My Swing (klineka)

[boogielicious]

6 hours ago, klineka said:

Had been playing my last couple rounds and noticed that my driver distance was down quite a bit even on well struck shots, well I figured out that the center of the clubface has a crack in it. If you run your finger over the face you can feel exactly where it is. I reached out to Callaway to see if they will do anything, but I think I might be outside the warranty period so I'm not optimistic. 

Once they get back to me, assuming they won't replace it, I will most likely schedule a driver fitting at True Spec near me in Columbus. I have heard great things about their facilities and it would be the first time I've been properly fit for a driver while hitting multiple brands at once instead of the demo days where I usually would just hit one brand/shaft combination.

I'm pretty brand neutral for driver, I plan on going with whatever brand performs the best for me, although I do have a couple in mind that I know I want to try including Ping G410 and Taylormade SIM and I have heard great things about both models. 

Bummer.

[klineka]

8 minutes ago, boogielicious said:

Bummer.

Good news. They responded and asked me to call their customer service dept which I did and after talking to the customer service rep for a few minutes he said they are going to send out a replacement and I will send them back the cracked one, no cost to me at all. Kudos to you Callaway!

[Double Mocha Man]

1 minute ago, klineka said:

Good news. They responded and asked me to call their customer service dept which I did and after talking to the customer service rep for a few minutes he said they are going to send out a replacement and I will send them back the cracked one, no cost to me at all. Kudos to you Callaway!

What if they notice you had the face shaved?  😄

On a less silly note I have used the same make of driver for the last 8 years or so.  Every year I demo other drivers and none have matched up.  I have had to replace the driver on 3 occasions because of the face breaking/slitting 2/3 of the way up.  No, not because my swing speed is super fast (it's 105 to 110) but because of hitting balls on the range in the winter when it's cold.

[klineka]

45 minutes ago, Double Mocha Man said:

On a less silly note I have used the same make of driver for the last 8 years or so.  Every year I demo other drivers and none have matched up.  I have had to replace the driver on 3 occasions because of the face breaking/slitting 2/3 of the way up.  No, not because my swing speed is super fast (it's 105 to 110) but because of hitting balls on the range in the winter when it's cold.

Hmm that's interesting. I didn't even think about that, but I do hit a decent amount in the cold. We have covered outdoor driving range bays with heaters on them at the driving range closest to me and I hit there a lot during the winter, plus I play plenty of rounds in spring and fall where the starting temp on the first hole is in the upper 30s or low 40s so I'm sure that probably played a role in it cracking, because I have a similar swing speed as you.

[Carl3]

9 hours ago, klineka said:

Had been playing my last couple rounds and noticed that my driver distance was down quite a bit even on well struck shots, well I figured out that the center of the clubface has a crack in it. If you run your finger over the face you can feel exactly where it is. I reached out to Callaway to see if they will do anything, but I think I might be outside the warranty period so I'm not optimistic. 

Once they get back to me, assuming they won't replace it, I will most likely schedule a driver fitting at True Spec near me in Columbus. I have heard great things about their facilities and it would be the first time I've been properly fit for a driver while hitting multiple brands at once instead of the demo days where I usually would just hit one brand/shaft combination.

I'm pretty brand neutral for driver, I plan on going with whatever brand performs the best for me, although I do have a couple in mind that I know I want to try including Ping G410 and Taylormade SIM and I have heard great things about both models. 

That's what you get for the 115 mph club head speed, LOL. Glad to hear of your successes.

Maybe you should ship me your set of SuperSpeeds to borrow 🙂 

Edited April 27, 2020 by Carl3

[klineka]

Got the new club today, man am I impressed. They sent over a brand new still in the wrapper Epic Flash SubZero 10.5 with a HZDRUS Black Smoke shaft with a matching headcover and a club wrench as well. 

I was honestly just expecting a replacement head so I am blown away by this. Can't wait to give it a go at the range tomorrow. 

Props to you Callaway customer service!

[klineka]

Just hit with the Flash at the range, I really like that head/shaft combo. That was the first time I was able to feel a difference in shaft profiles, I think it was probably a combination of the flex being an X-Stiff and the shaft profile itself, but the HZRDUS Smoke Black felt very stiff throughout the entire shaft, and made it feel really easy to return the clubface square to the ball regardless of how aggressively I swung, but I was still able to choke down and hit a little knockdown fairway finder too.

I was a bit surprised at the ball flight since the shaft is labeled low launch and low spin, because my shots very launching much higher than they had previously, but they looked to me like more of high launch, low spin drives rather than the high launch, spinny drives that just float up, these ones were high bullets that held their line really well, or had a slight fade to them.

The only negative I noticed was the sound. It is LOUD. Very loud, similar to a metal baseball bat. But if it performs on the course how it did at the range today, that is something I can easily overlook.

[klineka]

Had my first lesson in a couple months yesterday, we focused on two of my big weaknesses so far this year, open club face with driver and wedge distance control.

Main things with driver were to get a steeper shoulder pitch, feeling like my left shoulder is going lower/towards the ball, and feeling like my left wrist is bowing during the backswing. In reality it still looks fairly straight with maybe a tiny amount of bow but it feels like my wrist is full on DJ -esque at the top. The result of doing both was a shallower shaft during the downswing with a much squarer clubface through impact.

Wedges we worked on more of "playing" concepts rather than technique, we talked about and practiced some things like varying swing speed, swing length, ball position, etc to alter trajectory and distance control, mainly with my 50 degree and PW which should help me dial in my distances better from 110-130 which has been my weakest distance with wedges this season.

[klineka]

Spent some time yesterday doing dry swings/rehearsals with driver at home and hit at the range today.

The main swing thought that resulted in consistently straight shots with the driver was feeling that the clubhead had to beat my hands to the ball. I wasn't actively thinking like "release the club" or "unhinge the wrists" or anything, I just swung and focused on making sure I had the feeling that the clubhead would beat my hands to the ball. I couldn't get video at the range, but I'm sure in reality it wasn't happening, but having that thought combined with a slightly steeper shoulder turn and standing a tad closer to the ball made the ball flight significantly straighter and the consistency of strikes was drastically improved as well, no more low heel cuts.

Edited May 6, 2020 by klineka
Specified I was talking about driver

[klineka]

Was able to get in for a Trackman session today, mainly wanted to see the launch conditions and dispersion with the new driver. It was a bit tough since the lowest tee they had was higher than what I typically use, but I made do. My swing speed has definitely dropped off a bit since I haven't been able to go to the gym the past couple months. Driver swing speed was in the 105-108 range and over the winter I was in the 110-115 range so carry was down a bit but still averaged 255-260 carry with a similar dispersion (roughly 60 yards laterally) over about 30 drives.

Likely will get the super speed sticks back out and start working with those again

[billchao]

26 minutes ago, klineka said:

Likely will get the super speed sticks back out and start working with those again

It might just be not doing the superspeed stuff that caused your swing speed to come back down. I've read that can happen if you don't keep up the training.

[klineka]

Started the superspeed stuff again yesterday.

Driver has been feeling great over the past couple range sessions/rounds, main feeling that results in a much squarer club face is when I get to the top of the backswing, to feel like I'm uncoiling and opening my chest as fast as possible to the left while my arms and hands just naturally fall behind. 

Have been working on distance control with wedges, especially my 50 degree and PW. Have been playing around with a couple different feelings for ways to take distance off, choking down, partial swings, softer swings, etc. and have been practicing altering trajectory as well and am starting to develop multiple ways/feelings to hit the same yardage with different clubs and different trajectories. I am decent at it now with like 70-90 yards with my 54 and 60 degree, but I hadn't practiced it at all with my 50 and PW.

[klineka]

Working on what @iacas and I talked about during the round yesterday, steeper shoulder pitch especially with driver. 

Is this better or at least on the right track Erik? That was about a half speed swing. 

 

 

[iacas]

Okay, so, first off…

Too tall, forces your arms too far out.

Then, I'll say this: I admire two things about what you're doing here:

• The exaggeration.
• How you manage to pull all that backswing stuff together into a fairly decent downswing. 🙂

But, yeah, look at these.

This is just for reference, so you know where the lines came from.

Okay, here we go…

Work on your setup.

Then come back and work on doing all this stuff a bit softer. Your arms don't have to go as deep, you don't have to keep the face that shut that long, etc. Just let the club and hands go where they want, but make sure the left shoulder stays down and doesn't lift up toward to end of the backswing.

[klineka]

23 hours ago, iacas said:

Okay, so, first off…

Too tall, forces your arms too far out.

Mainly worked on the setup position tonight. It feels like the grip of the club is at my knees but I think it actually looks pretty normal?

In order to bend over more and have my arms more straight down I had to add a little radial deviation (I think that's what it's called) to my left hand/wrist, is that normal/ok?

The feeling of keeping the left shoulder down/not letting it come up immediately helped my irons, was hitting them very solid. Did a ton of slow swings with the driver, in the full speed swings my left arm was getting way above the steeper shoulder plane and I was slicing across the ball pretty bad. I had worked on that over the winter a lot but it looks like I slipped back into some old habits.

[billchao]

3 minutes ago, klineka said:

In order to bend over more and have my arms more straight down I had to add a little radial deviation (I think that's what it's called) to my left hand/wrist, is that normal/ok?

Your hand is still ulnar deviated. It's just less than your old setup.

[klineka]

One super important note to myself regarding the driver swing, make sure you do a full turn on the backswing and get your back completely facing the target. 

With the feeling of steepening my shoulder plane, I noticed that when I didn't do a full turn on the way back, I was coming way over the top and out to in which resulted in huge slices, but as soon as I remembered to get a full turn while getting the shoulders steeper it was night and day difference, consistently hitting them out of the center of the face and dead straight or a couple yard fade.

I put an alignment rod through my front two belt loops and made sure the stick was pointing at the ball when I was at the end of my backswing. Did a few 1/2 speed reps with that then took the stick out and just envisioned it was still there to make the full turn.

Another feeling that helped was taking my time on the backswing and almost feeling a pause at the top to make sure I was fully turned. I wasn't actually pausing but just had that feeling.

[klineka]

Had a lesson last week and we went over short game stuff, mainly medium length pitch shots (20-40 yards) and a little out of the bunker too as I had never had a lesson on bunker play before.

The general theme with all of my short game shots was that my weight needed to be further forward and stay forward during the entire swing as I had a tendency to set up with a more 50/50 weight distribution and then lean my torso away during the shots.

Once I kept my weight forward, the strike improved a lot and my low point was much more consistent and I was able to feel how to properly use the bounce of the club for multiple shots in a row.

The other point of focus was smaller backswings and allow my body to turn and rotate through the shot to add speed/carry distance instead of relying on all arms and minimal body rotation as I had been doing previously. 

The combination of the weight forward and the smaller backswing/more body rotation has resulted in shots with the 54 and 60 that are launching higher and landing softer which is nice especially with the 54 degree because I now have a mid trajectory shot, where before all I really had was a bump and run or a flop shot.

I now have 3 stock trajectories and a club that I feel comfortable with for each, and then I can open the face and adjust off of those as necessary. PW is for bump and runs just off the green, 54 degree for mid trajectory shots, and 60 degree for high trajectory. Prior to the lesson I would have used the 60 degree for almost everything (without much success overall).

Tonight I did the 50 point game from LSW and completed it in 48 shots, I mixed it up between easy medium and hard lies and chose positions that required me to do high, medium, and low trajectories. I struggled the most with the high trajectory shots, but the low and medium ones were very solid.