My Swing (billchao)

[Golfingdad]

Haha thanks, Steve. You're a lot more excited about this than I am, shows how tough I can be on myself I guess. It's been too long since our last round, BTW.

Your swing is way too pretty to turn in triple digit scores so we get excited seeing something in the 80's ... Even without knowing the specifics. :)

[billchao]

Your swing is way too pretty to turn in triple digit scores so we get excited seeing something in the 80's ... Even without knowing the specifics. :)

Thanks! I will try my best to keep the audience happy going forward

[SavvySwede]

http://www.gamegolf.com/player/billchao/round/559370

Not really sure what to make of this round. I scored well, but mostly because the course lets me get away with errant tee shots. Kept hitting push fades all day so that's promising from a swing change point of view: path no longer +12° so open face at impact causing push fades - makes me wonder if I didn't develop this swing path because of my inability to "square" the face in the first place. Problem with that is I kept lining up to play a draw and missing everything right. Still, my misses were playable even though my contact felt like crap most of the day.

Tried to play more irons off the tee to mixed results. Somehow managed to push my 5I and 6I into the trees at times. Kind of surprised I scored as well as I did, but I pitched the ball well for the most part and didn't miss a single 4 footer (which is good since my lag putting sucks and I leave myself too many 4 footers, but at least I improved my putting in one aspect).

Seriously, I tried to play conservatively off the tee and still managed to grossly mis-hit tee shots. So much for that side of the argument.

Could have played better, could have played worse. A few bad breaks, a few good ones. That's golf.

62% fairways hit though.

[billchao]

62% fairways hit though.

Oh right, forgot to mention that in my post. That's some kind of GameGolf error. It counted a bunch of fairways I hit on other holes in the fairway accuracy stat. I emailed them about it. It's really 38% fairways hit, which is actually still good for me. Hitting irons off the tee helped.

[b101]

Oh right, forgot to mention that in my post. That's some kind of GameGolf error. It counted a bunch of fairways I hit on other holes in the fairway accuracy stat. I emailed them about it. It's really 38% fairways hit, which is actually still good for me. Hitting irons off the tee helped.

Love that! At least it's still the short grass

[Abu3baid]

Nice Bill!

I took a look at the round and if you take a look at the GG picture you can see what you did on 4 & 7..

You played the 7 fairway from the 4th tee and the 4th fairway from the 7th tee

Them the breaks right!!  Keep it up.  (i.e. playing well I mean)

[billchao]

Love that! At least it's still the short grass :-D

Nobody said I had to hit it in [i]my[/i] fairway! Plus, I needed the challenge of getting the ball back on my hole through the trees ;-) [quote name="Abu3baid" url="/t/70666/my-swing-billchao/510#post_1192658"]Nice Bill!   I took a look at the round and if you take a look at the GG picture you can see what you did on 4 & 7..  You played the 7 fairway from the 4th tee and the 4th fairway from the 7th tee :-D Them the breaks right!!  Keep it up.  (i.e. playing well I mean) [/quote]I also played the 2nd from the 8th hole, only to learn that my 6I doesn't climb fast enough to clear the tree in front of me. I pured that 6I, too. Oh well :-) Funniest part about that hole is the fact that I've played it many times, mostly hitting driver, and that's the farthest right I've ever hit a tee shot there. With a 5I. I hit a few trees pretty solidly yesterday :-D

[billchao]

Wanted to see why I was topping the ball when I last played. @SavvySwede mentioned that I was swaying off the ball a bit, so I wanted to address that, and discovered through my videos that I was lifting up the right elbow again. Focus is back to keeping the elbow against my body (feel) and bending my knees a little bit more and letting them bow out (I'm stealing this move from Vince). Apparently, even though my feet are flared, my ankles are rather flexible, so my knees are still pointed forward instead of outwards and my linkage isn't optimal, leading to a hip sway at the beginning of my swing.

New videos after doing some work on that front:

Best swing I've ever recorded.

[billchao]

Haven't uploaded any videos in a while, so here:

 

Big toe miss on that DTL video which is my typical miss these days. Got a lot of good things going on in the swing otherwise. Wrists are more stable at A4 and the path is less in to out. I've been hitting the ball pretty well lately and this is why.

Some pitches:

 

I've been pitching pretty well lately, too. Cleaning up the extra wrist action in my full swing has bled into my pitch swing.

My putting still needs work. I've got all winter coming for that soon.

[SavvySwede]

Haven't uploaded any videos in a while, so here:

 

Big toe miss on that DTL video which is my typical miss these days. Got a lot of good things going on in the swing otherwise. Wrists are more stable at A4 and the path is less in to out. I've been hitting the ball pretty well lately and this is why.

Some pitches:

 

I've been pitching pretty well lately, too. Cleaning up the extra wrist action in my full swing has bled into my pitch swing.

My putting still needs work. I've got all winter coming for that soon.

Don't start saying stuff like that already.There are still a few precious months left.  Swing is looking good though, just gotta watch for that club going across the line at the top.

[billchao]

Don't start saying stuff like that already.There are still a few precious months left.

Swing is looking good though, just gotta watch for that club going across the line at the top.

Thanks. I noticed that, too. It's better than what it used to be when my wrists broke down at the top, but it's still there. I could probably get away with feeling more laid off at the top.

[billchao]

Played around with some feels the other day and didn't get around to uploading the videos.

 

The only change is feeling like I'm leading the downswing with my right elbow, pushing it out and in front of me. Helps keep it from pulling slightly behind my body during transition and tipping the clubhead across the line.

[billchao]

I haven't played a lot lately, but still working on the swing. I went back and devoted my time to making a proper centered pivot. I don't like how I've been doing it for a while, letting the upper body translate away from the target late in the backswing and rotating around (for lack of a better term) the right hip instead of letting it turn towards the target. To that end, I've been flaring my right foot more at setup and feeling like I'm pulling the right hip up and behind me instead of just feeling like I'm turning the hips in general, which for me leads to a bit of a slide.

 

I also made one adjustment with my grip: switched to a reverse overlap. Something about how my interlocking fingers tense up during the swing makes me feel like I can't downcock my wrists enough to get the clubhead down to the ball enough. It may or may not be true, but I like the reverse overlap. Feels like the right hand is in complete control and the left is just helping to stabilize the club through the swing.

Still working on keeping the swing shorter, much more successfully than before. You can see in my practice swing that I go to A4 (feels like A3) and I trust it more now so I'm better at stopping myself there and starting the downswing earlier.

Right elbow still slides behind me at transition and the hips still outrace the arms. I adjusted the latter by reducing the amount of front foot flare at setup to try and stall the hips a little.

 

It's better. The change is subtle, but everything is more in sync. Backswing is cleaner, too, because the left knee is able to turn in a bit more as I turn. Impact looks more dynamic with the hips pushing forward instead of spinning around. I don't think I'll have any issues with possible harm to my ankle or anything since I transfer the pressure to my left heel as I swing and spin my foot as I come around to the finish. I'm going to stick with this setup.

[boogielicious]

Keep plugging away Bill. It is looking good. And don't forget to rake up those leaves!

[billchao]

7 hours ago, boogielicious said:

Keep plugging away Bill. It is looking good.

Thanks, Scott. Next year will be the year!

7 hours ago, boogielicious said:

And don't forget to rake up those leaves!

We have to rake several times during the season because of the four mature red oak trees in our yard and everything that blows into it from neighbors' trees. They're old trees. I'll go out and estimate the height of one of them in a bit. I'm guessing in excess of 70'.

That's just everything that dropped this past week since we raked the previous weekend. The leaves are almost all down now, so we're just waiting to do a final cleanup.

[boogielicious]

2 hours ago, billchao said:

Thanks, Scott. Next year will be the year!

We have to rake several times during the season because of the four mature red oak trees in our yard and everything that blows into it from neighbors' trees. They're old trees. I'll go out and estimate the height of one of them in a bit. I'm guessing in excess of 70'.

That's just everything that dropped this past week since we raked the previous weekend. The leaves are almost all down now, so we're just waiting to do a final cleanup.

I hear you on both counts? I worked hard on a few priority pieces this year, but want to increase my efforts. The driver is still my big weakness.

As for leaves, our neighbors lost a big old maple this summer. It turns out that accounted for at least 10 bags of leaves. We only had four this year. I did miss the color though.

[billchao]

35 minutes ago, boogielicious said:

I worked hard on a few priority pieces this year, but want to increase my efforts. The driver is still my big weakness.

Yea, tell me about it. I can't even take a shorter club and hit that off the tee instead, sacrificing distance to keep the ball in play. I just need my swing at home to the course with me, which I've been better at this year, but it's so easy to make the wrong move on the course because I'm not focused on the mechanics as much.

41 minutes ago, boogielicious said:

As for leaves, our neighbors lost a big old maple this summer. It turns out that accounted for at least 10 bags of leaves. We only had four this year. I did miss the color though.

14 bags was just our first round of raking, and we didn't do the entire yard. I'm expecting to more than double that.

I estimated the trees are over 90' tall. I used a crude clinometer (a right triangle from one of my kids' toys) on one and shot the distance to the tree with my rangefinder, got 33 yards. The tree is 104" around at my waist level. We have 4 of them, though 2 are slightly smaller.

Here's a picture of some leaves I took just because:

[nevets88]

That's a big difference Bill, looks great. I didn't realize you used an interlocking grip. Does the shortened swing translate to longer clubs? 

You hear tips about shortening your swing, like think going halfway. I had to think as short as possible to get it be a little short of parallel. To get a backswing that ends at A2, I have to think okay, take it back 1 inch.