Does Good with Driver mean Bad with Irons and Vice Versa?

[gregsandiego]

I've decided to focus heavily on the driver in practice since that's my biggest weakness. I now practice about 95% driver. It is helping.

But my ball striking with the irons seems to suffer a bit.

Is there some actual kind of Yin and Yang effect? Or is it just me?

[Lihu]

The only Ying and Yang thing that might be happening is hitting up with driver and down with irons.

[newtogolf]

Driver is sweeping swing where you try to make contact with the ball on the downswing or upswing depending on school of thought.  Some people sweep their irons but if you take a divot with your irons all the driver practice might be making your swing arc more shallow.  Are you hitting the ball thin with your irons?  

[Lihu]

4 minutes ago, newtogolf said:

Driver is sweeping swing where you try to make contact with the ball on the downswing or upswing depending on school of thought.  Some people sweep their irons but if you take a divot with your irons all the driver practice might be making your swing arc more shallow.  Are you hitting the ball thin with your irons?  

You mean drive short with little roll or longer and more roll?

 

[gregsandiego]

7 minutes ago, newtogolf said:

Driver is sweeping swing where you try to make contact with the ball on the downswing or upswing depending on school of thought.  Some people sweep their irons but if you take a divot with your irons all the driver practice might be making your swing arc more shallow.  Are you hitting the ball thin with your irons?  

Yes. My most common mishit  is thin.

[Lihu]

9 minutes ago, gregsandiego said:

Yes. My most common mishit  is thin.

Use the same swing, the impact is in a different location because you want to get the ball on the upswing with the driver and the downswing with the irons.

You just need to find your divot. Hit the ground first with a real swing then look for the impact location and adjust the ball position accordingly. This is kind of where setup is pretty important.

If you have equal mishits thin and fat, then it's probably a real swing issue. IDK how to fix that. Post a video if it is.

[9wood]

A couple of helpful photos showing golfers stance and ball position

 

[RayG]

I'm sure many will attest- You can have a GREAT day off the tee and all those perfect lie, middle of the fairway balls seem to go "kachunk" and end up no place near where you aimed them. OR you are spraying drivers all over the county, chipping back to the fairway and THEN your iron shots are dropping like darts onto the green. So I think there is a conspiracy going on. If your driver is doing good, your irons get jealous and conspire to piss you off and vice-versa... It's a cruel game...

[bm85]

It's not just you, golf is definitely hard.

The worse thing is when you get them all working together, and you still just shoot an 82. It's an irrefutable affirmation that your swing just sucks.

[SavvySwede]

1 hour ago, gregsandiego said:

Yes. My most common mishit  is thin.

I'd bet your shoulder plane is becoming too flat and/or flattens in transition. An easier move to get away with using the driver but not the irons. Start a Myswing thread.

[ppine]

Golf can be as complicated as you want it to be.  I believe more and more in the Lee Trevino school of just step up and hit it.

It is usually  a mistake to think about more than one thing during a swing that you want to focus on.

Sometimes I start to come over the top a little and hook the ball.  Then it is time to swing for right center field and it goes away.

[Lihu]

49 minutes ago, bm85 said:

It's not just you, golf is definitely hard.

The worse thing is when you get them all working together, and you still just shoot an 82. It's an irrefutable affirmation that your swing just sucks.

Yeah, that's because your short game mysteriously quits on you.

 

My son just shot that score the other day and he hits pretty solid and has a good short game. He just ended up in a lot of bunkers that day. Tough luck. . .

 

[bm85]

6 minutes ago, Lihu said:

Yeah, that's because your short game mysteriously quits on you.

 

Nah, I just have a bad mental game.

[gregsandiego]

14 hours ago, RayG said:

I'm sure many will attest- You can have a GREAT day off the tee and all those perfect lie, middle of the fairway balls seem to go "kachunk" and end up no place near where you aimed them. OR you are spraying drivers all over the county, chipping back to the fairway and THEN your iron shots are dropping like darts onto the green. So I think there is a conspiracy going on. If your driver is doing good, your irons get jealous and conspire to piss you off and vice-versa... It's a cruel game...

I'm hearing this song while I read this...

 

 

 

[gregsandiego]

On 3/18/2016 at 6:03 AM, 9wood said:

A couple of helpful photos showing golfers stance and ball position

 

That's 4 different ball positions!

I generally use only three.

Driver inside left as shown

3's and 4's a bit more center

everything else center.

 

 

[boogielicious]

20 hours ago, gregsandiego said:

That's 4 different ball positions!

I generally use only three.

Driver inside left as shown

3's and 4's a bit more center

everything else center.

 

 

One thing that is not shown in that graphic is the width of your stance changes as the club length increases. The angle of attack changes too with fairway woods coming in more shallow than irons and wedges. What you really want to find out is where the low point is in your swing with all these clubs and then play the ball just before where the club impacts the ground. If you ignore the right foot in the graphic, the picture is better. I think of my ball position only relative to my left heel.

 

[Patch]

Does good with one, mean bad with the other? On some days it will. Other, fewer days,  not so much. It's rare that any player will have all parts of their game working well, at the same time.

Myself, when I go out, I have a target score of 80. Of the days I actually shoot an 80, a few of those rounds are easy, while most of the others make me work harder to some degree.  

I practice my approach (120 +/-yards) and short games more than my longer games. Probably 80/20. What gets me by is that when I practice, I always use all my clubs at that practice session. 

[gregsandiego]

1 hour ago, boogielicious said:

One thing that is not shown in that graphic is the width of your stance changes as the club length increases. The angle of attack changes too with fairway woods coming in more shallow than irons and wedges. What you really want to find out is where the low point is in your swing with all these clubs and then play the ball just before where the club impacts the ground. If you ignore the right foot in the graphic, the picture is better. I think of my ball position only relative to my left heel.

 

That leads me to a question. Say I put the ball an inch or so left for my 3 iron. Am I not consciously then trying to bottom the club out just a bit left of center?

Or instead does the club bottom out the same for every club and I just move the ball to match up with different points in the swing plane?