spentmiles

I've been working on learning to slot the club by dropping the arms. Much of the advice out there says that it's the left hip movement, laterally and rotationally, that should pull the arms down. I'd like to understand this and I don't feel as though there's a physical barrier, but bumping and rotating my left hip always seems to turn my shoulders out at the ball, causing an over the top situation. I don't understand how guys like Sergio can slinky those hips around without seeming to affect their upper bodies. Should you actively resist the turning of the shoulders as you turn your hips? Doing so seems to create a great amount of tension down the left side of the body.

Hey, thanks Mike! That's what I was looking for.

Saevel25, So, at the top of the backswing, you don't turn the hands clockwise, lowering the club head behind the body and away from the target line. Rather, you lower the left arm while keeping the club head behind the hands? And this brings the right elbow to the torso? I think the picture is clear. Would you say that Scott has flattened the shaft at that point? I guess I'm having trouble understanding what McLean means by a flatter shaft plane. For some reason I got in my head that the hands allow the club head to tip backward, away from the target line. Is the picture what's meant by a flatter plane?

I've been working on the slot swing from Jim McLean's book. He's got a drills section at the end, but unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any videos that show the drills with live action. Can someone who is familiar with the slot swing, or who understands this drill, please interpret it for me: "Using your 8 iron, make small swings, stopping your hands at waist height in your backswing and in your through swing. As you swing your arms back to waist height in your backswing, hinge your wrists so the club shafts sits nearly perpendicular to the ground. Now, start your downswing by consciously dropping the club head behind you and changing the shaft position from vertical to more horizontal. (It won't get to horizontal, but it's a good idea to exaggerate the way it feels when you try to learn a new technique). Be careful to flatten the shaft, not your arms." I'm not clear on what he means by "dropping the club head behind you and changing the shaft from vertical to more horizontal." From the waist-high top of the abbreviated back swing, are you supposed to tip the shaft away from the target line so that it's laying down horizontally at the still waist high position? At full horizontal, your top hand (my right hand) would then be about even with my left hand, rather than on top of it. Is this a correct interpretation? I've read the book a few times and practiced the initiating hip move for the last three months, but I feel like I'm missing something essential in terms of how the shaft flattens in the down swing. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for the feedback. I look forward to working on this change. I can see how my torso stops turning and my arms keep going, which seems rather pointless and destructive.

Looking at the front view, I see that my left arm bends a lot during the last part of the backswing. Then, when I start down, that left arm forcibly straightens and the force of that straightening motion throws the clubhead away from my body, which destroys the wrist cock. The club head then releases too soon and I have to stand up to get it to the ball. Would I be better off just learning to stop the backswing when my lead shoulder touches my chin? I've tried in the past to stop the left arm from breaking so much, but at this time, it's really unconscious. Should learning to limit the back swing be a priority for the off season?

Sorry, I was making a joke in another thread and changed it to -2. Just changed it back to something more accurate.

I've been Playing Golf for: 10 Years My current handicap index or average score is: 85 My typical ball flight is: Mid height, left of center The shot I hate or the "miss" I'm trying to reduce/eliminate is: High right Videos:

Well, after several attempts, I am unable to post the video here. Perhaps it's better this way... Knowing what I've told you and watching the video wouldn't leave much to decipher. Golf is a personal journey. I'm sorry I meddled, but I don't want to be a jerk either. If you send me a private message, I can send you the link to the video. Unfortunately, the only place I have it posted requires a small fee ($195 USD) to view hosted videos. I know a pay site probably strikes you as some sort of scam, but as a show of good faith, I will include a small device that I created, based on a training aid that Hogan gave me as a teenager. Between the video and the training aid, you will find truths beyond your wildest dreams. Take me, for example. My best round was a 54 at Pinehurst on a frigid day. There's no reason that some of the better golfers here couldn't improve on that.

Hogan was one of my grandfather's closest friends. When I was a kid and we'd go to get togethers at my grandparent's house, Hogan would often be there. He was a quiet and sulking kind of guy, especially after the accident, but if you got him alone then he was a fine conversationalist. My grandfather was big into golf and he got me into it when I was very young. Hogan would often join us, but he hated watching me swing. I hit the ball allright, but he was nevery happy with my technique. And he was always telling me this one thing that seemed simple, but took me many years to fully comprehend. And to make matters worse, he'd always tell me that I couldn't tell anyone. I had to take it to my grave. Well, I realize now that Hogan conveyed to me his "secret." It's not so much a "secret" as a way of using your right elbow and left knee. I promised him that I would never tell anyone, and I almost never speak of it, but I do get angry when people accuse Hogan of manufacturing a secret. He did in fact have a secret that has allowed me to average in the low sixties throughout my golfing life, which has been on again off again, more off, due to personal concerns and commitments. But all of you out there looking - keep looking. It's really almost clear exactly what he's doing in the video link below:

For the last year, I've been playing a G20 with a TFC169 D Tour Stiff. For fun, I picked up a Nike VR Tour with a Project X 6.0. Took both clubs to the range last night and noticed a big difference. With the Project X, I could feel the shaft bending on the downswing and then kicking through impact. I was hitting some bombs. With the TFC, I didn't feel much if any of that whip-release through the ball. Felt more like a bat hitting a baseball than a flexible stick transferring energy. I think the shafts are relatively similar, more alike than different, spec-wise. So, can anyone help me understand what property of the Project X might allow me to flex it like that? I do like that feeling, though I've only had one range session so I can't say if it's playable. Ball flights with each were straight enough for me though. As much as it means, the TFC is 63g with 3.9 degrees of torque. The Project X is 66g with 3.3 degrees. I'll probably play the Nike for a while, but I'd like to understand what exactly it is I like about this shaft for future purchases. Thanks.

I think this video explains it well: Hogan Power Drill Using a short club to practice this helps, though you make not see the point of it until you try. I use a kids club and do the motion 10 times for 3 sets, so 30 total, every few evenings or so. I think conciously trying to do it screws up your flow, but doing it over and over will help slowly work it into your scheme.

Some quick background: I'm a tall golfer (6'5") and I've always had a rather upright stance. I was a caster/early releaser forever, but this year I've been working on lag and getting the shaft leaning forward through impact. I feel like I've made good progress on the lag, but I'm finding all of my shots are high, right, with little compression and not much of a divot. I think I've traced it down to being too upright at the start and then standing up as I come into impact. I think this is a mental issue left over from my casting days, stemming from my fear of plowing into the earth a few inches behind the ball. When I stand up, the shaft straightens vertically at impact, adding loft and losing the shaft lean. I want to stay down more and trust that my lag will angle the shaft enough to clear the impact zone without me having to stand up. Now, being tall, my question is the best approach to closing the gap between my shoulders and the ground. Should I bend a lot more at the knees, or bend more at the hips? Or a combination of the two? I've been fitted multiple times for iron sets, and different fitters have come to the same measurements, so I don't think it's an equipment issue. But for me to ground the club and stay down, I've got to bend somewhere...

Functional strength training and daily stretching. Do that for twelve weeks and you'll feel much better.

That's a great post. It answered a lot of my questions about what people mean when they say "hit up with the driver." Do you think the club manufacturers are changing any structural elements of drivers that would affect this advice?

Hey hey hey, slow down there. I didn't mean it as a personal attack. Believe me, I've spent the majority of my golfing years chasing my tail - meaning, I've wasted a lot of time trying various manipulations in every aspect of the swing. I don't even know if it's avoidable for people like us, who didn't start golfing when we were little kids, under the tutelage of someone with a sound swing and an even better ability to communicate it. I want you to get better because it's obviously important to you to do so. I want the same thing for myself. So whatever I say, I don't say it out of meanness or trying to be flip. But I think it's a warning you should heed: don't just play around with little things that seem to correct your issue of the day; it's all in the fundamentals and the less you "do" outside of those fundamentals, the more success you will see. It's the things that you are doing that are screwing up your swing; a lot more than what you aren't doing. I wasn't talking about tilting your shoulders at address. I was talking about setting up with your driver with your arms extended and taking a back swing like you are swinging a diving board from your shoulders. That's what I tried to do for a while and it does straighten the ball out, at the cost of distance. You aren't going to be happy for long with doing it that way. IF, in fact, that's what you are doing. I'm reading your words, not looking at a picture of you, so your words trigger MY mental images, which may not be anywhere near your reality. If you look at any pro's set-up with their driver, they aren't holding the club much different than they hold their pitching wedge. It's not like we're ever going to be professionals, or achieve their angles, or their results, but they have figured out the most efficient ways to do things. And you'll hear all this, "Every one has their own swing." What I think that means is, "Everyone has a different set of compensations they've created to minimize the flaws in their fundamentals." And those flaws may help us break 100, or even 90, but to get low consistently (and be happy with how we're doing it) requires us to strip away those flaws and just do it the most efficient way. If that was an easy thing to do, then there wouldn't be 9000 posts on here from people wondering how to fix this or fix that (myself included). I think I'm talking from my own personal frustration more than anything. I kick myself for all the hundreds of buckets of balls I spent ingraining flaws over the last decade. And yeah, you can get flaws to work with enough continuous practice, but that's not the road to contentment... Then again, maybe golf isn't something that can be taught. Maybe it's something you just have to learn on your own, through trial and error, adding flaws and then taking them away. I just don't want you to waste as much time as I did, but you sound like you have a lot more raw talent than I ever did.

Check out this video: Basically, the newer drivers need to be tee'd lower, further back, and you don't have to swing up on them as much unless you want the high ball flight. I'd always read the standard advice, tee it high and way forward, which led to me hitting everything off the crown. I tried all manner of different tweaks, but even if I got something working for a while, that high-left-popup was just waiting for me somewhere ahead. I like to hit it low and let it roll. Nothing more depressing than watching your ball take one bounce and stop immediately.

From my experience, increasing your swing arc like that just hides the cast. And the problem with Band-aids like that is your body eventually figures out a way around them and the problem, or some other problem, creeps into the swing. Then you're off making more adjustments, which never seem to carry over from round to round. Maybe one day your shoulder joint is extra loose and the little fix is working perfectly. Then the next, your a little tighter and you can't get that magic back. Eventually, you get sick of chasing your tail and either commit to getting better or give up.

Tried it last night with an iPad, generation 2. The software works as advertised, though the user interface takes a little getting used to, particularly how to seek forward and back. Once you figure it out, it's fine. The problem is with the iPad camera: both the front and rear cameras are only capable of 30 fps. For me, I was interested in where my club shaft was releasing in relation to my hand position. With only 30 fps, the shaft and hands were just a blurry smear, so I couldn't see with any confidence what was going on. I'll use it again for macro stuff, like body position and shoulder turn, but you'd need a faster camera to see any detail.

Thank you all for your replies. As I've thought about this more today, I think that I've been approaching the hip turn wrong, which has complicated the move through impact. Since my hips were so dead for so long, I really overdid the hip turn. From the top of the back swing, I was firing my hips to angle toward the target. My hands didn't have time to drop into the slot. It was a really fast and violent hip turn, an overcompensation... From looking at more swing sequences, I see that the hips and the hands (arms, whatever), work together. When the hips are turned in the back swing to -45 degrees (relative to the ball), the hands are at their highest point. When the hips have turned to 0 degrees (belt buckle facing the ball), the hands have dropped to just above belt level, wrists still set, shaft vertical on plane. Then when the hips move toward the target, 45 degrees or so, the hands are now even with the ball, and the club is slotted. That's when you can fire the club and complete the turn so that the hips eventually face forward. I'm thinking that the timing is the important thing. The hips and hands have to move together. You don't want lightening fast hips and slow arms, otherwise you'll get stuck. You don't want fast arms and slow hips, or you're just arm swinging, most likely coming over the top. They need to move together in a fluid, graceful motion, so that their relative positions are reached gradually and momentum is built up in the swing, which is then released through the faster motion of impact. And the funny thing is, the timing seems natural when I think of the hips connected to the arms with a string. As the hips shift and rotate, the arms have to move down, as they are connected through the musculature of the core. Does this make sense?

From the drill and in your normal swing, do you feel as though you are holding the club square through impact rather than rolling it closed? I spent a lot of time in the past researching and experimenting with ways to close the club face through impact that required "forearm rolling" and "hand rolling", etc. They were all active ways of moving the club through the impact zone with forearm action. But in this drill, and other similar impact drills (stick the alignment rod into the grip's hole and don't let the rod touch your left side), it seems as though they are holding the club face square through impact and not doing any rolling motion whatsoever. It seems like to have the shaft leaning forward at impact, you can't be rolling it because rolling would straighten the shaft and bring it vertical. So, should you feel as though you are sort of dragging the squared club face through impact, rather than trying to release it through with some sort of rolling or flipping or releasing action?

Do you feel like Step 4 (fire arms,hands,club) is powered by your arms, like mostly an arms swing? For years, I tried powering the swing with the shoulders, mostly the right shoulder, which led me to casts and coming over the top. Last night, on the course, I experimented with turning the right shoulder only to parallel with the target line (instead of turning it past the ball), and then swinging hard with the arms. It felt to me like an arm swing, but the results were good. Do you think it's accurate to say that all the motions proceeding Step 4, (weight shifting, hips opening, shoulders returning to parallel) are just to get the arms into position to swing? I know that it's not really an "arms swing" because all of that coil and release has sent energy into the arms, but coming from a place where I just sort of flung the arms or flailed them around me, it's a noticeable difference.

I've been working on getting into proper position heading into the impact zone. I feel like I'm getting to this position in my swing (Picture of Louis Oosthuizen just to make it clear as to what I'm talking about): My hips have turned, which has brought the club toward the impact zone without casting, and my shoulders are still relatively closed. I've always had dead hips and an overactive right shoulder, so it's taken a lot of work to understand these feelings. My question is, what is the action once you are in this position? I've played around with a few different approaches: 1. Pulling the butt of the club toward the target, mostly with the left arm, through impact. - I don't feel like the club really releases and there's power left on the table. 2. Swinging with just the arms while keeping the right shoulder back. - This feels really different - keeping that right shoulder back and firing the arms. While it feels powerful, there's a timing aspect to it that I don't like. 3. Feel as though I'm swinging the inside of the right wrist so as to keep the bent right wrist angle and the left wrist bent too (the opposite of flipping), which keeps the club face closed into impact. My bad shots are mostly fat, with the club entering the ground behind the ball, which eats up all the power. They still go straight but there's not compression whatsoever. The good shots really go down and through the ball and I feel that compression, lots of power and piercing ball flight. It feels as though there should be another move in the sequence after I've cleared my hips, shifted my weight, and got the club horizontal to the ground. Can anyone describe what that move might be? How do you get from the above photo to here:

I had a crappy old acoustic guitar that I thought sounded like junk. Then one day a friend came by, picked it up, and made it sound like Hendrix was in the room, playing the blues. After he left, I tried it again. And lo and behold, it sounded terrible. Must've been the humidity in the room was different while he was there. Something was different.

When I was walking home from work one afternoon, I took the shortcut through the alley. The rain started coming down hard and it was getting dark, so I had my head down and wasn't watching where I was going. I accidentally stumbled over a bum who was laying on the ground with a blanket over his head. I started to apologize, but when I turned around, I noticed that the guy hadn't moved. I'm a volunteer EMT, so despite the rain, I stopped to see if he was all right. When I pulled the blanket back, I nearly did a back flip - somebody had cut off his head and stuck it in his lap. His weather worn face stared up at me, his expression frozen in the terror of his last moments. It's not often you come across something like that. Fast forward a few weeks. It's a bright and sunny Saturday morning, which I've spent the better part of drinking rum. I feel like winning some quick cash, so I head to the local course where the guys in fancy pants and popped collared shirts play for a few hundred a hole. I get a cart by myself, throw my bag on, and go racing to the first tee where a threesome is just teeing off. Right in this big guy's backswing, I smash the brakes and leave a ten foot screech of melted rubber on the path. He spins around, like he's ready to fight, but I just jump out of the cart, grab my driver, and march up to the tee as I tell the guys that I'm playing with them. They were about to get mouthy, then they saw my head cover. Not a peep after that. Turns out these guys couldn't take a little pressure. Their hands were visibly shaking when they teed their balls. They couldn't even make one footers. I took them for almost three thousand dollars and I wasn't even playing well (67 from the tips). Moral of the story, you need the right head cover to set the tone of your game. When you see it, don't hesitate to grab it, no matter the cost.