My Swing (freshmanUTA)

[freshmanUTA]

I'm frustrated for the first time in a while. My parents moved so I was helping them get some things out of their house and tweaked my back in the process. This was about 2 weeks ago. I had a tournament last sunday and I had to play through the injury. Miraculously I took 4th, but since then I cant hit my 5 or 4 irons, or my driver. I just spray them all over the place. To be honest I'm just concerned about swinging too hard and hurting my back so my swing with those clubs has gotten really wristy and flippy. It's causing inconsistent strikes on the face, and some fat shots. I think I'm just gonna stick to hitting my shorter irons and my wedges until I really feel normal again. My back doesn't hurt anymore but I still don't feel 100% right. Aside from that, my wedges up through my 6 iron have ridiculously good dispersion on the range. On the course is a similar story but I'm still trying to improve with different lies. The course I play a ton is really hilly so sometimes I get some really bad hook lies and some balls well under my feet. I'm learning, and its a blast. I'm just frustrated that I had to get hurt.

[freshmanUTA]

My back is fully healed and I’m back to playing and practicing. But during rounds I keep losing focus or making dumb decisions without even realizing it. In my last tournament I shot an 85 and It should have easily been a 79 or better. I missed three, four foot par or bogey putts, and I had 4 separate holes where I 3 putt when i got on the green in regulation. I also made three birdies. Im still shaky over having 3 birdies and shooting an 85. I feel like I unintentionally let myself shoot high scores without realizing it. I usually have a routine before every shot, and sometimes I feel confident enough to cut the routine short. Sometimes it works, others it doesn’t. I’d say it’s about a 50/50 between working and not. But at the same time, sometimes I’m not confident and I take longer on my routine and most of the time the shots are bad. When that happens it’s about a 70% chance I mishit, or otherwise screw up, the shot at hand. 

 

I hate golf. But, I love golf. Haha.

[freshmanUTA]

So today I shot an 83 and finally got my tournament index. I'm an 8.6 which is honestly better than I thought I'd be. This is just even more motivation to keep practicing. My driver is the best it has ever been by a mile and a half, and my wedges and general game inside 100 yards has become really good. However, I think it's time to get fit for irons since the last time I was fit was over 3 years ago and my swing is a lot different now than it was before. Other than that, the only issue I have is not creating enough speed with my wedges and blading chips/pitches across the green.

The biggest issue I've had is impatience. When I start hitting bad shots I get angry and swing harder and out of tempo so the shots just get worse and worse. I've really slowed down my practice this year and I've had the best results yet. I usually take about 4-5 slow practice swings per ball I hit. It usually takes me about 1 minute to hit a ball this way. I feel like if I go any slower it just throws off my comfort level and I lose focus on what I'm working on.

Edited July 4, 2019 by freshmanUTA

[freshmanUTA]

I think its time to get fit for a putter. I mentioned Irons in my last post, but honestly I think a good putter will last me a hell of a lot longer than a set of irons so it would be a more worthwhile investment. I also want to get the FlightScope Mevo because I have a hard time keeping track of my iron distances. As I've become more and more confident with my swing I'm hitting the ball further and further. For example, 155 used to be my go to stock 8 iron distance, but now I'm sending my 8 iron well past the hole when I hit it from 155. 

[freshmanUTA]

Swung a club for the first time in a few weeks and was really rusty with my short irons, couldn’t do anything but blade my 6 iron, and was on point with my 5 iron through driver. Oh well, such is the game of golf. I trust that my swing is good, I just need to keep putting in the work and spending the time on the same things I’ve been working on.

-Shorter backswing, but not rushing the downswing.

-Grip

-Not coming too far inside and pushing the ball miles right.

 

[freshmanUTA]

Now that my season is done, I would like to reflect.

My driving Fairway Hit % in the beginning of the year was less than 40%, to end the year it was 63.5%. My target goal was 65%, and if you remove the drives before I got my new driver it moves up to 66.4%, but that is cheating myself. I need to improve this stat.

My average GIR was 7.8. This is bad, I really need to improve this. However, my best rounds of the year were all over 12 GIR, which shows that when I’m on my game, I’m hitting greens. 

My Average score on par 3’s was 4.186. I really need to improve my par 3 play. My average par 5 score was 5.546. I’m not mad about this, but considering my length off the tee and with irons, I would want this to be at or under 5. My average par 4 score was 4.915 This is just abysmal. I shouldn’t be averaging nearly a bogey on par 4’s. 

My average score in tournaments was an 89. 75. My average score out of tournaments was an 80.66. My goal for tournaments was 85 or better and my goal outside tournaments was under 80. I hit neither.

These are the only stats I keep at the moment. I had a few rounds in the 90’s and 2 rounds over 100. The 90+ and 100+ scores were all in tournaments, save for one round of 91 I shot on my schools course.

All in all, my short game improved a ton, my  iron ply improved a ton, my driving was the biggest overhaul, and my mid range wedges gained a fair amount of accuracy and consistency. I don’t feel I’m far off of being in the 70’s or better. I typically give myself plenty of birdie attempts, and I can recover well. 

[freshmanUTA]

 

 

Heres a video of me hitting a stinger 4 iron today. These are the first couple swings after about a month of sitting around doing schoolwork. I had a weird transition in my swing path where when I started playing I was over the top, then I became far too shallow and it was causing inconsistent clubface delivery, a hook that I couldn’t get rid of,and I was literally incapable of fading the ball. All this sucked because I HATE missing on the left side of the course. So, I’ve been working on getting steeper in both the backswing and downswing. I think my backswing is pretty decent, but I’m a little steeper than Id want in the transition. Granted I’m trying to compress the ball and keep it low, but I still don’t like the position I’m in.

 

Time to get back to work to start 2020.

Edited April 4, 2020 by freshmanUTA

[freshmanUTA]

Here is a normal full swing with a 6 iron today.

 

[freshmanUTA]

I played golf a few days ago, and was doing really well too.. I was +1 through 9 with two birdies, a double bogey and a bogey and obviously the rest being pars, this is one of the best scores I’ve shot through 9 in the last year.

And then... I hit something in the ground, it was metal but I couldn’t figure out what it was, and it left a decent dent in my iron (which the course offered to fix free of charge). On top of that, I really jared my wrist and it was very painful for the rest of the hole, though I continued through the round and immediately after hitting the piece of metal I shot 2 quadruple bogeys in a row, then followed by two bogeys in a row. 

So, I sat at +11 through 13. We hit a small backup because the greens crew was doing work on the green of the par 3 we were on. They waved us on but since the course was empty and I was hurting, we told them to finish up what they were doing. About 15 minutes later they thanked us and we feed off, and I birdied that hole and the next. Brought me back down to +9. The rest of the round I wasn’t swinging right but I shot par, par, bogey to finish with a +10 82.

Since then, I have felt completely fine, but been kind of scared to hit golf balls and my shots have all been pretty weak.. Not making good contact, really thin. I have some pretty poor luck..

[iacas]

Happy birthday, man!

[freshmanUTA]

1 hour ago, iacas said:

Happy birthday, man!

Thank you! Celebrating by bashing balls into a net!

[freshmanUTA]

 

Still working on the shallowing motion. I still feel like I can’t swing 100% or else I come over the top, but it’s really getting there. I like the positions i get into. I feel like my backswing should be higher/steeper, but I’ve been hitting the ball really well recently and I don’t think it causes any issues.

[freshmanUTA]

I don’t know what’s going on, but every single club other than my 7 iron since working on shallowing the club are toed shots. But, the weird part is that they feel really pure. Like, club twirl and don’t watch the shot cause i think it’s really good level pure. Then I look at the club and it’s right out of the toe side of the grooves.

I’ve attached a photo of the wear pattern on my 7 iron and my 8 iron. My 8 iron pattern is typical of the pattern of the rest of my clubs.It trends high and towards the toe, but most are very solid. But they feel absolutely no different than the shots that I hit that are straight out of the toe of the club, other than the fact that the ball flies shorter and tends to go too far left.

7:

8:

Its a bit harder to see on the 8 but you can still see it’s out of the toe. Like I said, these shots feel great, as if I middled the ball perfect, but they fly shorter and tend to go too far left.

[billchao]

What clubs are you using? I've never hit a single toe shot I'd describe as feeling great...

[freshmanUTA]

56 minutes ago, billchao said:

What clubs are you using? I've never hit a single toe shot I'd describe as feeling great...

Ping iBlades. They’re not off the smooth part of the face, but definitely off the toe. It’s the weirdest thing I know.

[boogielicious]

8 hours ago, freshmanUTA said:

Ping iBlades. They’re not off the smooth part of the face, but definitely off the toe. It’s the weirdest thing I know.

Try putting a vertical line on the ball with a magic marker and see how far off center you are.

[billchao]

12 hours ago, freshmanUTA said:

Ping iBlades. They’re not off the smooth part of the face, but definitely off the toe. It’s the weirdest thing I know.

Well in any case, it looks to me like your head drifts towards the target line in the backswing and back away from it in the downswing, off the “wall” you’re set up to at address.

[freshmanUTA]

I ran the idea of toe contact being because my head is moving away from the ball on the downswing through my coach and he says it’s a very real possibility so I should take a few swings where i feel like i’m intentionally getting closer to the ball at impact. 

My heads still moving a bit but it’s very subtly moving away from the target less than it was before. I guess I just need to keep working on the feeling. This is with the 7 iron and I haven’t had any issue with contact, but when I was swinging with my 5 iron I noticed that regardless of being thin or not the contact was generally in the center of the clubface rather than off the toe.