Flaws!

[daa1969]

So, what are the most common swing flaws you see? I think the 2 i've been picking up on lately are the grip, and the transition. First let me say that i really dont feel that the average golfer is making such a bad swing because theyre try to lift the ball up, as suggested all day long by instructers, i feel its merely a result of their grip, setup, and transition. If your grip is wrong you will inevitably set up wrong, and the one i love is "i lifted my head" well, more than likely if you didnt lift your head swinging with that setup you would probably have cracked your neck somewhere like the c4-c6 vertebrae. I think the flippy hand thing often associated with try to lift the ball is more likely a poor transition, if its quick, subconsciously you will feel the head out of place and try to manuvuer it with your hands, maybe by flipping hands or perhaps gripping tighter and holding open. Anyway, if your having some trouble try to fix grip, which will help you set up better and try a much smoother transition, practice letting the club start falling on its own before you start building speed, i'm sure everyone has had those shots where your not even trying and the ball just seems to fly off the face with that smooth as butter feeling, for me, without fail, the harder i try, the worse it goes! 

[vangator]

The biggest flaw see is over swinging.  Many golfers try to swing as hard as they can right from the top.  A cast is often the result.  Spinning out and poor weight shift as well.

Edited April 3, 2016 by vangator

[Ernest Jones]

A bad weight shift.  

[Natural Patrick]

Yep, everyone thinks that they are capable of hitting 300yd drives and 150yd pitching wedges. Reality sucks, but they keep fighting the good fight.

[Patch]

Poor grips would be a good one.

[bm85]

The biggest "flaw" is that people practice poorly.  

[Lihu]

  On 4/3/2016 at 3:59 AM, bm85 said:

The biggest "flaw" is that people practice poorly.  

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Yeah, I was going to say something like that. The other one is that too many people are stubborn.

[boogielicious]

I would say not keeping centered in the backswing (swaying back). Many of the new My Swing posts have this, as did I. I see it on the course all the time too. I think it is somewhat natural for your body to want to shift back during the backswing because of the weight of the club. Changing this habit can lead to big improvements on contact.

[daa1969]

Funny thing, my dad has it all, he's only 65, but man is he stubborn, he's so set in his ways it's impossible to get him to change, i get it's natural to sway back, i guess in an attempt to find more power, but reality is that doesnt work, from the moment he grabs the club with his white knuckles and his shoulders pop open it's clear we're in trouble, he claims he's old and cant hit far enough, but the truth is he's in pretty good shape for his age and with no major limitations, i have got him to hit a few good ones occasionally so we know he can do it, it's just impossible to get him to carry those thoughts to the tee, he gets right back into that "i have to murder this ball" mentality, you can see that he's already trying to get back to the ball before the club is even hip high. The most complexing thing is, he loves to play, we play every week, he refuses to try and get better, but yet gets so disgusted each and every round. I'm grateful that i can be out there with my dad but man, i just wish we could get him to have more fun and ease up a little. He's one of those that we know he can hit a 7iron 150, but has so little confidence that he uses a 5wood depending on his poor swing to come through, and it usually doesnt when you want it to. Oh well, guess i'm rambling, anyway, ya, stubborn, swaying, and overswinging are good ones, but my impression is if the grip and setup are better maybe you won't get too out of whack during the swing, if we can just think more smooth and allow the body to work rather than letting the hands do it all maybe we start playing better, it's like they say though, golf is a game of inches, the few inches between your ears! 

[Lihu]

That's a good story. I'm more in the dad side of things. I guess the fact that I learned to golf after my kids gives me the perspective to listen to my kids when they see me doing something really wrong.

I had an 8 foot birdie putt, and was setting up to make my usual shot for a 2 putt par, when my son stopped me in my tracks and told me to read the putt better. He told me that the place I should aim is at the edge of the cup and to align the putter looking from further down to see he slopes along with using the feet to feel the slope. When I did that the putt went in for the birdie. Same thing happened on another one, which ended up teetering on the edge of the cup. His putting is really good, even though our scores didn't show that with the unevenly sanded punched greens. The lesson learned is to stop what you are doing and listen to good advice. The only issue is filtering out bad advice. That's where stubborn comes in.

Being stubborn doesn't go along with improving, but it is built in to filter out bad advice too.

It's great you and your dad play every week. My son and I play about once a month.

[daa1969]

Another great flaw i see isn't a swing flaw, it's a head flaw before we grab the club, i myself have been guilty of this too, but when I realized it, and changed my thinking, it changed my game drastically! I'm talking about clubbing up. We all do it, we get in a rythym at the range, we're hitting our pw say 140, we get ourselves believing thats our number, unfortunately, when we use that number on the course we fall well short, or severely off line because we're trying too hard, when your body isn't in that range rythym and there's consequences to the shot it's quite a different result, we have to be honest with ourselves out there in evaluating the situation, we have to understand where the trouble is and what our probability is of the shot judging by past course examples, not range numbers. For me, ya on range i hit my pw 140 all day long, but on course i find it falls comfortable and consistent around 125-130, so when i step up to that 135 shot over water with say 125 to clear, i go to 9iron, i know any mis-hit with pw is gonna be short and possibly roll back down bank, but a slight mis-hit with 9 will still get there, and if i happen to tag it oh well, its at back of green. Anyway, i see it all day long where people come up short, and most of us are not that great where we get up and down consistently, so why put that pressure on, just club up! Another thing i see is way too many of us use way too lofted clubs on short pitches and chips, go as low as you can and watch the score go down too! I promise you, if you club up and work on less loft around greens you will shave some serious strokes, just think about how often your short and how often you flub that lob wedge. Say your short 6 times, more than likely thats 6 bogeys, maybe worse, now add say 3 flubbed wedges, thats giving away 9 strokes and it could've been prevented. Maybe if we really evaluate our games we would build more confidence just from knowing we're not as bad as we think, we just make poor decisions. These simple pre-swing thoughts can help take you from say a 20hndcp to a 10 real fast!

[saevel25]

  On 4/2/2016 at 11:56 PM, daa1969 said:

So, what are the most common swing flaws you see?

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Lack of a centered pivot caused by not turning the hips correctly or enough on both the backswing and the downswing. 

I would say the top 2 threads posted for first time My Swing threads are the Center Pivot thread and the Posture Thread. 

  On 4/2/2016 at 11:56 PM, daa1969 said:

First let me say that i really dont feel that the average golfer is making such a bad swing because theyre try to lift the ball up, as suggested all day long by instructers, i feel its merely a result of their grip, setup, and transition. 

Expand  

Grip isn't a key to the golf swing. There are so many types and golfers can find a way to play really good golf with funky grips. Grips are a fine tuning adjustment. 

Set up can get bad. Typically the ball gets to far back in the stance. Also, a lot of amateurs try to get too much knee flex, have curved lower backs or keep their upper backs too straight. 

Transition is mostly caused by a poor backswing. You can get a lot stuff for free if the backswing is better. I wouldn't say transition is a problem until other things are fixed that might be causing a transition problem. 

  On 4/3/2016 at 3:59 AM, bm85 said:

The biggest "flaw" is that people practice poorly.  

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Very good point. When I see a guy have 200 golf balls at the range and they finish before me when I only hit like 50 golf balls. I bet I get more improvement in what I want to change than he does :) 

[Lihu]

  On 4/3/2016 at 5:37 PM, daa1969 said:

Another great flaw i see isn't a swing flaw, it's a head flaw before we grab the club, i myself have been guilty of this too, but when I realized it, and changed my thinking, it changed my game drastically! I'm talking about clubbing up. We all do it, we get in a rythym at the range, we're hitting our pw say 140, we get ourselves believing thats our number, unfortunately, when we use that number on the course we fall well short, or severely off line because we're trying too hard, when your body isn't in that range rythym and there's consequences to the shot it's quite a different result, we have to be honest with ourselves out there in evaluating the situation, we have to understand where the trouble is and what our probability is of the shot judging by past course examples, not range numbers. For me, ya on range i hit my pw 140 all day long, but on course i find it falls comfortable and consistent around 125-130, so when i step up to that 135 shot over water with say 125 to clear, i go to 9iron, i know any mis-hit with pw is gonna be short and possibly roll back down bank, but a slight mis-hit with 9 will still get there, and if i happen to tag it oh well, its at back of green. Anyway, i see it all day long where people come up short, and most of us are not that great where we get up and down consistently, so why put that pressure on, just club up! Another thing i see is way too many of us use way too lofted clubs on short pitches and chips, go as low as you can and watch the score go down too! I promise you, if you club up and work on less loft around greens you will shave some serious strokes, just think about how often your short and how often you flub that lob wedge. Say your short 6 times, more than likely thats 6 bogeys, maybe worse, now add say 3 flubbed wedges, thats giving away 9 strokes and it could've been prevented. Maybe if we really evaluate our games we would build more confidence just from knowing we're not as bad as we think, we just make poor decisions. These simple pre-swing thoughts can help take you from say a 20hndcp to a 10 real fast!

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I have the perfect solution for this, just use limited flight range balls. . . 

[DrvFrShow]

the longer the club the more the swing flaw will show up. it's why people can hit their 9 iron all day but slice their 5 iron.

[saevel25]

  On 4/4/2016 at 1:06 AM, DrvFrShow said:

the longer the club the more the swing flaw will show up. it's why people can hit their 9 iron all day but slice their 5 iron.

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The more loft the less the spin axis will tilt. 

[DrvFrShow]

  On 4/4/2016 at 2:01 AM, saevel25 said:

The more loft the less the spin axis will tilt. 

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exactly!

[daa1969]

I agree about the longer clubs, im no different than most of us, ya sure, i can get in the groove at range with them, but when it comes down to that one shot, when the pressures on, we all know what happens, fortunately my big mis is usually just a thin shot so it stays fairly straight and still gets good distance, but it sure didnt feel good. I have dropped my 3iron for the adams pro dhy and found some pretty good results. However, i keep getting this nagging thing in my head saying to break down and give the single iron theory a shot, you know, like bryson dechambuea where all the irons are the same lenght. Anybody on here ever given it a shot?

[Bill926]

  On 4/3/2016 at 2:53 AM, vangator said:

The biggest flaw see is over swinging.  Many golfers try to swing as hard as they can right from the top.  A cast is often the result.  Spinning out and poor weight shift as well.

Expand  

I agree.  I always wonder how I can hit my AW 75 yards and straight every time with what feels to me like a smooth half swing, but I struggle to hit a 5 iron 175 consistently with a full swing. I try to work on it on the range, but the over swinging always comes back during a round.