Jump to content
Check out the Spin Axis Podcast! ×
Note: This thread is 2815 days old. We appreciate that you found this thread instead of starting a new one, but if you plan to post here please make sure it's still relevant. If not, please start a new topic. Thank you!

Recommended Posts

Posted

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


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.

-Justin

My Swing

SLDR C 10.5, Aeroburner 3W/3H, MX-200 4-GW, Vokey Chrome 200 56 & 60, TM White Smoke

Awards, Achievements, and Accolades

Posted

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. :-P

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!

-Justin

My Swing

SLDR C 10.5, Aeroburner 3W/3H, MX-200 4-GW, Vokey Chrome 200 56 & 60, TM White Smoke

Awards, Achievements, and Accolades

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

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.

-Justin

My Swing

SLDR C 10.5, Aeroburner 3W/3H, MX-200 4-GW, Vokey Chrome 200 56 & 60, TM White Smoke

Awards, Achievements, and Accolades

Posted

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.

 

-Justin

My Swing

SLDR C 10.5, Aeroburner 3W/3H, MX-200 4-GW, Vokey Chrome 200 56 & 60, TM White Smoke

Awards, Achievements, and Accolades

Posted (edited)

 

 

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 by Pepsivanilla93

-Justin

My Swing

SLDR C 10.5, Aeroburner 3W/3H, MX-200 4-GW, Vokey Chrome 200 56 & 60, TM White Smoke

Awards, Achievements, and Accolades

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

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 :-D

 

 

Fountains_Scorecard_070117.jpg

  • Upvote 2

-Justin

My Swing

SLDR C 10.5, Aeroburner 3W/3H, MX-200 4-GW, Vokey Chrome 200 56 & 60, TM White Smoke

Awards, Achievements, and Accolades

Posted

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!

 

-Justin

My Swing

SLDR C 10.5, Aeroburner 3W/3H, MX-200 4-GW, Vokey Chrome 200 56 & 60, TM White Smoke

Awards, Achievements, and Accolades

Posted

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!

  • Upvote 2

My Swing


Driver: :ping: G30, Irons: :tmade: Burner 2.0, Putter: :cleveland:, Balls: :snell:

Awards, Achievements, and Accolades

Posted
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.

-Justin

My Swing

SLDR C 10.5, Aeroburner 3W/3H, MX-200 4-GW, Vokey Chrome 200 56 & 60, TM White Smoke

Awards, Achievements, and Accolades

Posted
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? 


Posted
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.

-Justin

My Swing

SLDR C 10.5, Aeroburner 3W/3H, MX-200 4-GW, Vokey Chrome 200 56 & 60, TM White Smoke

Awards, Achievements, and Accolades

Posted

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.

  • Upvote 1

-Justin

My Swing

SLDR C 10.5, Aeroburner 3W/3H, MX-200 4-GW, Vokey Chrome 200 56 & 60, TM White Smoke

Awards, Achievements, and Accolades

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

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.

1st_hole.jpg

-Justin

My Swing

SLDR C 10.5, Aeroburner 3W/3H, MX-200 4-GW, Vokey Chrome 200 56 & 60, TM White Smoke

Awards, Achievements, and Accolades

  • 7 months later...
Posted

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 :banana:. 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.

  • Like 1

-Justin

My Swing

SLDR C 10.5, Aeroburner 3W/3H, MX-200 4-GW, Vokey Chrome 200 56 & 60, TM White Smoke

Awards, Achievements, and Accolades

  • Administrator
Posted

Good to have you back at it.

Erik J. Barzeski —  I knock a ball. It goes in a gopher hole. 🏌🏼‍♂️
Director of Instruction Golf Evolution • Owner, The Sand Trap .com • AuthorLowest Score Wins
Golf Digest "Best Young Teachers in America" 2016-17 & "Best in State" 2017-20 • WNY Section PGA Teacher of the Year 2019 :edel: :true_linkswear:

Check Out: New Topics | TST Blog | Golf Terms | Instructional Content | Analyzr | LSW | Instructional Droplets

Awards, Achievements, and Accolades

Posted

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!

Currently focusing on: Key 4 - shorter backswing.

What's in the bag: Callaway X2 Hot Driver, Titleist 915F 3 wood, X2 Hot 3 Hybrid, 3, 5-AW Apex Pro irons, 54*, 58* Cleveland RTX, Odyssey Versa 1 Putter

Awards, Achievements, and Accolades

Posted
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.

 

 

-Justin

My Swing

SLDR C 10.5, Aeroburner 3W/3H, MX-200 4-GW, Vokey Chrome 200 56 & 60, TM White Smoke

Awards, Achievements, and Accolades

Posted

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.

-Justin

My Swing

SLDR C 10.5, Aeroburner 3W/3H, MX-200 4-GW, Vokey Chrome 200 56 & 60, TM White Smoke

Awards, Achievements, and Accolades

Note: This thread is 2815 days old. We appreciate that you found this thread instead of starting a new one, but if you plan to post here please make sure it's still relevant. If not, please start a new topic. Thank you!

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now


  • Want to join this community?

    We'd love to have you!

    Sign Up
  • TST Partners

    PlayBetter
    Golfer's Journal
    ShotScope
    The Stack System
    FitForGolf
    FlightScope Mevo
    Direct: Mevo, Mevo+, and Pro Package.

    Coupon Codes (save 10-20%): "IACAS" for Mevo/Stack/FitForGolf, "IACASPLUS" for Mevo+/Pro Package, and "THESANDTRAP" for ShotScope. 15% off TourStriker (no code).
  • Posts

    • Day 470 - 2026-01-13 Got some work in while some players were using the sim, so I had to stick around. 🙂 Good thing too, since… I hadn't yet practiced today until about 6:45 tonight. 😛 
    • That's not quite the same thing as what some people messaged me today.
    • Day 152 1-12 More reps bowing wrists in downswing. Still pausing at the top. Making sure to get to lead side and getting the ball to go left. Slow progress is better than no progress.  
    • Yea, if I were to make a post arguing against the heat map concept, citing some recent robot testing would be my first point. The heat map concept is what I find interesting, more on that below. The robot testing I have looked at, including the one you linked, do discreet point testing then provide that discrete data in various forms. Which as you said is old as the hills, if you know of any other heat map concept type testing, I would be interested in links to that though! No, and I did say in my first post "if this heat map data is valid and reliable" meaning I have my reservations as well. Heck beyond reservations. I have some fairly strong suspicions there are flaws. But all I have are hunches and guesses, if anyone has data to share, I would be interested to see it.  My background is I quit golfing about 9 years ago and have been toying with the idea of returning. So far that has been limited to a dozen range sessions in late Summer through Fall when the range closed. Then primarily hitting foam balls indoors using a swing speed monitor as feedback. Between the range closing and the snow flying I did buy an R10 and hit a few balls into a backyard net. The heat map concept is a graphical representation of efficiency (smash factor) loss mapped onto the face of the club. As I understand it to make the representation agnostic to swing speed or other golfer specific swing characteristics. It is more a graphical tool not a data tool. The areas are labeled numerically in discrete 1% increments while the raw data is changing at ~0.0017%/mm and these changes are represented as subtle changes in color across those discrete areas. The only data we care about in terms of the heat map is the 1.3 to 1.24 SF loss and where was the strike location on the face - 16mm heal and 5mm low. From the video the SF loss is 4.6% looking up 16mm heal and 5mm low on the heat map it is on the edge of where the map changes from 3% loss to 4%. For that data point in the video, 16mm heal, 5mm low, 71.3 mph swing speed (reference was 71.4 mph), the distance loss was 7.2% or 9 yards, 125 reference distance down to 116. However, distance loss is not part of a heat map discussion. Distance loss will be specific to the golfers swing characteristics not the club. What I was trying to convey was that I do not have enough information to determine good or bad. Are the two systems referencing strike location the same? How accurate are the two systems in measuring even if they are referencing from the same location? What variation might have been introduced by the club delivery on the shot I picked vs the reference set of shots? However, based on the data I do have and making some assumptions and guesses the results seem ok, within reason, a good place to start from and possibly refine. I do not see what is wrong with 70mph 7 iron, although that is one of my other areas of questioning. The title of the video has slow swing speed in all caps, and it seems like the videos I watch define 7i slow, medium, and fast as 70, 80, and 90. The whole question of mid iron swing speed and the implications for a players game and equipment choices is of interest to me as (according to my swing speed meter) over my ~decade break I lost 30mph swing speed on mine.
    • Maxfli, Maltby, Golfworks, all under the Dicks/Golf Galaxy umbrella... it's all a bit confounding. Looking at the pictures, they all look very, very similar in their design. I suspect they're the same club, manufactured in the same factory in China, just with different badging.  The whacky pricing structure has soured me, so I'll just cool my heels a bit. The new Mizuno's will be available to test very soon. I'm in no rush.  
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Welcome to TST! Signing up is free, and you'll see fewer ads and can talk with fellow golf enthusiasts! By using TST, you agree to our Terms of Use, our Privacy Policy, and our Guidelines.