My Swing (Pepsivanilla93)

[Pepsivanilla93]

I've been Playing Golf for: Started about 20 years ago but only practiced for about 3 years of that. 99% of that 3 years was just a driving range hobby. All self-taught.

My current handicap index or average score is: Shoot in the 110's

My typical ball flight is: straight, straight draw, straight hook

The shot I hate or the "miss" I'm trying to reduce/eliminate is: fat shots and hooks

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Videos: 

 

 

A few weeks ago I started working on a proper weight shift and earlier this week started to work on getting the forward shaft lean. I've been working on ball striking recently since it affects every club, but I can play my hook mishits on 5 irons and up for the most part. I was hitting fat about 50%+ of the time before I started thinking about "squishing the bug" under my left shoe the last time out to get a good weight shift. That took it down to about 33% of the time. Also thin shots happen maybe once or twice a round, I usually have no problem getting the ball in the air.

Hopefully the videos are quality enough for now. When I get to the range next I'll actually hit a ball, stabilize the camera, and set the camera up as recommended. I didn't read the sticky until these were already uploaded to Youtube.

[Pepsivanilla93]

Went to the range today to work on ball-striking and it went great! A few things I worked on were the "toes up drill" to improve my weight transfer, and shortening my back-swing. I also steepened my back-swing by making it feel like I was taking it back vertically. I bought a 68 ball bucket and the first 20 or so were pretty bad hooks with fat shots interspersed. The last half of the bucket I think I hit only 1 or 2 fat shots and consequently found that my ball flight was much straighter, if not dead straight. I think this had to do with steepening my back-swing, as in the videos above it looked to come around my body too much and get under plane causing too much of an in-to-out swing path and the hook spin.

Another thing I noticed was that if I lost focus on the ball I would hit the ball thin. It felt to me like the anticipation of recoil when shooting a gun. Putting conscious effort into focusing on the top of the ball eliminated thin shots for me.

I came in with the goal to improve my ball-striking and find some angles to work with to eliminate fat shots and felt that I met that goal today. Not to take away from the couple hundred practice swings I've been taking at home on the carpet.

I was hitting everything from lob wedge to 4-iron nice and crisp today but had a lot of difficulty with my 3 hybrid and no successful shots. I tried swinging it like an iron, putting the ball forward in my stance a bit and sweeping it, but all that happened was topped balls and 20-yd breaking balls that went 3 feet high and dove into the grass. Once I get my camera stabilized out at the range I'll have to post a video of it.

Still I feel I have my work cut out for me to ingrain these swing changes (there's about 4 I worked on lol) and really groove them into my subconscious. Happy to have these results so quickly though, and looking forward to journaling my swing more in this thread!

[Pepsivanilla93]

My current handicap index or average score is: 20.3 been playing in the low 90's recently

My typical ball flight is: straight, straight draw, straight hook

The shot I hate or the "miss" I'm trying to reduce/eliminate is: fat shots and hooks

 

I've found my weight shift to be the single greatest factor in getting my divots to start in front of the ball. Been working on that the last 2 weeks the most and this is how far I've ingrained it. I've also been been working a drill where I put a lunchbox inside my backswing to stop myself from taking it back so far inside. I started that really recently so I still have to make a conscious effort to bring it back as straight as I can. Swing seems to be on a much better plane though and it's taken a lot of the curve out of my ball flight, the problem is I now have a slight fade or slight draw that starts straight. It was much nicer taking the right side of the course out of play! We'll see how I do tomorrow though.

[Pepsivanilla93]

Finally got out to the range today to take some video. Used a selfie stick we had in the home office and leaned it against my bag to film. I started with my 6-iron and took some videos for evolvr. I enjoyed my aimpoint class so much I figured I'd give evolvr a shot, especially with first month free. TST hasn't led me in the wrong direction so far.

I got out to the practice green as well to practice Aimpoint and sunk 2 20-footers from different reads! I'm really enjoying the ease-of-use and fun I'm getting out of it.

Also took this video of my driver practice. As noted above I've had a tough time with hooks and the lower the loft, the worse the hook. Put the driving range basket on the inside of my swing to take away my ability to pull the club inside and hit from the inside and I had some of the straightest shots and 3-5 yard draws I've ever been able to hit with it. I'm looking forward to seeing my analysis from evolvr and seeing how it translates to my driver swing and other clubs.

 

[Pepsivanilla93]

 

 

Figured I might as well post these here as my first submissions to evolvr. I think I've taken my swing quite far teaching myself and I'm pretty proud of what I've accomplished so far. Now that I make a little more money since I joined this site and I'm committing more to my golf game I figure it's time for a trained eye to help me out. LSW is next but I've spent too much on golf this month!

Edited June 20, 2017 by Pepsivanilla93

[Pepsivanilla93]

Shot my record score yesterday with an 87. +3 on the front nine for a 39 and +14 on the back with a 48. The back nine steps up the difficulty drastically.

I had my first evolvr analysis come in last tuesday or so and have been working on what was instructed. Apparently my swing was too 'armsy' and the instructor made it very clear to me what I was doing and how it should actually look. After a few days working on it real slow I played a round on Saturday and shot my score above. Ball striking was considerably better, I think I had one fat shot all day. Thin contact is the issue I'll bring up with my instructor next but I'm very happy with the way it's coming along in just the first week. Boy does it feel good when you hit the 4 iron flush though

 

 

[Pepsivanilla93]

I've been working on working the torso a little more instead of my arms over the last week. Just sent in my second evolvr upload and I'm looking forward to working with the instructor more. My contact has greatly improved since my first analysis and I'm looking forward to shooting lower scores!

 

[RandallT]

Glad to see such quick improvement!!! Congrats. 

Dont worry if you take a step backward in scores though, as you may hit a patch where it's tough to execute what the instructor is trying to get you to do (that's my experience anyway).

Curious what specifically you are working on with your torso. I am guessing they want your hips and shoulders more open at impact than I'm seeing. That was what evolvr had me working on fairly recently. 

Anyway, good luck on the continued progress. You're in good hands with instruction but if keep up with the good posting here, I'm sure you'll get some  conversations with others going. We aren't avoiding you, I swear!

[Pepsivanilla93]

6 minutes ago, RandallT said:

Glad to see such quick improvement!!! Congrats. 

Dont worry if you take a step backward in scores though, as you may hit a patch where it's tough to execute what the instructor is trying to get you to do (that's my experience anyway).

Curious what specifically you are working on with your torso. I might guessing they want your hips and shoulders more open at impact than I'm seeing. That was what evolvr had me working on fairly recently. 

Anyway, good luck on the continued progress. You're in good hands with instruction but if keep up with the good posting here, I'm sure you'll get some  conversations with others going. We aren't avoiding you, I swear!

Thanks for the kind words! I'll keep the score thing in mind as I work on some things in the future.

I've been working on not straightening up on my downswing as well as getting the shoulders to lead the arms more. I was told I was throwing my arms down towards the ball and my torso wasn't as active as it should be in the swing. He might have mentioned getting the shoulder more open, I'd have to go back and check. He gave me a drill to work on and if enough improvement was seen he was going to add in another piece. Sort of like fixing a larger problem in smaller chunks it feels like.

Thanks again. I look forward to posting around here more.

[teohenwhy]

On 6/18/2017 at 1:12 PM, Pepsivanilla93 said:

Finally got out to the range today to take some video. Used a selfie stick we had in the home office and leaned it against my bag to film. I started with my 6-iron and took some videos for evolvr. I enjoyed my aimpoint class so much I figured I'd give evolvr a shot, especially with first month free. TST hasn't led me in the wrong direction so far.

I got out to the practice green as well to practice Aimpoint and sunk 2 20-footers from different reads! I'm really enjoying the ease-of-use and fun I'm getting out of it.

Also took this video of my driver practice. As noted above I've had a tough time with hooks and the lower the loft, the worse the hook. Put the driving range basket on the inside of my swing to take away my ability to pull the club inside and hit from the inside and I had some of the straightest shots and 3-5 yard draws I've ever been able to hit with it. I'm looking forward to seeing my analysis from evolvr and seeing how it translates to my driver swing and other clubs.

 

Nice swing! I wish I had a swing as smooth as yours. Can I ask why you have that ball basket ? I'm guessing it's to help with your takeaway? 

[Pepsivanilla93]

22 hours ago, Tony Ly said:

Nice swing! I wish I had a swing as smooth as yours. Can I ask why you have that ball basket ? I'm guessing it's to help with your takeaway? 

Thanks! You can groove a smooth swing too if you put in some time. I've got the basket there to provide feedback if I took my club too far inside on the takeaway as well as it's soft enough that if I hit it it won't get damaged nor will my club. On the downswing I used it to get my club more down the line and straighten out my tendency to hook by preventing the inside-to-outside swing path.

[Pepsivanilla93]

Got an email for a handicap revision for my Grint profile. Got under 20 which was my goal. Still working on the same things from evolvr because contact has drastically improved.

[Pepsivanilla93]

Haven't played in about 3 weeks after my golfing buddies went on vacation and work picked up on the weekends for me. Shot an 86 today on a course I've been meaning to play, and I'm glad I did. (69.6 rating--127 slope--6,123yds) New favorite course. Links style with no trees in sight. The tee boxes on hole 1 and 10 are elevated about 80ft above the rest of the course so you can see the entire thing around you. The twosome ahead of us ended up driving their cart over 3 greens that we saw, not respecting the cart only rule for par 3's, parking their carts on the fringe, playing slowly, not raking bunkers etc... We saw it all with them. We let the starter know at the turn but they were gone after playing only the front nine.

Anyways, have my handicap trending on the grint towards 16.6 which is awesome. A big thank you to this community for helping me absolutely demolish my expectations of my ability this year. I'm doing way better than I thought I would. No chili dips and only 1 top today that was with the driver.

I've been practicing getting my shoulders more open at impact. Still focusing on the torso and shoulders as guided by my instructor. I've found that my shoulders would stall at about A6 which caused my arms and hands to extend out to right field generating the inside-out swing path and nasty hooks. With conscious effort to keep the shoulders turning I've found that it pulls the club around my body better thus straightening up my club path at impact and in return straightening out the ball flight. Everything was flying straight today for the most part with a normal amount of draw mixed in. Hooks and overdraws crept in a bit here and there as expected. My instructor was right though, work on improving contact through the drills I was shown and ball flight will sort itself out.

I've got to take some swing videos this week for evolvr and I'll post them here once I do.

[Pepsivanilla93]

I can't believe I haven't posted since July 30th! I got really busy with work last year, only had 2 days off total in October, which ended my season for the most part. I got away from golf for a while but the weather is starting to warm up again and I've been out playing and practicing again. I'm still working on the swing changes from my evolvr lessons (connecting the arms to the body so I don't get stuck behind) and making great progress! I'm finally able to hit my fairway wood and hybrid with enough consistency to play them on the course. I was even hitting my driver off the deck at the range today, and well at that . I've been practicing my guitar all winter and I've found that I make the fastest progress learning new songs by going really slow, almost boringly slow, and making sure I master the part slowly before increasing the speed. I'm taking the same approach to my golf swing this year and over a few hundred golf balls I'm really seeing the difference. Looking forward to updating this post some more this year and I'm setting a goal to reach a single digit handicap.

[iacas]

Good to have you back at it.

[b101]

Keep at it and good to see you back - there's some really nice, athletic moves in your swing, so I'm sure you and your instructor will be able to do lots with it. Love evolvr, so keep us posted with how it goes!

[Pepsivanilla93]

On 4/2/2018 at 9:52 AM, iacas said:

Good to have you back at it.

Thanks, Erik. LSW scheduled for delivery Saturday and I'm really looking forward to finally reading it!

 

On 4/3/2018 at 2:12 AM, b101 said:

Keep at it and good to see you back - there's some really nice, athletic moves in your swing, so I'm sure you and your instructor will be able to do lots with it. Love evolvr, so keep us posted with how it goes!

Thank you, I'm glad to be back. I've only done a lesson or two in evolvr so far and it's really paid off. I will definitely be signing up again soon to keep me on track.

 

Had the day off work today so I decided to take a couple videos of my current progress. Last time I was at the range I was getting pure strikes and straight ball flights with the things I was working on. Progress is unquestionable at this point and I'm just waiting for the weather to warm up a bit more before the courses will open for the season so I can see how it reflects in my scores.

 

 

[Pepsivanilla93]

Tried out this range about 30 minutes away that has the Trackman Range feature, today. Couldn't get it to register a single shot. Very disappointing and frustrating range visit. Just one of those awful days for your swing too. I just wanted to get an average carry distance for my clubs and some shot data to review at home, so I didn't show up with any game plan for practice. The app for Trackman stopped working after about 20 balls all the way until I left. I contacted the range to see what was up after my visit since they were packed when I was there.

 

Got too carried away as well trying to fix my club path and whole slew of other swing faults that weren't my priority and since nothing was working I was getting frustrated. This post is a bit of a vent of my awful range visit as well as a reminder to work on, and video, my priority change since working on one thing at a time is going to be the only way I'm able to track progress.

 

A couple questions for anyone who drops by and can answer: What's the best way to track ball striking progress? My goal is to improve sweet spot hits with proper ball first contact and that's the fix my instructor was helping me with. Should I take an initial percentage of quality hits to mishits and then test it at certain intervals to track progress? Should I just video my swing and make sure my swing changes are present, then continually submit videos until my instructor sees the progress? Then he can adjust as necessary?

 

Thanks guys, going to send in some more videos anyways for instruction. It's just too complicated and 'instant gratification inducing' trying to fix it myself at this point.