Swing Help

[barrycuda]

hi all. im a 30 year old guy, started playing golf 1 year ago and i have a 11.9 index.

i have caught a bad case of over-the-tops that i cant seem to shake off. just 1 week ago i was drawing nicely every club but now i have a nightmare swing and i dont know what happened, frustrating.

my drives are mostly pull-sliced,sliced,or pop ups. 3wood takes a divot and pretty much like the driver, also some shanks. irons sliced,pulled or shank. 52 and 58 wedges shank often. the ball always leaves a mark on the club near the hosel.

i get confused with that shanking, some say its an out-in swing, others say its a inside-out swing. i know i have a flat swing.

any help is appreciated.

[Fried Egg]

Try posting this in "swing tips." You might get more help.

To stop coming over the top, feel you lower body shift your weight forward to initiate your downswing. This should allow your arms to drop down to about hip high without any conscious effort. This should put the club in a good position to swing from the inside to square and back to the inside. A good check point is when the club is parallel to the ground in your downswing, it should also be parallel to your target line. If it's pointing left of your target line, you're still coming over the top.

If you're shanking the ball with an outside-in swing, either your body is moving toward the ball or your arms are moving away from your body in the downswing.

[crazy_horst]

Pop-ups with the driver is from being too steep on your downswing. I hit a few of these the other day playing in a group with a teaching pro, and he told me it was from my upper body moving ahead of the ball on the downswing, i.e. upper body moving toward my target.

The pull-slice and slice definitely indicate an outside-in swing, and you can shank it with an outside-in swing if you are leaving the clubface wide open.

I have gone through this same phenomenon before, and for me it was a case of the-worse-I-hit-it-the-harder-I-try-to-swing, and the harder I tried to swing, the more I lurched at the ball using a shoulders-first move. I know for me, tension in my grip and forearms doesn't help.

Try using a nice, light grip pressure and making full swings at like 70-80%, just nice and easy, and try and keep the grip pressure nice and light throughout (like a 3 on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being squeezing the crap out of the club). Make sure you swing through to a full finish.

Tempo problems and grip pressure/tension are game wreckers for a lot of golfers.

[barrycuda]

thanks for the replies. i found a great drill to solve coming over the top on the internet.
it involves placing your bag/cart a few feet right of you(right handed) then on the backswing swing past the bag/cart on the outside, then passing it again on the inside with the downswing.

i then started out hitting little chips/pitches, which have little backswing so the chance for anything to go wrong is minimal.
then moving onto swings where the left arm is parallel to ground on backswing. this worked for me, not 1 shank since i started using that drill.

i believe i was also moving towards the ball/sliding, bending the left knee on the downswing instead of keeping it straight and posting up on it on the follow through.

p.s i didint realize i posted this in the wrong place. can moderators move threads on this forum?