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Posted

Thanks again, @iacas and @mvmac . About the weight stuff, you're saying I should set up with my weight centered between toes and heel, and maybe further away from the ball?

I guess it's reassuring to hear my shoulder plane is alright, but I'm definitely lacking in rotation in one way or another. The difference at impact for example here is drastic:

Again, the golfer on the right has his right shoulder below the left, spine is bent sideways, and hips are way open. I'm also liking his right arm and elbow, how it's super close to his body and bent.

I don't rotate enough, which causes my body to stall, my right arm to lose it's bend and my hands to flip, and I stand up and early extend before impact so I don't hit it fat. Any good tips on how to properly turn through the ball? :roll:


Posted

I worked on my back swing yesterday, and I think I made some progress:

The problem is, of course, that I've had such a flat back swing for a long time I've developed a huge OTT move in the transition. It has produced some ok shots, as I've gone from under the plane to more or less on plane with my OTT move. I think it's time to change that once and for all now. I do like how my back swing looks now, quite similar to Dustin Johnson. My weight is indeed on my heels, but otherwise I think it's ok.

A1:

A2:

A3:

A4:

A5:

Here's the big flaw. My arms start working towards the ball right away in the transition, while Dustin (and virtually every other pro as well) brings them more or less straight down, keeping his left arm connected to his chest. It's something I need to work on.

A6:

As a result of the transition I'm way OTT and there's nothing I can do to fix it anymore. You can imagine the amount of slice my drives have because of this position. :roll:

I need to feel like my hands and arms work way down and away from the ball at the start of the transition. We'll see how it goes.


  • Administrator
Posted
I worked on my back swing yesterday, and I think I made some progress:

The problem is, of course, that I've had such a flat back swing for a long time I've developed a huge OTT move in the transition. It has produced some ok shots, as I've gone from under the plane to more or less on plane with my OTT move. I think it's time to change that once and for all now. I do like how my back swing looks now, quite similar to Dustin Johnson. My weight is indeed on my heels, but otherwise I think it's ok.

Yes, that looks like what you want to work on next. Right after you fix your balance - it looks too far back on your heels at address.

Couple of good drills or things you can do on your own, but start with using some driveway sticks in the ground like so:

The blue stick is outside the target line (white dotted line) and just at the top of your right shoulder, and about two inches outside your right shoulder (to your right).

The purple stick goes just inside the target line and angles inward at about the shaft address angle.

The blue stick doesn't allow your left arm (or clubhead) to shift out quite so much during the transition and early downswing, while the purple stick forces you to raise the handle and keep the clubhead outside (above) the stick.

Erik J. Barzeski —  I knock a ball. It goes in a gopher hole. 🏌🏼‍♂️
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Posted

Thank you very much for your advice, @iacas . I have been working on my transition move, and I feel like I've made some progress. The balance thing is putting me off though. If I set up with my weight closer to my toes I fell like it moves even further towards the ball during the swing to the point where I'm about to tip over, which is when I start pulling my upper body back and early extending like crazy. And I'm hitting so many shanks with irons that I'm actually afraid of going to course right now. Anyway, here are some stills from a driver swing from yesterday. I haven't had a chance to get some actual sticks for the recommended drills, so I've drawn them afterwards. Sorry for the angle being slightly tilted.

A1;

A5:

Hands are almost inside the line, definitely better than before. The angle of the image is making me look better than I actually am though. If you use the front edge of the mat as reference, you can see I already have my weight on my toes and I'm about to tip over. This is when I start pulling back slightly.

A6 (ish):

Loving that clubhead position coming from the inside, drastic difference compared to the previous swing.

A7.5:

Look at that, the whole club and my hands are actually between the lines. Yay.

I have a feel for the transition that seems to work, have to keep grinding it. My backswing is creeping back towards the flat side though, it's something I need to keep an eye on. Also the balance stuff is driving me nuts, but I guess it'll get better with time. Sad news is wind blew over my tripod with my phone, and now it has a broken screen and doesn't work anymore. I'll get it fixed but meanwhile can't take any video above 30fps. Oh well.


  • Moderator
Posted

A1 looks a lot better. Arms could be deeper at A5. As you're rehearsing the downswing, make sure the weight/lower body is transferring forward.

Mike McLoughlin

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Posted
Yeah, I agree about the arms at A5. I'm glad to inform though that I had the best range session of the season today. I was flushing a lot of my shots with what looked to me like a push draw. I've been pulling everything all my life so any shot that starts more to the right feels like a push, but they might have been straight draws as well. Either way, the shots felt great, sort of effortless. I'm concentrating on going deeper with my arms on the backswing, without letting my wrists get too active too soon so the clubhead doesn't overtake my hands. I also feel like I'm turning my torso more around my left hip so the right hip gains depth instead of the left getting closer to the ball. This leads to a position at the top where I feel like I have enough space under myself so to speak to swing from in to out. I don't have a camera right now to confirm what I'm feeling so I might have just gotten lucky today on the range. Either way, making solid contact has never been easier than today. Heading out to the course tomorrow, we'll see how that goes.

  • 1 month later...
Posted

Just a quick progress update. I've been playing more than working on my swing lately, but after a recent change to what to me feels like a flatter swing (I haven't taken a video lately so I don't for sure know what my swing looks like at the moment), I've been shooting some of my best scores. Couple weeks ago I shot an 83, besting my previous record by 4 shots, and yesterday I shot an 80. I was on track to breaking 80, but a dumb bogey on an easy par 5 on the 17th and a tee shot to a bunker on the par 3 18th made sure that didn't happen yet. Did manage to get up and down from the bunker though, which was cool.

This was on the easier of the two courses at my home club, just 5469 meters (=6000 yards). Handicap's down to 12.8. I will try to take some video next time I head to the range.


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  • Posts

    • He's not and GEARS doesn't really measure toward your midline. It's measured at the joint. That's not why his use of "midline" is bad (part of the reason is that your "midline" is twisted, the top of your sternum can be pointed at a different place than the belt buckle, and your shoulders protract and retract, too. I think he's just trying to use midline to say which way the arm is moving. But they have terms for that — adduction and abduction — so whatever.
    • They weren't necessarily short - I don't remember the exact specifics of all of it, but some of them were missing a little left or right or both. Day 1 they were landing on the edge and kicking on, where day 2 they were just missing and kicking down into the bunkers and did it a lot. I think all told I actually went into bunkers on 8 holes. Some of them were not good shots. Like a few examples, on 8, the pin was in the back. I hit it solidly, but pulled it and it went long, over the bunker into long grass. I had the ball in sandy earth with long grass around it and about a foot below my feet. That next shot I tried to do what I could but it went into the bunker in front of me. Into a footprint. That one I dug out of the footprint, but still in the bunker. Got that one out of the bunker, but into the fringe grass in front of me. Chipped that one on a bit hard and two putts later made a 7. Another was on 14. The flag was on the little finger of green front left. I tried to play a little past it and a little right. Shoved it maybe 10 yards right of where I wanted to and the carry over the bunker gets longer the further right you go and that one hit the grass between the green and the bunker and came back down into the sand, left it in there and didn't get up and down on the next one. I think carrywise it carried about as far as I was planning on it doing so. Another was on 6, leaked my drive a little right into the fairway bunker. Hit a nearly good shot from there that went a little left and a little short and kicked into the bunker front left. That was a strike thing and just a hard shot. Did similar on 18. Drive in the right bunker, slightly heavy second that hit the bank between green and bunker again and kicked back into the sand. I think the tiredness manifested more as not squaring the face up so well and less as slowing down.
    • Depends on how short you were coming up on these shots. A bit more wind? Also, maybe you were swinging at 2-3 mph slower the next day.  I think the biggest thing is not adjusting. Like making assuming your stock shot is not enough and taking 1 club up. Not sure what type of adjustments you were making in your decision making. 
    • No one should measure a joint mobility away from that joint. If you go to physical therapy, they are not measuring your knee mobility based on your midline. It is based at the joint. Shoulder mobility should be measured in reference to the shoulder joint. 
    • He's using a driver swing, while I used the iron swing. Bryson goes from about 65° B to 15° B, hence the 50°. If you bend your right elbow, you're going to pull your hands across your chest some. Conversely, if you abduct your right arm and hold onto a grip with your left arm, you can see how extending the right elbow as we do in the golf swing during the downswing will "pull" the right shoulder/humerus forward (adducting it, as going from 65° to 15° of abduction is). Even people who pull their right shoulder WAY too far around them eventually get it "back in front" when their right arm/elbow extends. So, such a motion shows up as shoulder adduction even though the movement that causes it is just widening the trail elbow. The left hand on the grip almost "pulls" the hands forward as the left arm can't stretch much (there's some shoulder protraction, but that's almost maxed out at P4). Oh, I downloaded it and watched it (and commented there) before he blocked me. It's what led to him posting the comment in the "update" above. 😄  Single shoulder range of 75°, and that's going out well into the follow-through. 50° Max range up to impact. Manavian's video is bad. He keeps saying "midline" which is just a horrible way to look at it. He also kept saying that the club was moving that amount — also wrong. Adding left and right together is really freaking dumb. Another golf instructor said "That's like saying the player has 100 degrees of knee bend (adding left knee bend to right knee bend) 🤦‍♂️" (similar to what the biomechanist said about squatting). Also, see my post above about elbow bend. That's why Plummer’s alignment stick demo is so intellectually dishonest. A golfer can't get anywhere near that position on the left with his left hand on the alignment stick (quoted below).  
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