My Swing (chspeed)

[iacas]

I agree with what you're saying. It gets across the line, and then it kinda swoops under.

I think you're working on the right thing. The elbow position will help, but the wrist conditions and forearm angles are the main driver here.

[chspeed]

2 hours ago, iacas said:

I agree with what you're saying. It gets across the line, and then it kinda swoops under.

I think you're working on the right thing. The elbow position will help, but the wrist conditions and forearm angles are the main driver here.

Thanks @iacas much appreciated.

Happy holidays!

[chspeed]

Getting to work on backswing while on vacation. I think that is helping quite a few things, especially the sweet spot path.

 

[chspeed]

"Covering the ball with chest" feeling

 

I think that my attempt to feel like I "swing from inside" over the years has caused me to stand up, lift my head, and hump a goat.

Over the past couple of weeks, i've been working on improving my backswing, and then swinging with a more "cover the ball with the chest feeling". This results in a swing that, in slow motion looks, at least to me, better. It also feels more powerful.

When I swing like this with any speed, however, I bring the arms over the top pretty consistently. To fight this, I'm practicing the feeling of "swinging" my arms down behind me as I cover the ball with my chest.

The big question: Am I on the right track here?

Here's some stills and video:

Still #1: Old setup on left, new setup on right. Look about the same.

 

Still #2: Top of swing, obviously the right is better.

Still #3: Impact

 

Video of practice swing, pausing at top and trying to swing arms down behind me (please ignore daughter walking by):

 

 

Now, here's a full swing, trying to get arms down behind me, but end up coming over top. I know the angle is a bit off, but it's still an over the top pull.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[chspeed]

Doing more practice and work on the backswing. Came across the famous Stubborn Steepness thread, which strangely helped a lot. Focusing on flattening on the downswing seems to take pressure off the flattening the backswing, which somehow made it easier to stop coming across the line!

Hitting foam ball indoors. In the caddie view, you can tell I was focused more on swing path so forgot to get forward.

 

[mdl]

Looks great!

[chspeed]

16 hours ago, mdl said:

Looks great!

Thanks! I'm pretty happy with it. In the past, I've been trying to flatten by pulling down the handle from the top while keeping the torso closed, which I now learned has the opposite effect! Now I feel like I'm starting with my torso pivot, which pulls the hands out and flattens the shaft. Crazy game.

[GolfLug]

Yeah, I will echo your sentiment. Progress seems very apparent. 

IMHO, you should still try to set right wrist earlier (I think it is inline with your priorities). Reason being the later you set it in your backswing, more it will require you to finish your backswing to lengthen to lay off club sufficiently. Not a big deal when practicing and you seem to transition with a good layoff and on plane quite nicely in your vids above, but as we all know that most of our on course swings can be a bit quicker in tempo and transition to DS usually suffers the most from incomplete 'lay off' when even a tiny bit anxious. I think it also has an added benefit of a more pitched right elbow at A4 and allowing you to shorten your BS with a larger margin of error for ensuring sufficient 'lay off' (sorta).

  

Edited January 16, 2019 by GolfLug

[chspeed]

6 minutes ago, GolfLug said:

Yeah, I will echo your sentiment. Progress seems very apparent. 

IMHO, you should still try to set right wrist earlier (I think it is inline with your priorities). Reason being the later you set it in your backswing, more it will require you to finish your backswing to lengthen to lay off club sufficiently. Not a big deal when practicing and you seem to transition with a good layoff and on plane quite nicely in your vids above, but as we all know that most of our on course swings can be a bit quicker in tempo and transition to DS usually suffers the most from incomplete 'lay off' when even a tiny bit anxious. I think it also has an added benefit of a more pitched right elbow at A4 and allowing you to shorten your BS with a larger margin of error for ensuring sufficient 'lay off' (sorta).

  

Great point, and definitely a concern of mine. I completely agree. I've already noticed that if there is any tension in the wrists in transition, the club won't lay off and will come down steeply. I will continue to work on getting the club a bit more laid off at the top. I have been working on that for a while, and I did manage to change the picture. I will work on incorporating that and this flattening move over the next few weeks.

It's interesting to see how a few of the other things I can't figure out (e.g. goat hump), seem to improve when you I get the club on a better plane.

Thanks!

[GolfLug]

10 minutes ago, chspeed said:

It's interesting to see how a few of the other things I can't figure out (e.g. goat hump), seem to improve when you I get the club on a better plane.

Thanks!

In my experience if I am not rotating my chest open through impact, my pelvis wants to goat hump. It is one of those things I have had to practice consciously - i.e. rotate chest through impact while maintaining incline. It's hard to do as we are so instinctively 'ball bound' at impact.  

[chspeed]

5 hours ago, GolfLug said:

IMHO, you should still try to set right wrist earlier (I think it is inline with your priorities). Reason being the later you set it in your backswing, more it will require you to finish your backswing to lengthen to lay off club sufficiently.

Tried practicing the feeling of combining the flatter backswing with the flattening downswing (video below). I think this will be hard to bring to the course because I've had so many years of being steeper and the steep -> flat feeling feels more natural to me. I'm also worried about overdoing the flattening and  hooking the ball (which has been a tendency). My question is, do you think it's worth the effort to try and learn   this kind of backswing, or should I stick with a bit of a steeper backswing? Would love to hear from you or others who've tried to make that change. Thanks again!

 

 

[GolfLug]

2 hours ago, chspeed said:

Tried practicing the feeling of combining the flatter backswing with the flattening downswing (video below). I think this will be hard to bring to the course because I've had so many years of being steeper and the steep -> flat feeling feels more natural to me. I'm also worried about overdoing the flattening and  hooking the ball (which has been a tendency). My question is, do you think it's worth the effort to try and learn   this kind of backswing, or should I stick with a bit of a steeper backswing? Would love to hear from you or others who've tried to make that change. Thanks again!

 

 

Damn dood.. that looks really good! It's hard to hook if you lead with right elbow and wrist lag as long as you maintain your spine incline and turn rates through impact - super important.

That looks much more loaded. I could play with this swing all day. Look up YouTube of some tour players. It's amazing how much they flatten shaft in downswing from A4 to A5. They do it by bending back right wrist full bore with a nice snug pitch right elbow.

 

[chspeed]

10 hours ago, GolfLug said:

Damn dood.. that looks really good! It's hard to hook if you lead with right elbow and wrist lag as long as you maintain your spine incline and turn rates through impact - super important.

Thanks @GolfLug! You're right about the turn rates, you can tell I decelerate and kind-of stall out in this swing. Will continue to work on this and see how it looks with real balls and more speed on the range. Wish it wasn't ducking January.

 

[chspeed]

Took a few caddie-view videos, and while the backswing and shallowing pieces looked great on the down-the-line view, my hands were falling way behind the body once I looked head-on view. Here's some practice, and swings to get things on track. Feeling that the hands come out more while letting club "lay off".

 

Edited January 18, 2019 by chspeed

[chspeed]

More work on shallowing. I’ve noticed that every day, I have to start with slow swings (5 percent speed or something), rehearsing the feel over and over again. Only then can I add some speed. Duh, only took me about 5 years of hearing it on this site before I finally understand. 🤓

Here’s the slow practice, followed by a swing of maybe 50-75 percent. 

 

[chspeed]

Just looked at impact. Very happy. I've been trying to get my body in this type of position for a long time by trying to force the butt back or forcing the head still. Could never really do it. Here I'm just focusing on shallowing the swing and all of a sudden those fall into place. Thanks Sandtrap!

[phillyk]

On 1/7/2019 at 2:25 PM, chspeed said:

Still #1: Old setup on left, new setup on right. Look about the same.

Want to come back to this, because there is an important distinction in the two set ups.  On the right, your head is slightly higher/chin up and the spine is then straightened, which helps for this:

On 1/19/2019 at 7:47 PM, chspeed said:

Just looked at impact. Very happy. I've been trying to get my body in this type of position for a long time by trying to force the butt back or forcing the head still. Could never really do it. Here I'm just focusing on shallowing the swing and all of a sudden those fall into place. Thanks Sandtrap!

I like your progress though.  In the process of getting shallower, it looks like you've released your wrists a bit later (from A6 to A7) and compressed the ball a bit more!

[chspeed]

6 hours ago, phillyk said:

Want to come back to this, because there is an important distinction in the two set ups.  On the right, your head is slightly higher/chin up and the spine is then straightened, which helps for this:

I like your progress though.  In the process of getting shallower, it looks like you've released your wrists a bit later (from A6 to A7) and compressed the ball a bit more!

Thanks @phillyk I appreciate the input!

I'll watch out for the setup, and continue to focus on the flattening piece. I'm having a hard time doing it at full speed, but will continue to practice.

Edited January 23, 2019 by chspeed