Action Into Impact

[spentmiles]

I've been working on getting into proper position heading into the impact zone.  I feel like I'm getting to this position in my swing (Picture of Louis Oosthuizen just to make it clear as to what I'm talking about):

My hips have turned, which has brought the club toward the impact zone without casting, and my shoulders are still relatively closed.  I've always had dead hips and an overactive right shoulder, so it's taken a lot of work to understand these feelings.

My question is, what is the action once you are in this position?  I've played around with a few different approaches:

1. Pulling the butt of the club toward the target, mostly with the left arm, through impact.

- I don't feel like the club really releases and there's power left on the table.

2. Swinging with just the arms while keeping the right shoulder back.

- This feels really different - keeping that right shoulder back and firing the arms.  While it feels powerful, there's a timing aspect to it that I don't like.

3. Feel as though I'm swinging the inside of the right wrist so as to keep the bent right wrist angle and the left wrist bent too (the opposite of flipping), which keeps the club face closed into impact.

My bad shots are mostly fat, with the club entering the ground behind the ball, which eats up all the power.  They still go straight but there's not compression whatsoever.  The good shots really go down and through the ball and I feel that compression, lots of power and piercing ball flight.

It feels as though there should be another move in the sequence after I've cleared my hips, shifted my weight, and got the club horizontal to the ground.  Can anyone describe what that move might be?  How do you get from the above photo to here:

[jclark]

My feel: 1. Shift weight 2. Open hips 3. Open torso (feel like I'm pulling them open with my right shoulder blade; feels like my chest is parallel to target line when next step starts) 4. Fire arms/hands/clubs (Feels like I'm doing this step very late, since I used to be very armsy) I feel like steps 1,2,3 are slow and the step 4 is explosive. If I rush or explode too soon then problems arise. I feel like I have to remain extremely patient until step4. These are my feels/thoughts. My 2 cents :)

[spentmiles]

Do you feel like Step 4 (fire arms,hands,club) is powered by your arms, like mostly an arms swing?

For years, I tried powering the swing with the shoulders, mostly the right shoulder, which led me to casts and coming over the top.  Last night, on the course, I experimented with turning the right shoulder only to parallel with the target line (instead of turning it past the ball), and then swinging hard with the arms.  It felt to me like an arm swing, but the results were good.

Do you think it's accurate to say that all the motions proceeding Step 4, (weight shifting, hips opening, shoulders returning to parallel) are just to get the arms into position to swing?  I know that it's not really an "arms swing" because all of that coil and release has sent energy into the arms, but coming from a place where I just sort of flung the arms or flailed them around me, it's a noticeable difference.

[Ernest Jones]

Rotate, straighten legs and raise the belt buckle.

Easy to drill, hard to do...

[spentmiles]

From the drill and in your normal swing, do you feel as though you are holding the club square through impact rather than rolling it closed?

I spent a lot of time in the past researching and experimenting with ways to close the club face through impact that required "forearm rolling" and "hand rolling", etc.  They were all active ways of moving the club through the impact zone with forearm action.  But in this drill, and other similar impact drills (stick the alignment rod into the grip's hole and don't let the rod touch your left side), it seems as though they are holding the club face square through impact and not doing any rolling motion whatsoever.

It seems like to have the shaft leaning forward at impact, you can't be rolling it because rolling would straighten the shaft and bring it vertical.  So, should you feel as though you are sort of dragging the squared club face through impact, rather than trying to release it through with some sort of rolling or flipping or releasing action?

[Ernest Jones]

Originally Posted by spentmiles

From the drill and in your normal swing, do you feel as though you are holding the club square through impact rather than rolling it closed?

I spent a lot of time in the past researching and experimenting with ways to close the club face through impact that required "forearm rolling" and "hand rolling", etc.  They were all active ways of moving the club through the impact zone with forearm action.  But in this drill, and other similar impact drills (stick the alignment rod into the grip's hole and don't let the rod touch your left side), it seems as though they are holding the club face square through impact and not doing any rolling motion whatsoever.

It seems like to have the shaft leaning forward at impact, you can't be rolling it because rolling would straighten the shaft and bring it vertical.  So, should you feel as though you are sort of dragging the squared club face through impact, rather than trying to release it through with some sort of rolling or flipping or releasing action?

I'm not qualified to give any kind of instruction but I'll give you some of my "impressions". Dragging the handle or raising the handle is probably a good feel. I would stay away from any "rolling" sensations and just let your body pivot guide you. I think that if you just do the drill without any analyzing or overthinking you'll start to get a good feel for it.

[jclark]

Once you do steps 1-3, your club should be in the slot, enabling you to fire as hard as you want thru impact. I feel like I'm pulling the club thru with my left side.(too much could lead to pulls) If I feel my right side doing any work it tends to lead to a flip or me stopping rotation/pivot all together. This is what works for me. Trying new things will definitely feel foreign and weird. I would recommend getting advise via online lessons (evolvr) or going to a reputable golf pro and get lessons.

[saevel25]

That drill is nice, its very similar to some of the drills Erik has posted, flat left wrist, with the preset drill. It does incorporate getting the belt buckle to point up in the follow through.

Originally Posted by spentmiles

From the drill and in your normal swing, do you feel as though you are holding the club square through impact rather than rolling it closed?

I spent a lot of time in the past researching and experimenting with ways to close the club face through impact that required "forearm rolling" and "hand rolling", etc.  They were all active ways of moving the club through the impact zone with forearm action.  But in this drill, and other similar impact drills (stick the alignment rod into the grip's hole and don't let the rod touch your left side), it seems as though they are holding the club face square through impact and not doing any rolling motion whatsoever.

It seems like to have the shaft leaning forward at impact, you can't be rolling it because rolling would straighten the shaft and bring it vertical.  So, should you feel as though you are sort of dragging the squared club face through impact, rather than trying to release it through with some sort of rolling or flipping or releasing action?

What these drills tend to do is, take the want to feel the roll out of the swing, and the flipping out. The club is closing into impact by natural body rotation.

Feel isn't real, as the motto goes. We can all say what we feel, and you would get multitude of answers. For me, i don't feel any arm/hand rotation at all in the downswing. I really just focus on hip rotation. If i rotate my hips in the downswing, and rotate through the ball, good things happen. Sometimes i got to get my club to work inside, or i pull draw, i am still working on a solid feel for that movement, its subtle. If i try to much feel with the hands, i hit steep divots, and sometimes flip. I think its mostly practice the motion to make it habit, then go stupid monkey on it and not have it as a swing though while playing :p

[mvmac]

Truth is once you get to that position Louie is in, there isn't enough time to actually execute any swing thoughts.  Not saying you can't work on and improve the downswing but once you get to A6 (shaft parallel to the ground) you either got it or you don't.

To improve the downswing and stop hitting it fat check out drills for Key #2 and #3

http://thesandtrap.com/t/61376/5sk-video-thread

http://purestrike5sk.com/videos.php

Originally Posted by Ernest Jones

I'm not qualified to give any kind of instruction but I'll give you some of my "impressions". Dragging the handle or raising the handle is probably a good feel. I would stay away from any "rolling" sensations and just let your body pivot guide you. I think that if you just do the drill without any analyzing or overthinking you'll start to get a good feel for it.

For most, rolling sensations work against the player and tends to rotate the path to the left, across the ball.  Regardless of what the player tries to do, the club head is closing on the downswing, so there's no need to manually "close" the face.

[spentmiles]

Thank you all for your replies.

As I've thought about this more today, I think that I've been approaching the hip turn wrong, which has complicated the move through impact.

Since my hips were so dead for so long, I really overdid the hip turn.  From the top of the back swing, I was firing my hips to angle toward the target.  My hands didn't have time to drop into the slot.  It was a really fast and violent hip turn, an overcompensation...

From looking at more swing sequences, I see that the hips and the hands (arms, whatever), work together.  When the hips are turned in the back swing to -45 degrees (relative to the ball), the hands are at their highest point.  When the hips have turned to 0 degrees (belt buckle facing the ball), the hands have dropped to just above belt level, wrists still set, shaft vertical on plane.  Then when the hips move toward the target, 45 degrees or so, the hands are now even with the ball, and the club is slotted.  That's when you can fire the club and complete the turn so that the hips eventually face forward.

I'm thinking that the timing is the important thing.  The hips and hands have to move together.  You don't want lightening fast hips and slow arms, otherwise you'll get stuck.  You don't want fast arms and slow hips, or you're just arm swinging, most likely coming over the top.  They need to move together in a fluid, graceful motion, so that their relative positions are reached gradually and momentum is built up in the swing, which is then released through the faster motion of impact.

And the funny thing is, the timing seems natural when I think of the hips connected to the arms with a string.  As the hips shift and rotate, the arms have to move down, as they are connected through the musculature of the core.

Does this make sense?