My Swing (lewisws)

[Lewisws]

I've been Playing Golf for: 4 years
My current handicap index or average score is: 80
My typical ball flight is: Slight fade
The shot I hate or the "miss" I'm trying to reduce/eliminate is: Slice

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Videos: 

Hi all,

I sturggle with a ball flight which starts of straight but curves off to the right (fade/slice).

I also struggle with fat/heavy shots and it seems I dont get alot of distance for the effort and swing speed. Any help or advice is appreciated i will get a front on view asap.

[Pretzel]

Biggest thing I can see is that your backswing is too long for two reasons. You're overswinging with the arms and hinging your wrists too much at the top.

Beyond that, the second piece I can see is that you're standing up through impact and the right heel is lifting. This can lead to inconsistent strikes and especially thin shots if you're not careful.

Both were things I did in the past, but the first thing I'd recommend fixing is the backswing length. What really helped me was a tip given by @iacas to make a conscious effort of feeling my arms in front of my torso on the backswing, which helped everything stay in sync a lot better without sacrificing any lag on the downswing.

[boogielicious]

This thread below can help.

 

[Lewisws]

On 2/23/2019 at 9:09 AM, Pretzel said:

Biggest thing I can see is that your backswing is too long for two reasons. You're overswinging with the arms and hinging your wrists too much at the top.

Beyond that, the second piece I can see is that you're standing up through impact and the right heel is lifting. This can lead to inconsistent strikes and especially thin shots if you're not careful.

Both were things I did in the past, but the first thing I'd recommend fixing is the backswing length. What really helped me was a tip given by @iacas to make a conscious effort of feeling my arms in front of my torso on the backswing, which helped everything stay in sync a lot better without sacrificing any lag on the downswing.

Hi @Pretzel 

Thanks for the reply. I tend to hinge the wrists up rather then hinge side to side if that makes sense. Whenever you hinge up the club will go further because of the range of movement when hinging up. Whenever I try the keep the right arm straighter like @boogielicioussuggested it feels like my wrists do nothing at all. Also the butt of the club is more in line with my right heel at the top which I believe is more depth?. 

Would I be right in thinking my wrist action is wrong? 

[klineka]

1 hour ago, Lewisws said:

Whenever I try the keep the right arm straighter like @boogielicioussuggested it feels like my wrists do nothing at all.

Would I be right in thinking my wrist action is wrong? 

Have you filmed yourself making swings where you have the feeling of keeping the right arm straight? Feel isn't real. Just because you feel like your wrists do nothing when you try to keep your right arm straight doesn't mean they aren't actually doing anything.

I would start with the suggestions that you have been given so far and see what that does to your consistency and ball flight. I've dealt with a longer than necessary backswing too and the biggest feeling that helped me was to feel like I was only taking the club back halfway. When I watched it back on video, it looked more like a normal full swing but was still significantly shorter than where I originally was.

[Pretzel]

6 hours ago, Lewisws said:

Hi @Pretzel 

Thanks for the reply. I tend to hinge the wrists up rather then hinge side to side if that makes sense. Whenever you hinge up the club will go further because of the range of movement when hinging up. Whenever I try the keep the right arm straighter like @boogielicioussuggested it feels like my wrists do nothing at all. Also the butt of the club is more in line with my right heel at the top which I believe is more depth?. 

Would I be right in thinking my wrist action is wrong? 

Here's a comparison of you at the top versus Tiger Woods (I chose a 7i swing of his since it looked like you were hitting some sort of mid-iron like that). 

You can see that your overly long backswing is a result of two different things. Your wrists are appear to be hinging too far (Tiger's are at 90 degrees or less, yours appear well past 90 degrees) in addition to your arms themselves going too far back (shoulders appear to be rotated about the same amount between the two of you, but Tiger's arm isn't pressed as tight against his chest).

You can see the same thing here from Dustin Johnson, a player with a long backswing, who has his shoulders rotated similarly to yours but his lead arm not folded as far across him and his wrists not hinged quite as far.

This is what I meant by feeling like the arms are more "in front" of you, is that having the lead arm folded as tightly across your body as you do is not going to give you extra distance (it's not "usable" extra lag because it puts your arms too far behind you) and it will make the swing harder to control, at least from my experience. For reference, this is what my swing used to look like at the top of the backswing when I was doing something very similar, alongside the excellent caption/commentary provided by @iacas.

Yours definitely isn't as dramatic with the arms as mine was, and I think the wrists are contributing far more to the overly long backswing than your arms are. The arms in front discussion I think would be beneficial for you though, since you say it makes your wrists feel like they're doing nothing. Currently your wrists are doing too much, so the proper amount of wrist action will feel like not much at all to you, and it can have the added benefit of keeping your right elbow pointing closer to the camera (avoiding arm overswing) at the top of your backswing at the same time. The feel for me that @iacas gave that worked well was keeping my hands "in front of my chest".

It would be very helpful to see a video of you trying out the feel where you said that it felt like your wrists were doing nothing. That's the best way to tell if that is setting you on the right path or if it isn't quite correct.