My Swing (allenc)

[allenc]

I spent many days at the range last month, mostly doing drills working on the same thing: more "out then down" and less "down then out".  If I wasn't just doing methodical drills to get it right on camera I was experimenting with swing thoughts to see if there is a magic 'trick' that would get me doing it automatically.  As of now, there isn't.  I suspect this will be more of a "one centimeter per month" rather than a "eureka" kind of improvement.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure if I've even improved one centimeter.  I got decent at doing slow motion swings or very small swings that have me looking a lot better on camera but I've yet to get that image even one time during a full swing.

Here is a vid where I do a couple pumps from the top, trying to get moving in the right direction, then hit it on the third.  Pretty much my favorite practice method since the alternative has me pausing at 5 which often causes me to readjust before hitting the ball.

Here is a swing where I do a slow motion rehearsal, followed by a full swing.  Although I'm not sure when I took this shot, It likely followed a couple dozen "pump" swings and definitely followed a month of similar practice.  Never the less it doesn't look much better than the beginning of the month in my opinion.

Here is the image at 5 in the rehearsal.  Probably have the shaft pointed a bit too far outside the ball but I guess I'm exaggerating.  My right arm mostly straight back at the camera and my left elbow very in front of me.

Here is the image from the real swing.  Not nearly so much of either.  But comparing it to the similar image from the beginning of the month below, it looks like I have my left elbow a bit more down shallowing the shaft a tiny bit.  Maybe thats optimistic thought, basically the same thing.  Obviously haven't got much more "out".

Finally, just today I decided to take a video of some swings without the ball to see if they look better.  It turns out they very much do.

Of course it's a well known difficulty using your "no ball" swing to hit an actual ball but at least I can be encouraged by that image.  One problem might be those practice swings could be a little shanky, so with the ball there I adjust to make sure I hit it.

[SavvySwede]

I tend to see my own faults in the swings of others so I noticed your hands go outside the plane they created at address. If you look at the lines I drew you'll see the hands move away from you maybe 4-5 inches from A1 to A2.

Keeping the upper part of the left arm closer to your chest will help keep those hands on the proper side of that wall.

[allenc]

14 hours ago, SavvySwede said:

I tend to see my own faults in the swings of others so I noticed your hands go outside the plane they created at address. If you look at the lines I drew you'll see the hands move away from you maybe 4-5 inches from A1 to A2.

Keeping the upper part of the left arm closer to your chest will help keep those hands on the proper side of that wall.

I gotcha.   So do you think the fact that I'm moving my arms away from my chest here in the takeaway leads to them being too "stuck" to my chest later in the downswing?  I can see how it might get me set up to swing too much "out" and since I won't be able to make contact that way I compensate by keeping my arms behind me on the first move down.

Kind of contrarian but it makes sense so I'll give it a shot.

[iacas]

I don't know that I'd worry too much about the backswing. Your position at A4 is quite good.

Some pictures of my own making:

The first image shows the difference. Pump on the left, real swing (tracked down to about A6.5 or so) on the right. The hands just want to pull in or stay closer to you later in the downswing.

The "no ball" swing is also not quite as good as you seem to think. It still suffers from the same issues as before. In fact, the shaft is even steeper on the "no ball" swing than on the blue dots swing to the left.

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Here's one more that's going to be important:

Jason's lead arm is "out" more here. Were he the same "dimensions" as you, he'd also have a greater angle (closer to straight) between the shaft and his lead arm, too, but you're taller AND standing closer to the ball a bit, so the angle is almost the same.

Here's what you've got to do, though, basically:

• Keep the hands swinging out. While right now your hands track the red line below, I want them to feel like they track the green line on the ground (image below).
• Move a bit farther from the ball if you need to.

You can see how in this image if you drew a line from your eyes to your hands that it would appear to trace near the red line. I want it to feel and look more like your hands are going out so far that they would obscure the ball from your vision. I want you to feel like you're going to swing well, well outside and over the golf ball with the clubhead because you're taking your hands so far "out."

You may hit more shanks than usual. You will likely need to have a little bit more "ulnar deviation" in this move. And again, feel free to back up from the ball a little bit, but you won't need much.

[allenc]

I think I've begun to become guilty of trying to make too good a swing rather than just work on one thing.  I had another video from earlier this month I meant to post where I got my arms well out at the expense of really steepening my shaft but couldn't find it.  So I ran out and recreated it and a couple others.

I can typically succeed in doing this move.  This is me trying EXTRA hard to swing my arms out and around:

 

Here is another 'pump' drill where I do try to hit the ball, but I try EXTRA hard to make the real swing look like the rehearsals.  The second one was the same thing but trying a little harder to make contact.

 

This is pretty much like the top video but with a silly exaggerated rehearsal.  I'm throwing it in just for the heck of it.

 

If I got the "out" part right on any of these, maybe I can begin to work on what's wrong with them.

[iacas]

I like the whiffs. Do more of those, but start to hit the ball.

I'm not being sarcastic… If you could imagine yourself freezing there, and me grabbing the club and pulling it down toward the golf ball and you still holding on to the grip, what would change about your body's positioning?

You'd probably be bent over just a tiny bit more. Your left shoulder would be a bit closer to the ground and your left side would be "crunched" a little bit more.

So, while the whiffs are good (much better arm angles, club inline with the hands nicely…), practice the exaggerated "outward" movement of the hands while thumping the ground. Then put a ball there. Thump the ground while still moving the hands OUT. You'll have to bend your left side a little bit more to do it… but not much. You're only two or three inches from a good swing.

Good job changing the picture, @allenc!

[allenc]

Here are a couple swings emphasizing bringing bringing my hands straight back on the takeaway as @SavvySwede and @iacas suggested as well as fully hinging my wrists.  My previous outside takeaway came from trying to do such an abrupt wrist hinge.  It ended up making more sense to my body to hinge more gradually if I was to change this.  In fact, in the shot below I don't quite get the shaft straight up at position "umbrella" but by the time I'm at the top it's is nearly parallel so that seems pretty good.  In these videos I'm not trying to do anything special on the downswing.  I also included the rehearsals because in another recent post I claimed I could make my real backswing look like my rehearsal so I'm putting my money where my mouth is.

 

 

 

I believe I am well hinged above but it looks like I'm also swinging back pretty far so that could be some of it.

Im pretty inline about 6 inches before impact but my backswing hinge is as large is I can figure out how to do so any further improvement would probably have to happen on the downswing.

 

In the two images below I'm refraining from moving my hands outside on the takeaway and my right arm is beginning to gain depth at a3 so that's good.

[iacas]

Good to see, @allenc.

Take a little time with this. When you next submit to evolvr, let me know what the shots are doing, but try to submit swings where you don't have too many thoughts (or any thoughts). It's good to "wipe the slate clean" and re-assess now and then.

You might still work on a familiar thing, but let's take a fresh look again. The hinging came easily, but then was lost a little. That was first most important.

[allenc]

2 hours ago, iacas said:

Good to see, @allenc.

Take a little time with this. When you next submit to evolvr, let me know what the shots are doing, but try to submit swings where you don't have too many thoughts (or any thoughts). It's good to "wipe the slate clean" and re-assess now and then.

You might still work on a familiar thing, but let's take a fresh look again. The hinging came easily, but then was lost a little. That was first most important.

Good, I was just thinking something along those lines.  All of my submissions were of swings that came after 30 minutes or so of working on something.  I though perhaps I would try and video a couple of tee shots during a round to send in next time.  That way we can see what a "real" swing looks like.

[allenc]

I spent 3 short range sessions working on left elbow to belly button ideas and it seems like something I might be able to work with.

A few thoughts:

- After the first session I decided to abandon the "belly button" part of the thought.  Trying to bring the elbow there really had me swinging my arms very low and around and pretty violently.  I obviously have the wrong idea about where my belly button is.  I changed to "drive elbow out toward the target", or even "toward left field".

- During the second session I made swings that felt better using the above thoughts.  I hit a few shanks at first until I tried doing the elbow move even faster which seemed to help.  I hit more thinnish shots than normal.  I felt like I could drive the elbow for a foot or two from the top but it was difficult continuing the feeling all the way through the swing.  I think I was sort of stopping at that point and just letting momentum take me through.  Video confirmed that the first couple feet down look a bit better but not really after that.

- Next session I tried more to get the feeling deeper into the swing.  I felt like I had a bit more success and that I need to just keep practicing the feeling a driving the left elbow farther and farther into the swing.  Ie. all the was to impact and beyond.

Here's the video of my final swing of my final session:

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As I said above, the position at A5 in this swing looks a bit different from my previous swing.  It looks like my left arm is more behind the right and that I'm holding the angle better.

Before:

After:

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I still can't really see that the impact is any better.  If anything my hands are further back in the "after" shot.  But the ball looks like its back as well so it's probably a wash.

Before:

After:

[iacas]

Looking good/better @allenc!

[allenc]

8-9 GIRs in each of my last three rounds.  Unfortunately I didn't even come close to approaching what this chart says  (84, 88, 90).

[iacas]

2 hours ago, allenc said:

8-9 GIRs in each of my last three rounds.  Unfortunately I didn't even come close to approaching what this chart says  (84, 88, 90).

95-2*GIR = 77 to 79. Yeah.

So are the missed GIR costing you big time?

[allenc]

21 hours ago, iacas said:

95-2*GIR = 77 to 79. Yeah.

So are the missed GIR costing you big time?

I'm not complete sure what was going on.  The two highest scores were courses I don't play much.  One was target golf where I didn't know the targets, and the other I was not used to the greens and had a lot of problems there.

The later was yesterday (actually 89 not 90) and I hit 8 greens but only made 5 pars all round.  I also only had two holes worse than bogey (double and quad).  On both of those I was actaully right next to the green in reg, so that was pretty ugly.  Hit lots of putts and chips well by the hole that I couldn't tell was downhill. Had four 3 putts and two 1 putts.

The 84 the other day I remember I just had 3 ugly holes and did really well otherwise.  I had three bad long game shots in a row for a 9.  And two 4-shot-from-next-to-the-green-holes.

In general though, I feel like my putting is ok and that my short game is better than terrible but maybe I'm fooling myself.  My green side bunkers might be an even split between over the green, chunked up to the top of the lip, and a solid shot onto the green.  So that part of my game is bad.  I do better if the sand is a little harder.

I hit a lot of drives that I wasn't very happy with and I have little idea which direction it's going to go, but I didn't really rack up the penalty strokes or anything.  I could usually advance my second shot pretty far, and I obviously hit the greens that I hit.  So it doesn't seem like my driver completely did me in.  I'm pretty sure I hit a very high percentage of greens from something like 90 - 140 yards.  Possibly more than I hit from 9 - 14 feet.

 

[allenc]

Yesterday:  9/18 GIR on a short but fairly challenging par 64.

Today: 8/9 GIR on a short executive course with 7 pars 3s and 2 pars 4s.

The latter only had one approach shot with a numbered club but they were all in full swing range so I'm still very happy with it.  On the one missed green I aimed away from the water and flared it farther left so even it wasn't very bad.

Also that's 27 holes while hardly sniffing a fat iron shot.  Several thinnish, but none bladed.

[allenc]

So here's me after a day or two of trying to eliminate flip/add lag/flatten right wrist and match backswing length to through swing length in my putting stroke.

I don't think I'm quite doing it correctly here even though it may look ok on camera (or it may not).  I'm sort of thrusting my hands forward through impact as I try to keep the club head back which feels way too involved.  And I don't get the timing right every time.  In the last few days I think I've improved the above to be a little smoother and by just using tempo and focus on making both halves the same length to accomplish the same thing.  I haven't seen what this next iteration looks like on camera yet though.

Yeah, and after 72 holes of using Game Golf, erm, something tells me that the full swing may not be my priority:

Ok, most of this was while screwing with my putting stroke mid round, and some of those putting strokes should be attributed to short game (because I use putter from well off the green and sometimes the rough).  And maybe some short game should move to approach because I think it counts 50-100 yarders as short game.  But I'm trusting that, ballpark, my first two columns are good and my last two columns are shit.

[iacas]

5 hours ago, allenc said:

So here's me after a day or two of trying to eliminate flip/add lag/flatten right wrist and match backswing length to through swing length in my putting stroke.

It looks good, really.

5 hours ago, allenc said:

Ok, most of this was while screwing with my putting stroke mid round, and some of those putting strokes should be attributed to short game (because I use putter from well off the green and sometimes the rough).  And maybe some short game should move to approach because I think it counts 50-100 yarders as short game.  But I'm trusting that, ballpark, my first two columns are good and my last two columns are shit.

I think it only counts strokes made from on the putting green as putts.

[allenc]

13 minutes ago, iacas said:

I think it only counts strokes made from on the putting green as putts.

It's possible that it's a gps and mapping issue.  But I simple can't find a shot made with the putter that it didn't count as a putt.  And if that shot was for birdie it counted it as a GIR.