My Swing (Pretzel)

[Pretzel]

I've been Playing Golf for: 12 years, but only seriously for the last 4

My current handicap index or average score is: 5.1 (will update every 2 weeks) 7706075

My typical ball flight is: Draw/Push Draw

The shot I hate or the "miss" I'm trying to reduce/eliminate is: Block to the right

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Videos:

First off, I'm sorry I couldn't find a newer video. This is just the one I had on hand to give a point of reference as to where I came from earlier this spring. This was filmed sometime in March I believe, but only uploaded to V1 golf for me to use recently. Since then I've worked on staying much more down through the swing, shortening the backswing, coming more from the inside (not quite as far over the top as the video), and keeping my lower body rotating all the way into the finish instead of stalling after I hit the ball.

However, this swing will give a general idea of how I swing the ball, and I will be able to film my swing tomorrow (with my phone) and add that as well.

At the time of this video, my ballflight was a slight fade that I still would occasionally block if I let my hips quit before I hit the ball and got my hands stuck.

[Pretzel]

To add clarification to some of my problems my driver is my Achille's Heel, so to speak. I will hit 3 wood as often as possible just to keep it in the fairway, which I've found drastically increases my chances of hitting the green. When I hit the green, I make more birdies etc. I'm just not sure what the difference for me is between my driver and 3-wood swing that I will hit the 3-wood so much better. When I go to the range to film I'll make sure to get one of each for comparison.

Looking at this swing, I also see that it's excessively armsy. It went long mainly because I let my wrist breakdown at the top rather than keeping it flat, which likely meant I was casting the club (a likely source of inconsistency).

[stb5089]

In this swing your coming up and out of it a decent amount (losing your spine angle and toosh line pretty noticeably). I would try to quiet down the feet especially the right foot before and at impact.  Also it looks like your takeaway involves a lot of wrist hinge, i prefer to set the hands more towards the top of the backswing. Good luck with everything

[Pretzel]

New swings from this afternoon:

Driver, Down the Line

Driver, Front View

8 iron, Down the Line

8 iron, Front View

I apologize for the lack of slow motion in these, Windows Movie Maker wasn't cooperating. I'm trying to get something to replace it since it doesn't like .avi files, so I'll repost these videos with slow motion if needed.

[theworldengine]

Club face too open up top, and right knee is pointing away from target line thru impact

[boogielicious]

Your swing looks pretty good to me.  Your driver set up appears to be the same as your irons with the exception of ball position. When I do this, the driver ball flight is lower and harder to control.

Here are some threads to check out.  A while back, a lot of us were having trouble with the driver when trying Stack & Tilt.  Erik, Dave and James put out these videos and threads about it.  For me, I was just coming in with too steep of an attack angle and ball flight was low and had a lot of spin.  I set up with my hips a bit more forward now which presets hitting up more.  there is another video of James with driver that shows how to hit a high draw, but I could not find it.

http://thesandtrap.com/t/44307/hitting-up-or-down-with-the-driver-in-an-inline-pattern

http://thesandtrap.com/t/42933/stack-and-tilt-driver-loft

[Pretzel]

Originally Posted by boogielicious

Your swing looks pretty good to me.  Your driver set up appears to be the same as your irons with the exception of ball position. When I do this, the driver ball flight is lower and harder to control.

Is there any other way you have of describing this "hips forward" change in your setup with the driver? Are you just not standing quite as leaned over for it, or is it something where you don't really get your butt sticking out as much?

I'm don't think I could really help out with this by describing a swing method that I use, because I don't know what methodology my instructor teaches and have never thought to ask him.

Originally Posted by theworldengine

Club face too open up top, and right knee is pointing away from target line thru impact

This is one thing that confuses me. From what I have been told, a clubface that is open has the toe hanging down at the top. When I stop both my driver swing and my 8-iron swing at the top the clubface appears to be pointing straight at the sky. I could be wrong though, it has been a while since I went over face angle at the top with my instructor.

Also, I'm still working on making Movie Maker behave with .avi files. I will post slow motion once I finally figure out what it's issue is.

[Pretzel]

Driver Down the Line Slow-Mo

Driver Front View Slow-Mo

8-iron Down the Line Slow-Mo

8-iron Front View Slow-Mo

[Pretzel]

I recently took a lesson and fixed a problem that remained hidden in these recent videos.

I had been making a fairly large change in my swingpath from the backswing to my downswing. My backswing was incredibly flat (easier to see when you can see how far the club is behind me) and I refrained from hinging my wrists until I got almost all the way to the top. From there I would come down on plane, but this is a likely reason for why a hook became my miss recently since I would sometimes be unable to correct in time.

I'm currently working on hinging my wrists earlier in the swing to counteract this and have had much more success with ballstriking consistency. It gives me more wrist hinge overall and allows me to save more of it as lag on the downswing when I feel like my wrists work more at the bottom of the swing both on the way back and through.

Furthermore, as a point of interest, my instructor told me to try and hit a fade before he fixed my flat plane coming back and I found myself unable to hit anything but a push-fade if it was turning to the right. Even after he fixed my backswing plane a pull-fade eluded me, which he said has something to do with my arm in relation to my shoulder angle. I find myself simply unable to create a steeper plane with my arm at the top than I have with my shoulder.

Finally, I have changed my setup posture slightly. When drawing out the angle on-screen, he showed me that my posture with a wedge and iron was 55* or more and still over 50* with a driver. This created a situation where I would have extremely deep hands at setup (shaft pointing below the zipper on my pants) but would need to "stand up" through impact to allow the shaft to come up to a more reasonable angle at impact. Part of this is due to having much longer arms than I am tall (armspan of 6'2", only 5'9" tall), but standing slightly taller at address has helped me stay in the shot a little more. I still do stand up with my legs but my upper back bends slightly to compensate.

Overall, I am much happier with my current swing than I was before and will try to get videos up (ones that show the entire club throughout the swing) sometime soon.

[Jakester23]

The swing looks real smooth. I would love to have that tempo. How often do you see your instructor I was thinking of getting lessons over the winter or early spring and I was wondering how often I should go for lessons.

[Pretzel]

I honestly haven't seen him as much this year compared to last summer. He has a deal where I can get lessons for $50 each, provided you buy them in groups of 10. I still haven't taken more than 8 lesson this year, compared to almost 20 last. This year I've just felt much more comfortable tweaking my swing on my own since he really gave me a good idea of what I should be doing, but I still touch base with him every so often.

[flopster]

Hey, you look like you do the same thing as me regarding your right foot, look at my swing video and read mvmac's advice,funy also were the same index lol.

[Pretzel]

I've had a few lessons since this last swing, but not the time nor thought to really take video of it. I'll try to sometime soon, provided that either the weather stays nice here or that I can get to an indoor facility.

[Pretzel]

Alright, time to revive the thread after getting a 3 month pass to a local indoor facility that is being refitted with new high speed cameras and a Trackman at each station (it's the same place as in the first video). While these things haven't happened yet, I'm looking forward to having a place to practice in the winter since it also has a chipping and putting green indoors.

Sorry, but this time I only have driver swings to show, but I'll add some more soon (and by soon I mean sooner than my last soon).

Down the Line, Normal Speed

Front View, Normal Speed

Down the Line, Slow Motion

Front View, Slow Motion

The two biggest things I notice personally are my right heel coming off the ground early in the downswing (I'm trying to fix that, but not quite sure how to go about doing so) and my spine angle straightening out significantly at impact. It almost looks like the two might be related, and it sort of appears as though I fall back on the swing even though nearly all my weight is on the front foot.

Watching the video it kind of looks to me like I get myself into a decent spot at the top and go downhill from there once my right heel comes up.

[Pretzel]

I'm heading to the same indoor facility tomorrow afternoon to film my swing again (with both driver and irons), but in the meantime I figured it might be interesting to post a couple statistics of mine throughout the high school tournament "post-season" (I purged all my data before the regional tournament and restarted using the regional tournament and the state tournament plus practice rounds).

Fairways: 58% Hit, 26% left, 15% right

Greens in Regulation: 60% hit (I don't have a nGIR stat though, using Golfshot to track these)

Scrambling: 45%

Sand Saves: 40%

Putting: 1.88 per hole, 2.22 per GIR (this stat was inflated a bit due to the slippery slopes of the greens at the state tournament, but those greens highlighted a weakness for me)

Over the rounds I had 0% eagles, 13% birdies, 54% pars, and 33% bogies.

Par fives played easiest for me, averaging out as a par over the rounds, with par 3's being the hardest with an average of 3.4 strokes per par 3 and 4.2 per par 4. In these rounds I had a scoring average of 75.75 on the two par 72 courses. Putting and scrambling likely played a large role (with the former hurting the latter as well) in why my scores were above par. Even just making 2 more up and down's per round and one more birdie putt would get me to around even par. 60% GIR is nothing that to complain about, but I would ideally like to improve it since the courses I play are easy compared to what pros play (state played 7100 yards, regionals at around 6800). My wedge game (both full swings from the fairway and partial swings around the green) could be improved quite a bit since a majority of my approach shots on par 4's and 5's were played from inside of 150 yards. Working on those two things, in conjunction with putting (which is slightly problematic for me since the nearest course has green that only roll around a 7 or 8, compared to most of the RMJGT and CJGA tournaments being closer to 10 or 11) should at least help me reduce scores. The number of fairways I hit is reasonable since the rough is a non-factor at every course I've played thus far as long as you're not more than a dozen yards off the beaten track, making it completely worthwhile to go for a longer drive as opposed to an accurate one (honestly the rough can be more desirable sometimes as the ball will land and stick instead of rolling back a couple yards when it lands).

This is just what I can see from this data, but I wish I could know the percentage of GIR a PGA tour player would hit from 125-150 yards (the current data on the PGA Tour website is skewed since it's only through a couple events, the leader is at 100% currently).

Just for a reference round, this is my scorecard from the regional tournament. It's an odd one, but it's the only one that Golfshot has uploaded so I can access it on my computer so far so it's all I have right now. The date is off, but that's because it has the date that the scorecard was uploaded instead of the date I entered it (I entered my tournament rounds the afternoon that I played them, since they frown upon electronic device usage during tournaments).

[Pretzel]

Sorry about the double images of my club during the swing, that's a byproduct of Windows Movie Maker. Watching the swing in V1 you don't see that, but in Movie Maker you do. I'll try to find another program to slow down the video that doesn't do that before I next post swings.

In these swings I appear to still be getting onto my right toe early, and I'm a bit unsure as to how to approach it. It would be the advice in your "toes up" video that I would want to follow, correct?

Driver DTL:

Driver Front:

Long Iron DTL:

Long Iron Front:

Wedge DTL:

Wedge Front:

[maddog0512]

I'm not qualified to give advice but where is this indoor facility? I'm also in CO (near Golden) and would love a place to practice over the winter.

[Pretzel]

It may be a bit of a drive for you since its in Erie, but it's a pretty nice stop there and they're upgrading everything this winter. It's called Leonard's Golf if you want to look it up. Adobe of the planned improvements are a trackman in every video stall, and they're adding a second simulator too.