Odogesq

Hi, and welcome! As some may point out, it is going to be difficult to give you good feedback without posting a video of your swing. That said, best course of action to get better is to invest in some golf lessons at a local course and stick with them for an extended period of time. Although you will have to spend some money, i guarantee you will improve and not regret spending the lessons. Without feedback from someone who know what they are doing watching your swing, you will forever be guessing at what you should be doing, regardless of the amount of reading you do on the internet.

Wow, I had assumed you are a beginner. With an index that low it sounds like you just need some range and practice time. Are you sure your full swing is the issue? If you are shooting 75-82, maybe your focus should be on chipping and putting to Dave some strokes.

Hi! YouTube videos can be a great learning tool, but as a beginner it's going to be difficult to just rely on YouTube because you will not be getting the feedback you get from lessons. YouTube video lessons typically focus on one "tip" or on every small part of the golf swing. Signing up for lessons will help you get a big picture understanding of your swing and your very specific swing fault. From there you will be able to better use the YouTube videos to work on specific faults. I agree with everyone else that lessons are a must at the beginning. It took me about two years of struggling on my own before I cracked and got lessons. Since then I have consistently improved each year. I regret not taking lessons first thing when I picked up a club. Lessons basically shrink the learning curve drastically. Lastly, I think you should keep playing while taking lessons and hitting the range. There is no substitute for experience and there are a lot of lies and places you will end up on the golf course that you just can't reproduce on the range. Best way to play is to just pick up your ball if you start holding the group back. Make it a fun, no pressure environment and you will enjoy yourself even though you will not beat the same level.

Hi! Finding a good instructor can be difficult. If you have never taken lessons before, it probably does not matter much who you go with as you will receive tremendous benefits from just about any instructor. Just make sure they are pga certified (or credentialed in some other reputable program, e.g. 5sk). That said, for a beginner you will benefit the most from purchasing at least 4-5 hours of time at once. Most instructors will let you break up that time as you see fit, in 30 min or 1 hour increments. You will most likely get the best results with the first couple lessons being an hour long, and tapering off into 30 min lessons with the rest. If you buy your lessons up front you will be able to negotiate a better rate. For reference I live in So Cal and pay about $80-$120 per hour for the local pros, or $40-$60 per 30 min. My advice would be to seek out the local pros at your local course and just chat with them. You definitely want to make sure they don't have a crazy methedology, or teach only one kind of swing. As long as they believe in focusing on the fundamental (grip, stance, weight shift, body turn) you should be fine. Ask around when you play golf, usually the locals will tell you if the local course has a good pro. Good luck!

No worries! Thanks for the responses and helpful link everyone!

Hi Everyone! So I have been taking lessons and working on turning my hips more during the swing and into impact. Only problem now is that as I turn my hips it brings my arms over the top, causing me to cut across the ball each time. No matter what I do I can't seem to get my arms on plane without some terrible result (hitting fat/thin/shank I used to hit a fairly consistent draw, and my miss was almost always a hook, so I got used to playing the course from right to left. It wasn't perect, but it got me down to a 7.8. However, I had very little hip turn in my swing and instead had a very pronounced "slide." I also tended to leave a lot of weight on my left in the back swing. That said, contact was always good for the most part and ball flight a fairly consistent right to left. My instructor is getting me to load onto the right side and turn my hips as opposed to sliding. Although I am able to make solid contact, I can't figure out how to turn my hips without pulling my arms down and throwing the club out over the top. Very frustrating. I'm playing tomorrow and will just have to play a fade to keep score low. Any advice/help/drills is appreciated.

21 days is a really short window to shave two strokes off your handicap, even with significant instruction and golf/range time built in. Not to mention the rounds of golf you will have to play during that window to get the handicapping calculation to adjust downward. Assuming unli ited resources and time, best chance of getting there though is to do nothing but golf for the next three weeks. Lessons and practice in the morning, and playing in the afternoon every day for three weeks. If you are like the majority of us saps and don't have unlimited resources, I would suggest working on your course management as mentioned above to ensure you you keep the big umber off the card, and also lots of putting and chipping. At a 18 handicap I imagine you can get it close to the green with the first 2-3 shots on any given hole, so being able to chip it close and 1 putt the majority of the time will get your scores lower.

While I can see how this type of setup would help someone get a lot of reps and work on timing, I just think it would be impossible to build a really good swing using only this setup without at least some range time. Reason being that it will be impossible to tell what kind of ball flight the balls have, which basically translates to how much spin, i.e. how shut/open your club face is at impact. Without seeing the full ball flight, you have no idea how the ball flies, and can only see where it starts, if that. Point being, while there certainly are a lot of benefits to this type of practice, it' s important to know the limitations and build in some actual range time too.

In a nutshell, traditional golf instruction will tell you that keeping the club "steep" on the back swing ensures that it does not get get stuck on the inside or result in a over the top move. If your tendency is to take the golf club back on a "shallow," path, meaning more on the inside and around your body, the natural tendency will be to lift the golf club into position as opposed to swinging it back, which may promot an over the top move, and/or it will be harder to get the club back on plane since you have pulled it so far into the inside, resulting into he club being "stuck" behind your body during the swing. All that said, a steep back swing is fine, but if you combine that with a steep down swing the tendency will be to cut across the ball and hit a fade/slice. In order to hit a draw you need to swing the club out to the right, with a clubfave that is closed in relation to the path. The only way to accomplish that after a steep back swing is to shallow out the down swing taking the club on an inside to out path.

The best instructors I have had were always good at communicating their ideas and instructions in more than one way. A failure to communicate can just as easily be the result of a failure to grasp the target audience. People learn and communicate in all types of ways, and imoh, the best instructors will intuitively try different methods. For example, a student might be a visual learner, so demonstrating the proper sequence in person or on video will work better than explaining it verbally. Likewise, some people will learn better by physically being placed into positions and shown what "over the top" or "casting" means. Others, myself included, do better with certain concepts or mental swing thoughts. And now a side note/gripe related to this topic: In my experience, Americans in general are poor communicators. Our educational system does not emphasize writing and proper grammar. As a result, people grow up and get jobs but struggle to articulate basic ideas, concepts, and messages. I say that regardless if your job oe stature in society, you will always have to communicate persuasively either verbally or in writing, and being able.to do so is a life skill everyone should have. Fortunately, that apparently does not stop people from making money because I can't even begin to tell you how many documents I have read that were written by wealthy individuals but totally lacking in cohesiveness. If I was king, I would ensure that the first 10 years or so of a child's education was spent learning to communicate using the English language, both in writing and orally.

I completely agree, when I said a shank is the worse, I meant it's one of the worse kind of shot you can hit on the golf course, mainly because you get no distance and usually end up some here at a 90 degree angle of where you started. At least with a big slice or hook you end I further down the fairway, and even if it goes OB you are taking a drop somewhere further down than from where you started. A shank, on the other hand, is the golf equivalent of an own-goal in soccer, IMHO.

Hello! Every now and then I will shank a ball too. Frankly, if you play enough golf I think your bound to hit a shank or two. Even happens to the pros. That said, a shank is the result of coming into the ball with the hosel. The cause can be a lot of things, but generally it's the result of standing too close to the ball. If you are not giving yourself enough space to swing the club through the tendency will be to come in on the hosel. When I first started playing I had a tendency to shank. My pro had me step away from the ball and take my address position feeling like I'm reaching for the ball. Probably 1-2 inches ahead of where I placed it. When I swung through I had plenty of room to swing the clubhead into the ball. Its not a permanent fix, but if you get the shanks again, try moving away from the ball a few inches on the next few shots to get the feel of making good contact. Then go take a lesson and tell.the pro you shank one every now and then and see what suggestions they have to improving your swing. Good luck! A shank is the worst.

Oh, that makes more sense. Facepalm moment.

I thought all the putting fundamentals stressed a quiet and completely still lower body, with really only the arms moving? Any threads on here about firing the lower hip during the putting stroke? That seems like a sure firewater get the putter offline during the stroke. By playing the ball slightly forward in my stance get the putter to come in flush or up into the ball a ery slight amount just fine.

There is no secret. There is no one move or tip that you will see or learn that magically unlocks the golf swing for you. There are only fundamentals that mist be practiced consistently to generate some consistency. Many people on this thread have touched on some of the important ones: good setup, good address, good grip, good takeaway, body coil, leading the downswing with your legs, forward shaft lean and hands at impact, head back and still, etc. The faster you disuade yourself of the notion that there is a "secret" out there that will turn you from a hacker to a tour prop overnight, the faster you will be o they way to playing better golf by focusing on the fundamentals. :)

Hello, you are correct, that swing is not the one I saw in the prior thread. Your 5/26 swing is mich better and looks totally different from the initial video you posted. You are turning mich better and it was clear that your are coming through the ball with more power and compressibg it a bit. That said, If that is how you are swinging now and still hitting it fat the only reason I can see is that (1) you have a tendency to hang back and not get as much weight over to your left side before impact as you could (you should have about 95% of your weight on the left foot prior to impact) and (2) there is a tendency in your swing to cast the club, resulting in an early release (this one is harder to confirm because we don't have a slow month video). Despite the foregoing, its clear that you are able to make decent contact, so i have to assume the times you hit it fat your timing is just off or you are fatigued as you indicated above which leads to lack of focus and will.impact your timing. By working on these two things you will take some of the timing out of your swing, which should result in better and more consistent contact, and you will be hitting the ball further, and it will start going straighter (assuming you are able to get your path and clubface going in the right directions, but that's probably a topic for another thread) If your phone has a slo mo video mode, upload us a slow mo dtl and fo swing video. It looks like your wrists break down before impact, resulting in a slight "scooping" action with the club (its hard to tell though without a slo no video). The two issues are intertwined. Not getting enough weight over to your left side will make it difficult to come into impact with the hands ahead of the ball, so the natural reaction is to cast the club to make contact with the ball, as opposed to leading with the legs and hips, which pull the upper body and arms through and ahead of the ball at impact.a good golf swing starts from the ground up. The clubhead is the last thing to come through the ball, in your swing it looks like the clubhead might catch up to the hands right at impact and pass them at or just after impact, which explains why you are hitting some fat shots. I.e., if your timing is not spot on and the clubface catches up and passes the hand prior to impact, even for a fraction of a second, it will usually lead to a fat shot. Try to get more weight over to the left side prior to impact, and focus on getting the hands to come through first and ahead of the golf ball.

Hi there! I also took a look at your swing. First, mvmac's response is stellar. Study that video and try to replicate the swing you see in his example video, placing emphasis on keeping your lower body more stable during the swing. Some golf basics: hitting behind the golf ball (ie a fat shot) is almost always the result of not getting your weight over to the left side at impact. By getting your weight over onto the left side before impact you will be promoting a slew of good things, like coming into the golf ball with the hands ahead of the ball at impact and the shaft leaning forward, all things that will promote hitting the ball first and then the ground, and hitting down on the ball. In your swing what I saw was a tremendous amount of hip rotation in the back swing combined with a sway to the right side. At the top of the backswing your hips are so open and your body so far off the ball that its going to take an incresibly timed athletic move to get back to your address position and onto your left side prior to impact. Instead, think of the golf.swing as more of a rotary action. Your upper body turns away from the golf ball while your lower body tries to maintain the position you were in at address. As you wind the upper body back, try to feel like you are restricting the hips and teyinf to keep them in the same position as address. In actualityx the wonding back of the upper bidy will pull the hips back slightly and you should feel some tension, like your body has been wound back like a spring. From there the correct move is to do the opposite, rotate your hips to the left, shift your body weight onto your left side, and let the lower body and club fall onto the correct plane. From there you can swing hard and through the golf ball. A good drill is to practice the forgoing with 1/2 swing, pausing for a moment between the back swing and downswing. Hope this helps! P.s. fatigue will always affect performance. If your arms feel tired and your focus is gone, its always best to move onto chipping/putting.

Hello! I have hit many different golf clubs and can tell you that there the club and shaft combinations out there result in an almost endless combination that provide a wide range of dfferent feels. The swingweight of your clubs can be customized and some people just like the feel of a heavier club. It sounds like you prefer a heavier club. One cheap way of adding weight to your current set of clubs is to add some lead tape to each club. A word of advise however: the heavier the club, the more difficult to generate high swing speed, especially for a beginner.

Hello! A push is the result of a swing path to the right with the club face pointing the same direction as the path. So, your problem is that you are having trouble closing the club face on your driver, which makes sense because the longer the club, the harder to close the club face. A draw is the result of a club face closed to the swing path. The ball position likely has very little to do with your push. Instead, I would advise you work on getting your club face closed to the swing path to produce a draw. Or, focus on a path that is straight through with a square club face to produce a straighter shot. The problem with trying to hit it straight, however, is that your misses will be both left and right, depending on whether the club face is a fraction of a degree open or closed on your misses. Hence why they say you should always try to play a fade or a draw for more consistency. At least when you are playing for a draw or fade, you can anticipate and manage your misses. For whatever reason you were able to close the club face when the ball was moved back in your stance. If that works, great, but just be mindful that the swing fault is an open club face that caused your pushes, and not the ball position. Moving the ball back simply helped you close the club face on some swings :)

Hello! I struggle with fat shots. One drill that helps me is to take my regular stance with a short iron and place the ball off my left heel instead of the center of my body. By playing the ball so far forward in your stance, it almost forces you to shift the weight to the left side and hit down on the ball in order to strike it. This is a great drill to over exaggerate. The feeling of what its like to hit down on the golf ball.

Hello! Whenever you make a swing change, such as the one you have described, your body is going to need some time to adjust. You are manipulating then club in a manner that is different then what you were doing before. As a result you have likely lost the club's sweet spot. I recommend you go back to the basics. Focus on stance, grip, good takeaway, proper weight shift and body turn. A good golf swing is an athletic, full body movement, not just a wrist hinge or cock. As a result of your focus on your one small adjustment, you may find that you have stopped doing something else in the golf swing that is causing your problems. Hence, the return to the fundamentals. Good luck!

One thing my golf pro told me that always stuck was that a practice swing is the same as a real swing, the only difference is that on the real swing you let the ball get in the way. In other words, you are never trying to hit the ball. Rather, the focus should be on making a good swing. Maybe just focus more on the swing instead of hitting the ball or making contact? Hope this helps!

Hi Shane, sorry to hear about how frustrating things have been for you lately. Golf is a wonderful game, but there is no doubt it can be a very humbling experienc, regardless of talent, skill, or.handicaps.The fact is golf is incredibly difficult because so much timing goes into each and every shot.if your swing is off a fraction of an inch, it could mean the difference between a topped shot and a decent ball. My point is, it's a waste of energy to let a few bad rounds make you think you should quit the sport altogether. When I go through tough spots like you are describing, the best solution for me is always to hang up the clubs for a week or so. I always come back refreshed and ready to give it another shot. As far as your swing issues, topping the ball means you have lost the bottom of your arc. Next to.e you are at the range, have a buddy watch your swing and point out when your swing bottoms out after a few practice swings, then have him place a ball just in front of the bottom of the arc. After hitting a few balls you should start to feel where your club is hitting the bottom of the arc and can adjust from there. Also, do the drill with a 9 iron or other club you are very comfortable with. My advice: take a few days or a week away from the course, gather your thoughts, do something besides golf, and when you come back do a few drills to feel the bottom of the arc again. You should be up and running in no time. Golf is like life. Shit is going to happen, it's inevitable. What defines us is how we handle our shit and how we bounce back from our own failures and setbacks. Good luck!

Hard to say without seeing your swing, bit an over the top action almost always happens because the back swing started with the arms and the shoulders first. When you get to your backswing position at the top, try to focus on starting the swing with your lower body by shifting the weight to your left sid and dropping the club down on the inside. The movement from the top is more of a body turn then an arm swing.the arms should drop down into the slot at the same time as the body turns and the weight shifts. Hope this helps, good luck!