Report

Day 8: More mirror work on the same stuff; neutral grip / centered turn.

Day 224 (13 Dec 24) - Friday men’s group session / teamed up with course greens keeper and his assistant.  Was a very “meh” round as I underplayed the putter more than anything.  Driving was okay, irons were good. Wedges were strong - even had a couple green side pitches rattle the flag and lip out for near miss birdies.  Fun part was we were busy repairing pitch marks - like three to each one we made.  Best lesson was really seeing the course from the perspective of the ones’ who take care of it.  

I might describe "engaging the legs at setup" a little differently. I'd say to bend at the ankle a bit more to get the knees more towards the balls of the feet. It actually looks better in your old set-up and wouldn't be the cause of a sway. A sway is when...well it's when you do in the backswing what you are currently doing with your knees/legs in the downswing. When your knees move laterally away from the ball it will cause you to move your center of rotation...your spine... back behind the ball and make it almost impossible to get back to the ball in the downswing. As for your knee action in the downswing, that's causing you to get no benefit of the ground forces and wasting a lot of potential for speed through impact. How should the knees work? Think about jumping straight up with your feet close together. Your ankles bend forward, your knees bend and you push straight up through your pelvis and body. Now stand with your legs apart like in the golf set-up and think about if you wanted to jump to the left. You would still bend both legs the same way but you would push up through your right leg harder than your left and again, you would push up the leg into the pelvis. Now do the same jump to the right. More push up the left leg into the pelvis than with the right. That's what your left leg needs to do through the downswing to use the ground forces. Your left leg will push your left pelvis back and behind you as you come into impact instead of straightening after impact. I hope that makes sense.

Your concept of the swing is off. Think of it this way. The club travels in a circle around your spine. The larger the circle the more speed you can achieve. So how do you make the circle bigger? By pulling your hands into the spine or by pushing them away from the spine? What will this fix in your swing? Your collapsed right arm and bent left arm. So, from the beginning of the backswing I would have you feel like both your right arm and left arm are pushing away from your body. Your right arm is collapsing...your right bicep is contracting...feel your right bicep extending as you take the club back. While you're doing this make sure that your right elbow stays pointing to the ground...that is external rotation of the humerus. Think of it as if you are losing an arm wrestling match. The right forearm and right hand rotate behind the elbow. On the downswing you have to maintain the external rotation of the humerus. You have to continue the feeling of losing the arm wresting match while pulling the right elbow around the body. Right now you are slamming you opponents arm to the table with internal rotation which is partly causing your pull. Your left arm isn't externally rotating either...it must...and it should push out away from the spine through the swing as well. Everything you are doing is shrinking your swing circle instead of expanding it. Your set-up will have to change obviously as currently you have the ball positioned where you will hit it only if you pull in and not if you push out. There's more but that should be a good place to start.

If your swing is repeatable and give you the distance and ball flight you like and you can score well with it...well...there's absolutely no reason to think you need to change it! Now do I think your swing is the prettiest in the world? No, I don't but I don't like Matt Wolfe's steep take away or Scotty Scheffler's footwork either! Will all 3 of you score better than me day in day out? Probably so!!! All that being said, if you wanted to change anything it looks like your backswing is what looks off while the downswing mostly looks fine. I would suggest trying to implement small changes and not overhaul everything all at once. Two areas I see would be keeping your left arm straight and turning your upper body earlier in the backswing. To straighten the left arm you actually need to think about the right arm. From the beginning of the backswing try to feel both right and left arm pushing the club out away from you. Your right arm does not need to collapse to less than 90 degree angle and in fact should be greater than a 90 degree angle. The more it collapses, the more you will bend your left arm. What causes it to collapse? Either you are pulling in with your right arm contracting your bicep or you are pulling your right shoulder blade back into the center of your back too aggressively. You will need to figure out which you are doing and how much is good and how much is too much. It's difficult to push away with your right bicep AND pull your shoulder blade aggresively across your back so addressing the arm may fix the shoulderblade. Turning the upper body should be an easier fix and may be easy to accomplish with simply thinking about it in different terms. Everybody refers to it as a "shoulder turn". I'd have you think about it as a "chest turn" or even "turning the entire rib cage" in the backswing. The point of it is to make sure your sternum...the center of your chest...is turning back away from the target. Those are the two big areas of your backswing that make your swing look less aesthetically pleasing than others. I hope this helps some!