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Stubborn Steepness


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To add to what Steve and Kevin said, steep (for me) can also lead to an over-the-top move. When filming my swing, if I'm steep at A5, the club head may be ahead of my hands at A6. I then have to compensate to not hook it.

The other result of this, for me, is I lose some swing speed. I've lost lag because my sequence before A6 was off.

Again, I've been working on this for a while. If you look at the video below, I do the drill mapping correctly, but then when I move to finish the swing, the shaft steepens. This is an issue with my sequence that I've been working on a lot. When I start the downswing, my arms are coming down before my hips slide and rotate, just a fraction of a second. This is cause the steepening. I've just had trouble eliminating the sequence issue. I can get if for a while, but then on the course it will revert back at times.

So @RandallT, don't feel like it is just you! :-)

 

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Scott

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This was, without a doubt, the most difficult change that I have made so far.  For me, I think an important part was changing my right elbow position, and how I turned through the ball.  I feel like it is helpful to break it down into two parts.  First getting into a good A5 position, and then figuring out how to get from that position to the ball.  I remember it being very difficult to even hit the ball from a good A5 position, and I think this might be what makes this change so hard.  For a long time I hit the ball like complete crap while I was making this change.  I did a couple of drills that I found pretty effective for me though.  First, I would take an alignment stick and hold it in my hands along with the club so that the club would be about twice its normal length.  This allowed me to practice my transition from A4 to A5 at a speed that was pretty close to full and still see exactly where the shaft is pointing (just make sure not to go too far and hit yourself with alignment stick).  Then, I would get my weight forward, doing my best to simulate impact, and start from a good A5 and try to hit the ball.  When I thought I had a hang of how to get from A5 to impact, I would try and put it all together.  I'd do the drill with the alignment stick in my hands, then drop it real quick and try to make a swing with the same feel.  It was incredibly frustrating, but after probably a couple thousand reps I eventually started to get the hang of it.  Also as with all the changes I make, I find it best to exaggerate the move to the extreme.  Don't just get the shaft pointing outside the ball; get that baby pointing a foot or two outside the ball on your slow swings.  I find that when I am able to do the move exaggerated in slow motion it's more likely to be what I'm looking for as a speed up my swing.

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16 hours ago, boogielicious said:

Again, I've been working on this for a while. If you look at the video below, I do the drill mapping correctly, but then when I move to finish the swing, the shaft steepens. This is an issue with my sequence that I've been working on a lot.

Thanks for the video. Good stuff. Just got good feedback on my mapping from my instructor, and it'll take me a while to get my slow mo to look as good as yours- then I'll tackle the issue of speeding up gradually with the correct form. For now I'm in super-slo-mo!

48 minutes ago, travisv said:

This was, without a doubt, the most difficult change that I have made so far.  For me, I think an important part was changing my right elbow position, and how I turned through the ball.  I feel like it is helpful to break it down into two parts....

Thanks for the insights, Travis. I noticed we had the same instructor, so it's great to get an idea about the scope of work ahead of me to get through this. I'll stick to it this time and do what it takes.

Love the alignment stick trick to see where the club is pointing. Reminds me that I once I heard the idea of a flashlight or one of those red pointers too for seeing where the butt of the club points. 

Anyway, your comments appreciated, and your swing thread reads like a pretty good success story. Congrats on your progress, particularly through this issue.

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Working on this exact same problem at the moment.

In my mind I feel like I am getting better and taking the steepness out. But then I video and watch back and realise it is the same as always.

 

At the range I am hitting some lovely irons, straight and long, but this is only a 50% thing, the rest are fizzing left and right. Not the kind of consistently that will ever score well on course.

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I have been working on this and what has helped me is feeling the hands/arms going away from the target.  Both in downswing and backswing.  This helps create a shallow angle of attack on the ball.

I made this illustration to show what I mean.  

 

svs.png

 

The green path is much shallower and creates a larger "flat zone" for the club entering the ball.    The orange path is much steeper and relies on perfect impact/timing for good contact.  

 

This chart shows the zoomed in detail to high light the "flat zone":

 

svsz.png

 

By really getting the arms away from the target on your downswing, you are shallowing out the angle and allowing that flat area.  The basic slope formula of "Rise over Run" creates less slope (shallower) when your hands are away from the ball as much as possible because the distance needed to travel horizontally is greater.

Edited by pumaAttack
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Tony  


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13 minutes ago, pumaAttack said:

By really getting the arms away from the target on your downswing, you are shallowing out the angle and allowing that flat area.  The basic slope formula of "Rise over Run" creates less slope (shallower) when your hands are away from the ball as much as possible because the distance needed to travel horizontally is greater.

The club doesn't travel in a triangle. It travels in an arc. So the slope of the line changes as the club moves to a new point on that line. 

If you hit the ball in the center of the clubface with a steep angle and a shallow angle the distance the hands are from the ball is the same. The club doesn't gain length. 

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9 minutes ago, saevel25 said:

The club doesn't travel in a triangle. It travels in an arc. So the slope of the line changes as the club moves to a new point on that line. 

If you hit the ball in the center of the clubface with a steep angle and a shallow angle the distance the hands are from the ball is the same. The club doesn't gain length. 

 

This is illustrating the flat area that path travels, starting from A6. The flat zone is much longer in a shallow path which allows for more leeway in making contact.  

Yes a steep and shallow swing will have the same distance at impact on a center strike.  But the shallow angle allows you to have a larger "target" to hit.  If you are a few inches behind on a shallow swing you will still make decent contact.  Those few inches on a steep angle will be a chunk or top. 

Edited by pumaAttack

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Just now, pumaAttack said:

 But the shallow angle allows you to have a larger "target" to hit.  If you are a few inches behind on a shallow swing you will still back decent contact.  Those few inches on a steep angle will be a chunk or top. 

True 

Matt Dougherty, P.E.
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7 minutes ago, saevel25 said:

True 

For some reason I can't edit my original post...  

But yes, I should clarify, this illustration is to show the slope calculated at A6 and only at A6, not a continual arc.  If your hands are at the same relative height at a6, the farther away from the target your hands are, the shallower the attack angle.  

Tony  


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On 5/9/2016 at 4:25 PM, Shark9 said:

Working on this exact same problem at the moment.

In my mind I feel like I am getting better and taking the steepness out. But then I video and watch back and realise it is the same as always.

 

Welcome to the club. I'm feeling like the swing is changing in my practice more than it is (when verified on video). It's tough to change the picture, but just gotta keep at it.

31 minutes ago, pumaAttack said:

 

svs.png

Nice graphic. Professional!  What software did you use? It just has a very sharp, tidy look to it. Thanks for posting.

And yes @saevel25, I'll also make sure I don't swing triangularly :-P

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I should also add you want your clubhead to be further away from the ball too.  The hands allow this but the main goal is getting the clubhead away from the target during the downswing.

Tony  


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I made a graphic to show what I mean with the hands and clubhead at both a5 and a6.

 

At A5, the hands are similar position but the clubhead is much farther away from the ball:

a5.png

 

 

At A6, the hands are much farther away from the ball:

a6.png

 

And the angles created from each hand position at A6:

 

 

a62.png

Edited by pumaAttack

Tony  


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7 minutes ago, pumaAttack said:

At A5, the hands are similar position but the clubhead is much farther away from the ball:

At A6, the hands are much farther away from the ball:

There is more to the golf swing then just saying, Oh the shaft  at A5 in the face on view looks steeper so it will be steep at A7. That is not correct. the shaft can look steep, but it could be flatter in the DTL view. As such it would produce a shallower angle. 

The DTL is a better angle to determine steepness in the golf swing. 

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Matt Dougherty, P.E.
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Just now, saevel25 said:

There is more to the golf swing then just saying, Oh the shaft  at A5 in the face on view looks steeper so it will be steep at A7. That is not correct. the shaft can look steep, but it could be flatter in the DTL view. As such it would produce a shallower angle. 

The DTL is a better angle to determine steepness in the golf swing. 

Why is the DTL view better?  I am trying to understand this myself.

Tony  


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I know I need to lay the club down but I am lost on how to do that, without severely opening up the clubface.

Any tips on that?  

Tony  


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On 5/7/2016 at 9:14 PM, travisv said:

This was, without a doubt, the most difficult change that I have made so far.  For me, I think an important part was changing my right elbow position, and how I turned through the ball.  I feel like it is helpful to break it down into two parts.  First getting into a good A5 position, and then figuring out how to get from that position to the ball.  I remember it being very difficult to even hit the ball from a good A5 position, and I think this might be what makes this change so hard.  For a long time I hit the ball like complete crap while I was making this change.  I did a couple of drills that I found pretty effective for me though.  First, I would take an alignment stick and hold it in my hands along with the club so that the club would be about twice its normal length.  This allowed me to practice my transition from A4 to A5 at a speed that was pretty close to full and still see exactly where the shaft is pointing (just make sure not to go too far and hit yourself with alignment stick).  Then, I would get my weight forward, doing my best to simulate impact, and start from a good A5 and try to hit the ball.  When I thought I had a hang of how to get from A5 to impact, I would try and put it all together.  I'd do the drill with the alignment stick in my hands, then drop it real quick and try to make a swing with the same feel.  It was incredibly frustrating, but after probably a couple thousand reps I eventually started to get the hang of it.  Also as with all the changes I make, I find it best to exaggerate the move to the extreme.  Don't just get the shaft pointing outside the ball; get that baby pointing a foot or two outside the ball on your slow swings.  I find that when I am able to do the move exaggerated in slow motion it's more likely to be what I'm looking for as a speed up my swing.

I agree with this.  It was a really hard change - the hardest one I've made.  It definitely involved me changing my right elbow position and it was also very hard to even make contact for a while.  The hosels on my short irons got positively abused.  I basically did a lot of these same exact things.  I still am doing them, lol.  Once you start to be able to do it you immediately realize how much better you could be doing it, lol. 

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4 hours ago, pumaAttack said:

Why is the DTL view better?  I am trying to understand this myself.

The DTL view, at A5, where the shaft points - inside or outside the ball, is a clear indicator of how steep or shallow you are. If shaft is pointing inside the ball, steep, outside the ball, shallow. Generally pointing around the vicinity of the ball is good. All this is assuming your camera angle is good.

Generally, the down the line view is good for checking out plane, face, path. It's great for seeing if you're dumped under, or swinging too out to in. It's a better view to see how accurate you are. The face on view is better to see power/speed generation.

If I understand it correctly, external rotation of the lead shoulder (stick your left hand out in front of you and rotate it clockwise) will lay down the club, but yes, the face will be open. Flexion of the lead wrist (bowing) will close the face down. It's a happy medium, a combo of the two that will get you on plane for as long as possible and it's something that happens way way too fast to think about in real time.

I am no pro, this is how I understand it as pros told me. Please take this with a grain of salt and instructors please correct me where I'm wrong.

I'm learning that even if you "have this move down" between A4 and A6, it's really hard to maintain inclination to the ground and stay on plane from 6 to 7. Long story short is if you think you've figured out shallowing and that's it, no, there's more. But you've figured out something that's anything but trivial to learn.

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Steve

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5 hours ago, nevets88 said:

The DTL view, at A5, where the shaft points - inside or outside the ball, is a clear indicator of how steep or shallow you are. If shaft is pointing inside the ball, steep, outside the ball, shallow. Generally pointing around the vicinity of the ball is good. All this is assuming your camera angle is good.

Generally, the down the line view is good for checking out plane, face, path. It's great for seeing if you're dumped under, or swinging too out to in. It's a better view to see how accurate you are. The face on view is better to see power/speed generation.

If I understand it correctly, external rotation of the lead shoulder (stick your left hand out in front of you and rotate it clockwise) will lay down the club, but yes, the face will be open. Flexion of the lead wrist (bowing) will close the face down. It's a happy medium, a combo of the two that will get you on plane for as long as possible and it's something that happens way way too fast to think about in real time.

I am no pro, this is how I understand it as pros told me. Please take this with a grain of salt and instructors please correct me where I'm wrong.

I'm learning that even if you "have this move down" between A4 and A6, it's really hard to maintain inclination to the ground and stay on plane from 6 to 7. Long story short is if you think you've figured out shallowing and that's it, no, there's more. But you've figured out something that's anything but trivial to learn.

That all makes sense but I think the lead shoulder rotation is reversed.  I believe it should rotate counter clockwise.  

If you rotated your lead arm clockwise it would be so wide open I'm not sure how it could ever be square at impact without a vicous flip or wrist roll. 

Rotating your Lead arm counter clockwise, which bows your lead wrist, will still shallow the clubface from A4 to A5 as well as keep the clubface square. 

Edited by pumaAttack

Tony  


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