topgrape

80 today, and my putting wasn't great............getting close to the magic 70's !

My handicap is officially 17 although people have always told me it should be better than that as I have a nice looking swing. However my handicap doesn't lie and I have been hovering around that level for a while, typically scoring 36 points + or - a couple when I play with my buddies on a Saturday. A few weeks ago I had a thought to shorten my backswing. I now have the feel that I don't take my left arm back past horizontal when playing approach shots - I say 'feel' because I probably go a bit past that but that's the feel I'm going for. My ball striking has improved a lot, hopefully as a result of this change, and it not being a coincidence, and I'm definitely not losing distance. My last 3 rounds have been 83, 83, 81 and I really should have broken 80 for the first time on that last round, but for a fluffed 3 wood on the par 5 16th that went into water. I had 9 pars and a birdie on that round and most of the pars were fairly regulation hit the green and 2 putt pars. I'm certainly not a good enough player to give advice to anyone, but if you are struggling to hit your irons crisply I would say to give what I'm doing a try.

I traced the club head

Hi everyone I filmed my swing today from a down the line perspective. I uploaded it into Kinovea and traced the path of my backswing. The down swing follows the exact same path. On the face of it I would have thought this would be a good thing but I've seen instructional videos that say that the downswing should trace inside the path of the backswing. Is there a generally accepted preference regarding this ?

Thanks for your reply DrvFrShow but it's not a review of the actual devices I'm after as such. More an understanding whether any of them help you to interpret the data they give you and suggest drills to fix any issues. For example if the data told you that you have a 5% out to in swing, do this drill to fix it and try to get your numbers to 0% ( I just made those numbers up ).

I'm thinking of things like Swingsmart, Skypro, 3 bays, Swingbyte etc

Hi guys I'm looking at the various analysers on the market and they seem broadly to produce similar feedback. I'm wondering if any of them help in actually interpreting the data and then offering drills or tips to improve the stats ? I really like the idea of them but am not sure the information that they would give me would be very meaningful to me. I've read some of the threads on here reviewing them but haven't seen anything that talks about how to use the information to actually improve your swing. Does anyone have any ideas / experience with this ?

I'm not sure I can understand this. I'd be interested to know exactly what you mean - is it more of a swing thought ie think of your left arm throughout the swing ? I just tried with a few practise swings (without a club) and I'm struggling to understand the concept. Always interested in ways to help to hit the ball better :)

If only you could get fitted in the UK :-(

There's your problem....

Thanks Erik, I'll try to work on that I'll give this a try tomorrow, thanks for your input

I do have a swing in the 'my swing' section if you wouldn't mind taking a look, although it's only a side on view so may not be very revealing, and is also with my driver off a tee.

Well I'm not as young as I was.......... Thanks for your response Erik...simple is good. I'm sure you're right. Since the finish is my swing thought then I'm probably anxious to make sure I do it. Can you suggest a drill to help, apart from just try not to do it ?

Hi I'm always looking at ways to tweak my swing. I went to the range and concentrated on making a full follow through with pose for the cameras at the finish - a little Rory-ish. I played on Saturday and found that generally I was striking the ball very nicely. I shot an 81 which is pretty good for me, but I topped several shots. When I practise the swing with a full follow through I can actually feel how that might happen, kind of lifting my body early to get into the finish position. Hopefully I've explained that well enough. Does anyone have any ideas / drills on how to avoid this ?