7 years. At this time last year it was at its low of 12.3. I belong to the Men's Club of a nearby public course, where I participate in around 10 group and individual tournaments per year. I don't really win any money, but that's because I don't sandbag ( is he joking? ). I probably play 20 to 25 rounds per year. Here in Colorado, the golf season is only about 6 months long, so in the winter you spend a lot of time doing drills in your livingroom, and only actually playing 1-2 rounds when the snow clears if you're lucky. Needless to say it's easy to get rusty here. Since it's golf season, I'm hoping to get into the habit of either playing or practicing at least twice per week. Would love to do more, but I got a job, wife, and a kid to otherwise occupy my time.

Living in Colorado does have its advantages: playing at 5,000 to 6,000 feet every round makes me feel like The Hulk (estimated distances for decent contact):

Driver: 240-250 yards

3-hybrid: 210 yards

4-hybrid: 200 yards

5-hybrid: 190 yards

6-iron: 180 yards

7-iron: 170 yards

8-iron: 160 yards

9-iron: 150 yards

PW: 140 yards

AW: 120 yards (approach wedge?)

54 degree wedge: 90 yards

60 degree wedge: 70 yards

Notice the lack of a long wood, and the gaps in the wedges. I have yet to find a long wood that I would hit more consistently off the tee box than my driver. As for the wedges, any shot between 95 and 135 yards and I'm screwed. I haven't hit a good AW in over a year, and I don't seem to have any luck hitting my PW or AW at partial strength.

My natural ball-flight is a slight over-the-top fade, often a little heavy, so when I'm on the course or the range I try hard to fight it and hit a draw instead. Unfortunately going against my natural swing produces inconsistent results. Sometimes I hit a beautiful high draw, sometimes I hit a push fade off the toe, and sometimes I just hit it plain fat. As a matter of fact, fat shots infest my pitching game too.

Frankly I believe the greatest room for improvement in my game is shots within 50 yards. I've been keeping detailed stats for years now, and my numbers indicate that just over 50% of my strokes come from within 50 yards, including pitches, chips, and putts. I hit about 35.1 putts per round, and about 19.9 pitches and chips per round. So if I want to shoot lower scores that has to be the best place for me to improve. However my stats also indicate that if I hit the green in regulation, I'm going to get a par over 80% of the time, so I could stand to use some long-game improvement too. And, hey, if I hit more GIRs, that means fewer short game shots per round.

Anyway that's my background. Once I get feedback from the Evolvr folks and work my way toward the Stupid Monkey badge, I'll give another update.

[Golfingdad]

I think this is a great idea.  The only thing I would suggest is that you turn this thread into a "myswing" thread, that way not only do you have the journal as well as the video evidence of your journey.  (I'm sure you could get a mod to help you do that if you wanted to)

And I am proof that Evolvr works, by the way.  Long story short, I was somewhere in the 10-12 cap range all my life as a self taught golfer, and then I started with them last summer.  Handicap stayed right around 10 although the swing was definitely improving.  However, since the end of January, I've come down from 9.9 to 6.8 and still dropping!

Good luck!!!

[fersman4]

Oh, I've never been to the Member Swings section before. I suppose it does make more sense there, and once I'm ready to give a true evolvr.com testimonial, I can post on that later.

Moderator, please turn this into "My Swing (fersman4)" under "Member Swings".

[mchepp]

I look forward to seeing your progress.

[fersman4]

Well here is what I submitted to Evolvr.com. Feel free to make observations, but I have bought into the Stupid Monkey philosophy, so I intend to focus my practice only on whatever the Evolvr folks come back with.

[Golfingdad]

Originally Posted by fersman4

Well here is what I submitted to Evolvr.com. Feel free to make observations, but I have bought into the Stupid Monkey philosophy, so I intend to focus my practice only on whatever the Evolvr folks come back with.

I have no advice, because I'm no expert, but it seems to me like you have a lot to work with here!  And you are obviously going into it with the right attitude, so I am also looking forward to following along with the progress!

Good luck!!!!!!!!!!

[cipher]

Originally Posted by Golfingdad

I have no advice, because I'm no expert, but it seems to me like you have a lot to work with here!  And you are obviously going into it with the right attitude, so I am also looking forward to following along with the progress!

Good luck!!!!!!!!!!

I agree,  I see a lot of potential there and things that they can work with.  I know some of the things that they will work on with you, but if you are going to be a stupid monkey then I had better not say anything.  Just wait for your lesson and work hard on it!  Good luck!

[BostonBrew]

I agree with the others. No need in compounding your progress by getting advice or instruction from multiple sources. They'll cover everything you need to do to improve. Good luck.

[fersman4]

Got my first Evolvr analysis back. And not surprisingly it's about Key #4, namely correcting my over-the-top move. I'm very pleased with how Stephan Kostelecky described the problem, and provided some visualization for what the correct path is. And the drills he's going to have me do are much "smarter" (for lack of a better word) than what I expected or heard and read before, so I'm excited. I'll give another update after I put in the time and work.

[cipher]

Originally Posted by fersman4

Got my first Evolvr analysis back. And not surprisingly it's about Key #4, namely correcting my over-the-top move. I'm very pleased with how Stephan Kostelecky described the problem, and provided some visualization for what the correct path is. And the drills he's going to have me do are much "smarter" (for lack of a better word) than what I expected or heard and read before, so I'm excited. I'll give another update after I put in the time and work.

Awesome! Have fun with it.

[fersman4]

I've been working off and on throughout the last few days at home without a ball on what Stephan wanted me to work on, and this morning I brought it to the range.

Most of my work on the range was with a slow tempo with the ball teed up a little. Stephan wanted me to hit the balls off to the right of my target using the key points I identified in the video. Early on I found that if I rushed the downswing, I was neglecting to "drop my hands", and the ball would go straight instead of right. I also found it difficult early on to do a proper weight transfer while I was concentrating so hard on what I was supposed to work on. However I made the conscious decision to not care about that, and just keep working on the path (Stupid Monkey?).

The video shows a sample of swings throughout the session. The swings get progressively closer to what I'm supposed to be doing. By the end of the session I felt like I had made some good progress. Being more comfortable with the swing changes the weight transfer came back, and I was dropping my hands better at normal tempo. No doubt the swing still feels a little weird, and I'm not sure I'm getting "inside" enough yet, so I need a lot more repetition with Stephan's drills.

After the last swing in the video I saw a half-bucket of balls that someone left around, so I did more practice off camera without teeing up the ball. Some of them were full swings, great-looking draws that started off right of target. I'm happy to see some progress, even though I know there's tons more work to do. I've got a Men's Club round on Sunday and I don't want to look like a complete duffer.

[fersman4]

Here is my latest swing video, composed of "natural" full swings.

My natural full swing is slowly evolving from over-the-top to inside-out. The drills and visuals given to me by the evolvr.com folks seem to be working, but I think I'm only about halfway there. It's certainly easier to do the right things in a slower swing, so I'm still working at slower speeds to improve my muscle memory of the correct swing path.

Oh and Sunday's round wasn't pretty. It's safe to say my swing path was all over the place, and that hurt my consistency, both contact and flight path. Somehow my short game showed up and minimized the damage. Still didn't win anything because I'm not a sandbagger.

[BostonBrew]

Good stuff man. Glad to hear you're putting in the time and effort to improve. The video shows a mixture of good and bad. And your description of Sunday's round is something we've all experienced. But that's usually inevitable with swing changes.

[fersman4]

Stephan on evolvr.com analyzed my second video and told me what I expected: that I need to do more inside-out. And he gave me a new visual/drill to help me do it better. He told me to feel like my back faces the target longer during the transition. Makes sense to me! Looking forward to giving it a shot. Also a little worried because I've been striking the ball much better the last couple days. But I gotta keep my mind focused on the long term.