My Swing (Yossarian)

[Yossarian]

Ok, just to change "subject"... I haven't seen many member swings about bunker play, so here is one.

Sand was a bit wet, using a 54 wedge.

Most of the times the outcome of my swings there are:

- skulled ball that enters in to orbit

- chunked shot that stays in the bunker

- if I am lucky, something in between\

below you can see one of each

 

[Wanzo]

This thread (below) and video inside is a good place to start.  It's a little hard to tell from the angle but it looks like that ball is pretty far back in your stance.  I'd consider moving it forward and getting the shaft more vertical, less forward press at address.  

 

[Yossarian]

Another subject I always struggle to grasp is the shaft angle at address vs impact.

For what I understand, there are people (Kirk Junge, Dechambeau) who advocate an upright position at address in order to minimize the compensations you have to make to hit the ball.

In my high handicapper experience, staying "tall" helps a lot in consistency, because the head remains relatively in the same position, because the spine angle does not change. When I start instead the swing more bent over the ball and with the arms hanging under the chest, I have to resort to every possible compensation (standing on toes, chicken wings, etc) to avoid chunking the club 10 inches before the ball. It's still a mystery to me how better players make room for the arms without lifting the head

Below "tall" and "traditional"

 

 

 

30 minutes ago, Wanzo said:

This thread (below) and video inside is a good place to start.  It's a little hard to tell from the angle but it looks like that ball is pretty far back in your stance.  I'd consider moving it forward and getting the shaft more vertical, less forward press at address.  

 

 

thanks! I will give it a try

 

 

[Slowcelica]

Here's my two cents, sign up for evolvr and get some consistent instruction. But before you do that make the commitment to improve. Reading through your thread everyone is telling you to change your grip, but you refuse to do it, because you hit bad shots when you change it. If you want to improve your swing, be prepared to play worse for a while, and by a while it depends on how much you practice, if you practice correctly, if you shut out random advice, golf shows, and youtube instructors. Listen to your instructor only, or you'll never get anywhere. The golf swing is complex, you change one small thing and it fixes other things, but until you get your swing in a good place it exposes 10 compensations you do to make up for that 1 bad thing, like your grip. So if you want to improve expect to get worse first and I mean 10 shots a round worse, I'm not where I want to be yet but when I first started doing lessons my scores went up at least 10 shots around and it was very frustrating. I stuck with it though and I improved, next golf season I had dropped down into the 90's and then low 90's and now depending on the day I can even get into the 80's. Get a good instructor, evolvr is good, and only listen to them, end of my rant.

[iacas]

@Yossarian, given that this is a Member Swing topic and not a general topic on swing theory or something, I'll be relatively brief:

Most PGA Tour pros don't "early extend" as you're doing in your image(s), and your "traditional" has a much lower handle that's closer to you than we typically see from PGA Tour players:

They then manage to stay much closer to that posture through impact - though the handle raises a bit. Much closer than you remain:

THAT is how they manage to set up as "bent over" as they do (which is less bent over than you seem to think and how you demonstrated, with the club farther from their bodies than in your setup, too), and they don't need to early extend and raise the hands that high (without the hands also going out, which yours barely do - the right arm at impact).

[iacas]

7 minutes ago, Slowcelica said:

But before you do that make the commitment to improve. Reading through your thread everyone is telling you to change your grip, but you refuse to do it, because you hit bad shots when you change it. If you want to improve your swing, be prepared to play worse for a while, and by a while it depends on how much you practice, if you practice correctly, if you shut out random advice, golf shows, and youtube instructors. Listen to your instructor only, or you'll never get anywhere.

Tough love time: throughout this topic we've continued to see two flaws over and over and over again. They are a) you sway back with your hips and tilt toward the target on the backswing, and b) your grip.

You've never really fixed either, and you wander off and return and just say "how do these look?" and they look about the same.

Improvement is a change, yes? So I've never really understood why people are so reluctant to change things. Laziness? Maybe. It can't be because you don't know what to change - the posts here have been very consistent in that.

So, look, you need to do two things, IMO:

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1. Go here and sign up: 

General Discussion - Evolvr - Online Golf Instruction

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For general discussion related to golf instruction and golf in general.

2. Read this and live it:

 

[Foot Wedge]

Ok I generally don't comment on swing threads because I am wildly unqualified to give instruction, but I want to chip in because my swing looked a lot like yours before I took lessons.  Same overswing, same spine tilt, same hooks.  But it looks like your grip and hip rotation have been repeatedly brought up as something to fix.  Additionally it seems like you head to the range, take a few full speed cracks at the instruction given by fellow golfers and teaching professionals alike, see poor results, and then continue to hit balls, letting the old muscle memory take over.  Not a good formula for change.  

I get if you don't want to waste money on range balls that you hit at 1/4 speed.  Get some foam balls or something and SLOW DOWN.  Yeah it feels weird as shit but read @iacas's post about practicing and ingrain the right move.  You don't even have to hit balls.  Do the wall drill and practice your backswing (with the correct grip).  Stand in front of a mirror and check your progress.  Again, I don't generally give advice and I am not even a good player, but I've attached a picture of my change so you see what you can do when you s low the hell down and focus on what is right in front of you. 

[Yossarian]

Quote

Tough love time

haha, don't worry, I understand the spirit

 

33 minutes ago, iacas said:

They are a) you sway back with your hips and tilt toward the target on the backswing, and b) your grip.

Ok for the grip, but I really thought the reverse pivot was kind of improved, at least compared to the first page of the topic

 

36 minutes ago, iacas said:

Improvement is a change, yes? So I've never really understood why people are so reluctant to change things. Laziness? Maybe. It can't be because you don't know what to change - the posts here have been very consistent in that. 

It's probably (at least in my case) a combination of:

- knowing how much it gets worse and not knowing for how long.

- not fully understand the benefits. Grip example: I still can't see what are the compensations I do (and I am sure there are many) because of that and how they affect negatively the whole swing

 

44 minutes ago, iacas said:

Go here and sign up: 

I will give it a try in mid February (including, yes, a grip change!), when it gets a bit warmer here. I have the luxury of having a driving range at a couple of minutes from where I work, so I can spend the lunch break there

[Yossarian]

14 minutes ago, Foot Wedge said:

I get if you don't want to waste money on range balls that you hit at 1/4 speed.

Thanks.

Actually, I have an all you can hit membership at the range, so I don't have any excuse for not practicing slowly 🙃

1 hour ago, iacas said:

They then manage to stay much closer to that posture through impact - though the handle raises a bit. Much closer than you remain:

Ok... still, if you turn my left hand in to a more proper position, the setup is not that different from... ehm Justin Rose?

[iacas]

1 hour ago, Yossarian said:

Ok for the grip, but I really thought the reverse pivot was kind of improved, at least compared to the first page of the topic

Probably a little bit since then, sure.

1 hour ago, Yossarian said:

It's probably (at least in my case) a combination of:

 - knowing how much it gets worse and not knowing for how long.

- not fully understand the benefits. Grip example: I still can't see what are the compensations I do (and I am sure there are many) because of that and how they affect negatively the whole swing

Well, one of the compensations is that you probably "feel" the face being "shut" or closed, so you swing out to the left quite a bit. With a face more "open" you won't have the instinct to swing out as much, because the ball won't go right as often.

1 hour ago, Yossarian said:

I will give it a try in mid February (including, yes, a grip change!), when it gets a bit warmer here. I have the luxury of having a driving range at a couple of minutes from where I work, so I can spend the lunch break there

evolvr.com - I just re-did the home page for you today, too!

1 hour ago, Yossarian said:

Ok... still, if you turn my left hand in to a more proper position, the setup is not that different from... ehm Justin Rose?

Yeah it is. You're more bent over, your hands are much closer to your body, and your shaft is lower.

[Slowcelica]

The problem with going to the range, is you become to worried about where the ball goes, or what others think when you start topping balls. I would suggest getting a mirror, and practice net for your backyard if at all possible. With the mirror you can stop in your backswing and check your position, with a net you don’t care about where the ball goes and you can focus on the movement you’re working on, combine that with your camera and you’ll make progress in no time. 

My daughter plays sports and I’ve learned a ton from helping her in practice. Telling her, don’t worry about the result, a successful practice is one where you make progress on what your working to correct. You can not make changes and nothing changes, or you can take the advice of the people who know what you should fix right now and fix it, and in a month or 3 you’ll have fixed it and you can start working on the next thing. 

[Yossarian]

18 hours ago, Slowcelica said:

The problem with going to the range, is you become to worried about where the ball goes, or what others think when you start topping balls.

I don't think it applies to my case, I really don't care what they think on the range and most of the times when I go there I am the only one.

But there is a similar psychological bias that applies, which has more to do with "pride" (for lack of better word).

Grip is a perfect example: if I grab the club with a more neutral one, I lose something like 20-25 yards on a 7 iron. 40 with a Driver. I think it has to do with not using anymore the wrists "Deviation" as a source of power.

It's very hard at that point to tell my brain that it will get better after it got worse.

As far as the rest of lack of improvements, @Foot Wedge is absolutely spot on:

- I read something online or on Golf Digest

- try it at full speed, record myself

- hey, it didn't work, let's try something else

[Yossarian]

19 hours ago, iacas said:

Well, one of the compensations is that you probably "feel" the face being "shut" or closed, so you swing out to the left quite a bit. With a face more "open" you won't have the instinct to swing out as much, because the ball won't go right as often.

Ok, that's probably why if I swing with a less strong grip (below), I am wiiiide open at impact: because the compensation for the closed face is still there.

 

[Yossarian]

I haven't posted here for quite sometime, worked with Evolvr

 

[iacas]

Looking better. Handicap update?

[Yossarian]

19 hours ago, iacas said:

Looking better. Handicap update?

Still in the 24ish.

There is probably something different I am doing in the swing during a round, vs practice.

A lot of approach shots come out fat or short (like, 15yd shorter for a 7i, 25-30yd for a hybrid vs practice). Could be a rushed, shorter swing, and maybe I decelerate through impact.

But there is still a lot to work on, for instance, Arccos tells me that in a good round:

 Average Drive 210

Standard Deviation +-38

Longest drive: 264

Fairway hit 8/14

GIR 6/18

Chip and Down: 2/11

putts per hole: 1.89

 

In a bad round:

 Average Drive 206

Standard Deviation +-33

Longest drive: 282

Fairway hit 8/14

GIR 1/18

Chip and Down: 3/13

putts per hole: 2.11

 

[Yossarian]

Finally I have found a new driving range, did some practice

I still have hard time in keeping the left arm straight in position A2; I can do it but 2 things happen, the whole swing feels way more rigid, or I start pulling the head away from the target.

 

 

Sorry for the misaligned camera below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 4, 2020 by Yossarian

[iacas]

Well… I'd focus on two things.

1. Rotate more early. Your elbow bends because it has to.

2. Make your right shoulder go DOWN. You're turning VERY flat, so your arms swing around you a LOT.