My Swing (guitman423)

[guitman423]

I've been Playing Golf for: 25 Years

 

My current handicap index or average score is: 12.5
My typical ball flight is: Straight, medium/high loft.
The shot I hate or the "miss" I'm trying to reduce/eliminate is: Long iron sh**ks. I have a thread about this issue where I thought it may have been due to incorrect iron lie. Maybe though it is actually due to shallow swing plane, resulting in me throwing the hozzle at the ball.  Does not happen 5 iron and below, or with metals.

---

Videos: 

Video 1: My standard 3 iron setup and swing. Looks like I come in way too shallow, fanning even. The start of the downswing shows me pushing the club outside, which may be why I am throwing the heel at the ball? I really feel unbalanced and the long clubs feel heavy with this swing. I have tape on my clubs, and it showed marks of a heel hit.

Video 2: My standard 3 iron setup and swing, but with an exaggerated steeper plane. This looks somewhat better, right? The start of the downswing shows me coming inside with the club. The tape of the club showed a center hit.

Video 3: My standard 3 iron setup but choked down to the grip. Obviously I had to get closer to the ball. I can hit this no problem, the club feels very light and balanced this way, causing me to wonder if the clubs were too long or the lie was wrong (hence the forum post). For some reason I do not think I have a very shallow swing with this grip, and I do not have to force a steeper swing to make good contact. Tape shows center hit. At the range I can nail these.

Thanks for advice, I have never posted swing videos before.

Edited May 20, 2016 by guitman423

[amoline]

Total disclaimer -- I am not a professional instructor. 

However, I wanted to hopefully clarify a thing or two, if nothing else.

Your "shallow plane -- heel hit" is actually incredibly steep

Compare this to Adam Scott in a similar hand position

After that you get into a position where you have no choice but to rake across it so hard that you actually just drag the hosel right into it. 

The fact that you can hit the ball from this position is actually a testament to your skill, in my opinion. :) 

You get into a very laid off (flat) position at the top, and it would feel weird to come back the same way, unless your name is Matt Kuchar. 

Oddly enough, your video of "steep plane" is actually more shallow than the one where you weren't choking down. Here, you actually have the club intersecting more of your trail arm instead of right across your lead arm. So here you are in fact more shallow and not steeper (so your compensatory move does not have to be so severe):

 

So that's the easy part -- showing you what's up. For the other part, as I say I'm not a professional instructor by any means. However, a feel for me when I have had this issue in the past is you have to make your arms/hands feel like they are working in the opposite way than they currently are -- that is, they need to feel like your left hand is working "flatter" and your right hand moves along with it, so you get the club feeling like you're laying it further behind you instead of getting it more vertical. Down and in, not out and over. 

Lastly, you really need to be hitting a ball of some kind. Practice swings really don't help as much as you think they might. Secondly, if you got some face on video it would help, too. Record it at hip height, face on. Hitting a ball. :D 

My two cents -- as I said, not a pro instructor so take it for what it's worth, but I hope  it gives you an idea or two. :) 

Andrew.

Edited May 21, 2016 by amoline

[saevel25]

Post video with better camera angles. Also, I recommend just posting your normal swing to start with. 

https://thesandtrap.com/b/playing_tips/filming_your_swing

 

[amoline]

1 minute ago, saevel25 said:

Post video with better camera angles. Also, I recommend just posting your normal swing to start with. 

https://thesandtrap.com/b/playing_tips/filming_your_swing

 

Son of a gun, that's the thread I was looking for. Look at that. :) Thanks for finding the link and covering for those of us less able in finding things. 

[guitman423]

On 5/21/2016 at 11:13 PM, amoline said:

Son of a gun, that's the thread I was looking for. Look at that. :) Thanks for finding the link and covering for those of us less able in finding things. 

Thanks for that link, I do have a high speed SLR so I will get much better videos posted this week.

Also, thank you for taking the time to look at my swing. Very interesting to see the comparison with Adam Scott, and yes indeed it looks like my downswing is very steep especially in comparison with his!

I guess when I posted I was mainly thinking about my back-swing though. I think you will notice that in the first video, my takeaway is very shallow. This is when I then cast the club out in my downswing and come in very steep. So, I was curious if my back-swing was the core of my issue.

Here are screenshots of two positions, takeaway and top, with each swing. The heel-hit swing at takeaway is perhaps too far inside and possibly even fanned? At the top it is below my shoulder. The center hit swing the takeaway is forced outside, and at top it is in line with my shoulder. Granted, as you have pointed out, the downswing introduces some other issues.

 

 

On 5/21/2016 at 11:02 PM, amoline said:

Oddly enough, your video of "steep plane" is actually more shallow than the one where you weren't choking down. Here, you actually have the club intersecting more of your trail arm instead of right across your lead arm. So here you are in fact more shallow and not steeper (so your compensatory move does not have to be so severe):

 

Additionally, I think this is the what I was hoping to achieve actually. By steep plane, I was referring to my backswing and not my downswing. I should have probably made that clearer in my original post.

My steeper backswing seems to promote a shallower inside-out downswing (good) as you pointed out. My shallow backswing seems to promote steeper and outside-in downswing (bad).