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Why Flaring Your Feet at Address Makes Golf Easier


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Posted (edited)

This post kind of proved that how there are very few fundamental truths in golf.

Flaring the left foot I can understand, but I play much better with my right foot square, it kind of locks me down into an athletic position. 

But then again, for some people, flaring out the right foot might help them.

 

Different strokes for different folks. 

Edited by Ks golf
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Posted

I'm about to head out to the course now. I'll definitely give this a shot. Seeing one of my main issues is not rotating my hips. Wish me luck! 

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  • 1 month later...
Posted

This site is a treasure trove of information.   every topic has something in there that can help improve my swing.  

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  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

Great video as always. I noticed something in my swing after watching this.... I lead knee (left knee) turns in rather than forward which I assume would contribute to issues. Well I'm going to work on this at the range. 


  • 11 months later...
Posted

So I've been struggling a little bit over the last couple of weeks with the game (HC is trending up, haven't been this high in a while).  Just wasn't striking the ball very well.  I was still scoring OK, but having to rely a lot on the short game from missing fairways and greens, but all scores were 78-82 range.  Went out yesterday on the course trying to figure out what i was doing.  Got behind our ladies Nine and Dine group, very slow, but allowed me to play around a little bit.  Finally after a few holes of hitting it poorly, I was standing on our fourth tee and it dawned on me after a couple of shots.  I looked at my stance and my feet were almost pointing in and then I remembered the foot flare from a TST thread and bingo, with the feet flared I started hitting the ball better immediately.   

Next 5 holes I flared the feet and what a remarkable difference.  Number 6 our 195 yard par 3, I hit 4 balls and all were on the green, not sure I've hit that green 4 times in a row ever.  Continued playing several balls on the rest of the holes and it was really quite remarkable how well I hit the ball.  Played the second 9 with a buddy of mine and shot 36 with a lip out birdie from 8 feet and a three-putt.  Thank you @mvmacand @iacas for all of the great tips!  

 

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-Jerry

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Posted
1 minute ago, jsgolfer said:

Thank you @mvmacand @iacas for all of the great tips!

Thank you. To others, give this a try. Yes, it will feel awkward at first… but the benefits, the things you get "for free," are worth a little temporary "weird" feeling.

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Erik J. Barzeski —  I knock a ball. It goes in a gopher hole. 🏌🏼‍♂️
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Posted
6 hours ago, jsgolfer said:

Thank you @mvmacand @iacas for all of the great tips!  

Happy it helped, just passing along good information 👍

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Mike McLoughlin

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Posted (edited)

I've said this many times, I'll say it again, this website is unrivaled in its accuracy of research based instruction. There is glut of info based on time honored tradition, everything is put thru the ringer of analysis.

Thanks guys.

Edited by colin007
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Colin P.

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  • 3 months later...
Posted

The other day I was hitting balls, hitting a lot of weak pushes and "pop  flies to right field". i felt like i couldn't get out of my own way.. I was lining up with my feet square to the target linne.  Si i flared out both feet, and even pulled my left foot, back an inch or so. all of  sudden I was able to get my left hip out of the way and turn through the ball, and starting making solid contact, and hitting the ball more or less straight with some power.  The stance just felt more comfortable.


  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

During my very first golf lesson, my instructor had me flare out my feet. The point of doing so was to help me on my turn which it absolutely did. But as the OP stated it has other benefits as well. This is definitely a good tip and has certainly helped my swing. A lot of the tips (possibly all of the tips) I have received in golf lessons are consistent with what @mvmacand @iacas post. I'm glad I found this site. It's an excellent resource. 

-Jimmy

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Posted
2 minutes ago, jimnm said:

A lot of the tips (possibly all of the tips) I have received in golf lessons are consistent with what @mvmacand @iacas post. I

You are exceptionally lucky then. Their instruction is backed with video analysis, pictures and tons of research . It’s one of the reasons I’ve stayed here for a good while. I’d say the majority of information I’ve received from lessons has turned out to be bogus. Anyway, glad you’re here and hope you continue to enjoy it  as much as I do.

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Posted
1 hour ago, Vinsk said:

You are exceptionally lucky then. Their instruction is backed with video analysis, pictures and tons of research . It’s one of the reasons I’ve stayed here for a good while. I’d say the majority of information I’ve received from lessons has turned out to be bogus. Anyway, glad you’re here and hope you continue to enjoy it  as much as I do.

Lucky indeed! Thanks, and glad to be here. Cheers!

-Jimmy

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"That tiger ain't go crazy; that tiger went tiger!" - Chris Rock

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  • 3 months later...
Posted

I definitely flare my feet. My front to 1 o'clock and my trail foot to 2 o'clock. For me it has completely eliminated coming over the top. I generally hit baby draws and my miss is a pull left so it also eliminates the right side of the course. I've found that my bad shots are always 1 of 2 things either I start with my hands too low or the I set up with the ball too far forward in my stance. I'm able to generate great power my drives and irons. Slightly over 300 with my driver 210ish with my 5 iron. Im 48yo 6ft and height weight proportional. I do have a slight duck walk naturally (1 o'clock). So I'm definitely a flared foot guy


Posted

This is a great read and has helped me understand my situation.  In 2016 I was in a motorcycle accident that degloved my left foot to where I had to have a tranmetatarsal amputation of all the toes. I retained the artch and part of the ball of my foot, however it has made life interesting.  In getting back into this game I have been wrestling with proper stance. I have found that by flaring my feet outward as noted in this thread, particularly my left foot, that my swing is smoother and more in control.  It feels natural and therefore I feel confident. I now know why it "felt better, smoother" the first time I tried it and why I will keep working along this line to improve my swing. 

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Posted

I have to say one more thing about this that I feel hasn't been addressed with this and that's stance width. My experimentation has led me find out that for me a wider stance with flared feet causes me not be able to shift my weight forward causing push slices and other terrible things. A narrow stance (feet under my hips not my shoulders) with my feet flared gives me great results but it gives the impression of a wider stance. I hadn't noticed anyone touch on this and I feel it's a critical piece to this puzzle

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    • Nah, man. People have been testing clubs like this for decades at this point. Even 35 years. @M2R, are you AskGolfNut? If you're not, you seem to have fully bought into the cult or something. So many links to so many videos… Here's an issue, too: - A drop of 0.06 is a drop with a 90 MPH 7I having a ball speed of 117 and dropping it to 111.6, which is going to be nearly 15 yards, which is far more than what a "3% distance loss" indicates (and is even more than a 4.6% distance loss). - You're okay using a percentage with small numbers and saying "they're close" and "1.3 to 1.24 is only 4.6%," but then you excuse the massive 53% difference that going from 3% to 4.6% represents. That's a hell of an error! - That guy in the Elite video is swinging his 7I at 70 MPH. C'mon. My 5' tall daughter swings hers faster than that.
    • Yea but that is sort of my quandary, I sometimes see posts where people causally say this club is more forgiving, a little more forgiving, less forgiving, ad nauseum. But what the heck are they really quantifying? The proclamation of something as fact is not authoritative, even less so as I don't know what the basis for that statement is. For my entire golfing experience, I thought of forgiveness as how much distance front to back is lost hitting the face in non-optimal locations. Anything right or left is on me and delivery issues. But I also have to clarify that my experience is only with irons, I never got to the point of having any confidence or consistency with anything longer. I feel that is rather the point, as much as possible, to quantify the losses by trying to eliminate all the variables except the one you want to investigate. Or, I feel like we agree. Compared to the variables introduced by a golfer's delivery and the variables introduced by lie conditions, the losses from missing the optimal strike location might be so small as to almost be noise over a larger area than a pea.  In which case it seems that your objection is that the 0-3% area is being depicted as too large. Which I will address below. For statements that is absurd and true 100% sweet spot is tiny for all clubs. You will need to provide some objective data to back that up and also define what true 100% sweet spot is. If you mean the area where there are 0 losses, then yes. While true, I do not feel like a not practical or useful definition for what I would like to know. For strikes on irons away from the optimal location "in measurable and quantifiable results how many yards, or feet, does that translate into?"   In my opinion it ok to be dubious but I feel like we need people attempting this sort of data driven investigation. Even if they are wrong in some things at least they are moving the discussion forward. And he has been changing the maps and the way data is interpreted along the way. So, he admits to some of the ideas he started with as being wrong. It is not like we all have not been in that situation 😄 And in any case to proceed forward I feel will require supporting or refuting data. To which as I stated above, I do not have any experience in drivers so I cannot comment on that. But I would like to comment on irons as far as these heat maps. In a video by Elite Performance Golf Studios - The TRUTH About Forgiveness! Game Improvement vs Blade vs Players Distance SLOW SWING SPEED! and going back to ~12:50 will show the reference data for the Pro 241. I can use that to check AskGolfNut's heat map for the Pro 241: a 16mm heel, 5mm low produced a loss of efficiency from 1.3 down to 1.24 or ~4.6%. Looking at AskGolfNut's heatmap it predicts a loss of 3%. Is that good or bad? I do not know but given the possible variations I am going to say it is ok. That location is very close to where the head map goes to 4%, these are very small numbers, and rounding could be playing some part. But for sure I am going to say it is not absurd. Looking at one data point is absurd, but I am not going to spend time on more because IME people who are interested will do their own research and those not interested cannot be persuaded by any amount of data. However, the overall conclusion that I got from that video was that between the three clubs there is a difference in distance forgiveness, but it is not very much. Without some robot testing or something similar the human element in the testing makes it difficult to say is it 1 yard, or 2, or 3?  
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