My Swing (BeardedBearMan)

[BeardedBearMan]

Hi TST - delighted to have recently joined and already enjoying starting to get involved in the community and the great content posted here. If anyone has the time, I'd be really grateful for some feedback on my swing. Here's my responses to the standard questions:

I've been Playing Golf for: I started young-ish (12 y.o) and played for a couple of years, even playing in 1 tournament. Then took up tennis from 14 and on and reduced to playing golf a couple of times a year with my dad. 4 months ago I picked up the game again and I'm really trying to improve so I've been practicing 3/4 times per week. The goal is to get into low single digit handicaps and scratch eventually, join a club to play comps, etc.

My current handicap index or average score is: 13.4 (up from 11.9 last revision). I was a 22 index in July but have seen some quick improvements over the past couple of months.

My typical ball flight is: mid-height gentle draw. Here's a Skytrack readout of a 7i shot I hit last week. it was a particularly well hit shot, although the spin number is lower than normal and so there's way too much roll out. The carry distance is typical for my well struck 7 irons:

The shot I hate or the "miss" I'm trying to reduce/eliminate is: On my Irons and fairway woods, my miss is a push right that doesn't draw back enough and loses a bit of distance. Here's a Skytrack readout of a typical miss on my 7i:

My driver is a disaster at the moment, with misses being huge slices right and the occasional duck-hook when I overcompensate the other way. I'll try to post a driver swing soon but I don't have one right now.

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Where I am with my game:

I know this isn't a question asked from the standard template but I thought it might be helpful to add a bit more colour to the swing. I've taken a couple of lessons over the past month and fixed my out-to-in path (at least with my irons). I feel like I've gotten a lot more consistent with my ball-striking and I'm beginning to feel much more confident that I can get close with my scoring clubs the majority of the time, with my misses still generally finding the green. I feel most comfortable with my game from 6i to wedges, with my long irons and short game being acceptable but with plenty of room for improvement. My biggest problem is my driving without a doubt (inconsistency + big slices on misses), followed closely by putting which can get hot but is sometimes abysmal, simply too inconsistent.

In terms of my swing, I'm finally seeing my path coming from the inside which is a big triumph for me, but I can see that my most easily apparent flaw is that my downswing plane is steeper than my backswing plane leading to early extension and a rising of the shoulders at impact to avoid hitting the ground before the ball. I'd love to hear about thoughts / drills that can help with both shallowing out the plane on the downswing and avoiding that early-extension / shoulder rise on impact.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide - really looking forward to getting more involved at TST and working on improving my game with the help here. I commit to updating this post with progress over the weeks ahead.

Best,

BBM.

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Videos: 

Here is a swing video of the well struck 7i shown above. It includes a normal speed down the line view, followed by a slow-mo down the line view, and then a normal speed face-on view followed by a slow-mo face on view (apologies for how tight the camera is on the FO view, not a lot of space in the sim bays I use): 

 

[iacas]

3 hours ago, BeardedBearMan said:

I've taken a couple of lessons over the past month

We're generally somewhat reluctant to give a bunch of advice to someone already receiving advice.

If you want to use this topic to just post updates about your swing and use it as a sort of diary or something, that's totally good with us.

[BeardedBearMan]

1 hour ago, iacas said:

We're generally somewhat reluctant to give a bunch of advice to someone already receiving advice.

If you want to use this topic to just post updates about your swing and use it as a sort of diary or something, that's totally good with us.

Thanks @iacas for taking the time to reply. I totally get that and agree with not confusing someone with too much advice - especially when they're already getting personalised advice from an instructor. However, I'd counter by saying that given I'm not currently working with nor receiving advice from the instructor (the 2 lessons were one-offs), I would definitely appreciate any feedback I can get so I can work on it going forward.

Either way, I'm happy to use this post as a swing diary as you suggest - and if you (or anyone else) want to provide any thoughts or comments in the future, I'll be happy to take them on board then. Thanks again.

[BeardedBearMan]

Here's an update - finally got a video of my driver swing. As I mentioned, it's super inconsistent, with regular misses being big push slices.