My Swing (Pretzel)

[Pretzel]

I'm heading back down to the same indoor facility tomorrow. I was planning on doing it today, but I was given two bags of apples today that happened to contain wasps within them. I didn't feel comfortable driving further than just going home knowing that they were in the vehicle, so I'll let them die from the cold tonight before I head out tomorrow to film my swing.

I did, however, drive a golf cart to a nearby course to play and hit some golf balls as well as play nine holes. I found that I need to make it a priority of mine to straighten out my large draw to a much more reasonable level and be comfortable with a small draw. I never was before since I always felt like it could still go straight, but I need to fix that in order to play collegiate golf next year.

This afternoon when I was hitting balls and playing I worked on the toes up exercise and noticed that to accomplish this without feeling like my ankle was rolling in an odd manner I would have to narrow my stance. After doing this it felt like it was a bit more natural, but I still can't get it to feel right in a normal swing after around 100 shots with it. It feels great in a practice swing, but I'm not sure what I'm doing different in a normal swing to make it feel so different. I'll record to see if there is as large a discrepancy as it feels like.

I think doing this drill more times with smaller swings could help. I pretty much just went about a normal warmup/practice session and round, except did everything with the idea of keeping the toes of the rear foot up.

[Pretzel]

I had recorded some swings on October 28th, but looking back at them they were clearly pretty awkward and not very representative of what I am currently doing. I will try to get to the indoor facility again on Tuesday, when I should have time to get there and record some more swings.

It does feel now like I'm starting to become comfortable with the right heel staying down. Either that or I'm drifting back to my old ways.

[Pretzel]

Alright, here's the videos. With schoolwork picking up recently I got a bit distracted and I apologize for the delay in the new videos. In addition to this, I'm happy to report that the indoor facility I go to is upgrading their cameras to above potato quality soon.

Wedge DTL:

Wedge Front View:

Driver DTL:

Driver Front View:

It felt to me as though the big things I need to work on now are staying down through impact (as opposed to standing up) and continuing to work on the right heel staying down in the driver swing. It feels to me like I almost fold myself down into impact, sort of scrunching together, before springing back out in the follow-through to achieve this. To get the whole staying down part I did practice quite a few swings where I tried to stay held down without rising up into a full follow through, but I won't upload those swings right now.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated. Right now I'm just working on what I see, but I'm certain there must be things I am missing here.

[iacas]

Basically…

• Bend the right elbow sooner.
• So you don't bend it at a super fast rate later (and swing long).

You're too closed at impact, too, but first things first…

[Pretzel]

Basically…

Bend the right elbow sooner.

So you don't bend it at a super fast rate later (and swing long).

I greatly appreciate it! I had a feeling I was missing something large since I have developed a more frequent hook miss recently.

[Pretzel]

Alright, it's been a while (and from my brief look at the swings, I appear to be struggling from the same things after not having played at all recently), but it warmed up enough for me to go out to the driving range the other day and I recorded a couple of wedge swings (the stable stick is great, though the angle is a bit low from it considering I had to place it at a lower portion of the range behind me to get the whole swing into frame). I plan to be more active this coming summer as I push towards scratch, but only time will tell if all goes to plan. I had the same idea last summer but a number of different things ended up getting in the way.

Wedge DTL

Wedge DTL Slo-Mo

Wedge Front

Wedge Front Slo-Mo

In the videos from the front I had a greater focus on trying to stay down through the shot and not let my heel rise early, which is a bit noticeable.

[SavvySwede]

Love the tempo with the wedge. I tend to get a little slow on the backswing. I did notice a change in your hand position. Seems they they want to move back to the same position you had when you stood a bit farther away from the ball.

[Golfingdad]

1 hour ago, Pretzel said:

Alright, it's been a while (and from my brief look at the swings, I appear to be struggling from the same things after not having played at all recently), but it warmed up enough for me to go out to the driving range the other day and I recorded a couple of wedge swings (the stable stick is great, though the angle is a bit low from it considering I had to place it at a lower portion of the range behind me to get the whole swing into frame). I plan to be more active this coming summer as I push towards scratch, but only time will tell if all goes to plan. I had the same idea last summer but a number of different things ended up getting in the way.

Wedge DTL

Wedge DTL Slo-Mo

Wedge Front

Wedge Front Slo-Mo

In the videos from the front I had a greater focus on trying to stay down through the shot and not let my heel rise early, which is a bit noticeable.

Swing looks great but you need to work harder on keeping a steady hood. :)

[Pretzel]

15 minutes ago, SavvySwede said:

Love the tempo with the wedge. I tend to get a little slow on the backswing. I did notice a change in your hand position. Seems they they want to move back to the same position you had when you stood a bit farther away from the ball.

Interesting observation. Over the summer I had begun to setup such that my arms hang vertical for the most part with my wedges and short irons, versus the more stretched position I had earlier. I had not noticed that my arms were going further outside my body to start my swing since it wasn't something I was looking for at the time. The two big issues I've been trying to work on (that are directly related to each other) are the right heel becoming unplanted early and my upper body lifting through the downswing. I did notice my elbow getting too far behind me again though.

5 minutes ago, Golfingdad said:

Swing looks great but you need to work harder on keeping a steady hood. :)

Yeah, unfortunately that's what I've had problems with since I can remember. My upper body lifts drastically when my right heel comes up, and for some reason I feel trapped and hit it much shorter (and often fat) on the occasions when I am able to stay down through impact without my heel or torso rising. Upon further review, it looks as though I've even rising on the toes of my lead foot through impact, meaning it's gotten worse than it was previously.

[Golfingdad]

43 minutes ago, Pretzel said:

Interesting observation. Over the summer I had begun to setup such that my arms hang vertical for the most part with my wedges and short irons, versus the more stretched position I had earlier. I had not noticed that my arms were going further outside my body to start my swing since it wasn't something I was looking for at the time. The two big issues I've been trying to work on (that are directly related to each other) are the right heel becoming unplanted early and my upper body lifting through the downswing. I did notice my elbow getting too far behind me again though.

Yeah, unfortunately that's what I've had problems with since I can remember. My upper body lifts drastically when my right heel comes up, and for some reason I feel trapped and hit it much shorter (and often fat) on the occasions when I am able to stay down through impact without my heel or torso rising.

What?  No, I was just trying to be funny about your floppy hood.  Your head looks pretty darn steady to me. :)

[Pretzel]

2 minutes ago, Golfingdad said:

What?  No, I was just trying to be funny about your floppy hood.  Your head looks pretty darn steady to me. :)

Ha ha, okay. I mean, my head moves up with my torso quite a bit in the downswing. 

Perhaps I could gain additional consistency by taping the hood down in my swing? 

[billchao]

2 hours ago, Pretzel said:

Perhaps I could gain additional consistency by taping the hood down in my swing? 

I wouldn't worry too much about it. Most courses don't allow you to wear a hoodie anyway. Better focus on other priorities 

[Pretzel]

16 minutes ago, billchao said:

I wouldn't worry too much about it. Most courses don't allow you to wear a hoodie anyway. Better focus on other priorities 

I dunno, those courses seem like they're fancier than I could afford. Perhaps I could compromise for them and cut the hood off entirely, thus making it into something that isn't a hoodie?

[Golfingdad]

1 hour ago, Pretzel said:

I dunno, those courses seem like they're fancier than I could afford. Perhaps I could compromise for them and cut the hood off entirely, thus making it into something that isn't a hoodie?

You might acquire the nickname "Belicheck" if you did that. 

[Pretzel]

Went to the range today and thought I was making good progress to keep myself from standing up straight at impact. I then videod myself and saw how wrong I was. I will be returning to the range tomorrow in an effort to make better progress to post.

Edited March 31, 2017 by Pretzel

[Pretzel]

Both shots below were meant to be low fades, hence the weird looking follow through on the wedge shot. It was windy and rainy, so I was practicing some lower trajectory shots while working on trying to stay down trough impact better.

I finally managed to fix the slow motion video so that you actually get to see most of the 120 fps I recorded in! For some reason when I was pulling the file straight off my phone it wasn't actually downloading the full 120 fps video to my computer, but I managed to fix it. Youtube still clips the framerate a little bit, but I could improve that (if desired) by slowing the video down a bit further so that the Youtube framerate manages to see all of the frames.

I also got some new irons, which is the main reason I went out despite the rain. A new (to me) set of Mizuno MP4's, and they feel great! 

6-iron swings:

Pitching Wedge swings:

 

One thing I noticed is that my downswing appears to be really steep in these swings, but I think that's a result of the low fades I was trying to hit with each. I will try to capture more video of "stock" swings when the weather gets better. I'm going to try to get out tomorrow, but I can't guarantee anything since some weather sources are predicting snow in the morning. 

As for staying down in the shot, it would appear that my right heel is still coming up much too early. I'm still not completely sure on how to correct this issue, and I'm also unsure as to whether I should be working on this or the next thing I noticed.

The final big thing is that my arms are definitely overswinging still. I thought I was doing better keeping my arms in front of my body more, but these videos show just how far past parallel the club is going as a result of my arms going way further back than my hands. I definitely need to work on this more (I had it much better at the end of last season, but over the winter it appears I've lost it), but I'm unsure whether this or staying down in my shots is a bigger priority.

[Pretzel]

Went back to the range today. Over the top on everything, it was disgusting. I need to figure out what I'm doing with the attempted changes that's also affecting my transition.

[iacas]

On 4/6/2017 at 11:38 PM, Pretzel said:

Went back to the range today. Over the top on everything, it was disgusting. I need to figure out what I'm doing with the attempted changes that's also affecting my transition.

Put a stick over your right shoulder and just outside your golf ball. See how keeping the left arm in a bit more helps things out.

You take your hands out and up at the start of the backswing, too.