RandallT

Hi Jon! Just throwing out an idea that has worked for me and head stabilization: Since you wear a ball cap, do swings where you look at some reference point right beyond the edge of the brim of your cap. Don’t look at the ball. Just focus on that reference point and keep the brim of your cap right there. My experience is that makes me aware of the 3D head movement as I move my body. Do it a bunch of times in a row. Exaggerate the body movements but keep that brim focused on the same point. You don’t even need a club. You can go through the body motions anytime you want. You look like an idiot if someone in the family sees you but hey, not like we don’t look like idiots anyway. Over time, it just became a steady head feel that lasted for me.

Happy Birthday, V!!! ( @GolfLug ) Lemme guess, more winter golf for you today? Also, happy b'day to @golferbabu, @bogiegolfer , @Jotay1944 (74th!)

Care to elaborate? You sound a bit snide here frankly. From what I’ve reviewed of your past posts, I feel you are mis-interpreting some things, but I don’t want to derail this thread on the long v short game debate. Regarding feel v real, I think @iacas has replied specifically to your last post. Might be better to quote what you disagree with and list the reasons. It could be you are just coming at this from an entirely different perspective and thinking he means something quite different.

Mike has explained a few times in various places on TST like above. Found this one above but can’t find the other more recent one I saw (within past couple weeks on a different thread) Hope helps.

Glad to know the pros aren’t goat humping then

I was a little surprised how the hips move forward toward the ball. Up/down made sense. To/from target, check. But my gut on the Forward/backward measurement was that it would’ve been more constant than it is. I’m not trying to debate the info. Just wanted to ‘fess up on an inaccurate mental image of what was going on, in case others had a similar sense.

I know the thread is meant for decent swings, but just ran across this on a feed somewhere. Ouch, not sure my spine would take that twisting.

Got it. I did see your response, but didn't fully grasp how it answered my confusion about it all. Clearer now as I take my time to really look at the videos, subsequent posts, and think about what's going on. Thanks

Welcome aboard, @Philosopher!

Definitely correct me if I’m wrong on all this, but here are some thoughts (some of you may know this is a topic near and dear to my heart): 1. I find it hard to believe that the hand path downward promotes shallowing. A simple experiment shows that down steepens the club. Am I way off base? 2. Since these lines are two dimensional, they don’t show how much the hands are coming TOWARD the “camera.” Isn’t it possible that there is lateral motion in the initial hand path from the top? That could make the initial hand path appear “steeper” but only from the perspective of the DTL view. Hope that makes sense as a question. I’ve been out of commission for a while on this but I was making strides on shallowing and a key element (I thought) was that my hand path from the top was more of a horizontal move back in a direction toward the DTL point of view than it was downward. It might appear in 2D as downward but that’s not the feel. I know I know- feel isn’t what’s really going on. But I am confused that this is presenting a convincing argument to consider the hands to move more downward than horizontally. That just feels wrong and has left me a bit puzzled frankly. Hopefully I’m just misunderstanding something in all this discussion here.

Welcome @HJJ003! Here’s to a good new year of golf

Good luck! Ill ask future posters in this thread to refrain from specific swing advice on the video above. Our standard here at TST is to have these discussions on those Member Swing threads. Basically: we prefer this thread not degenerate into a “JoeFree” swing thread by a different name. But any general advice on how to get through this swing flaw is appreciated. I can definitely see others having ideas there.

For what it’s worth, the specific thing has been key for me. When I go to the range, I now look forward to figuring out the one or two key things I’ll work on. Also, one of the best things about this site is the “Member Swing” threads. You’ll get specific advice on what to focus on and encouragement to bust through that priority. Have you started one by chance? If not, think about it. (Sorry I should know, but I’m on my phone and too lazy to shift windows to check!)

In my mind, this is a really a question about how to learn. How to ingrain a new muscle pattern. First, I’d read this: Are you doing what needs to be done at slow speeds, and verifying it all by video? Then speeding up bit by bit. From my experience, we each have major sticking points that have no shortcut. You’ve gotta go through it bit by bit, and you’ll get through it. For you, it’s the in to out issue, but for me, it’s a different flaw. But the process to get through it is probably the same, as is the frustration of not getting past the issue more quickly. Also, I enjoyed this thread on the learning process:

That was what I had guessed based on what you had written. Your swing looked athletic and with decent clubhead speed, so I just thought maybe you were delofting the club by getting too far ahead of it. Maybe that's a hockey move for a proper technique for a slapshot? I know nothing about hockey! Being from snow-blanketed Erie, PA, I'm sure @iacas gets a fair number of hockey players coming through as new students and maybe has seen if that is common or not.

Welcome to TST, @Cormier10 ! Glad to have you and good luck on the swing thread. Here are some good tips here: I'm not an instructor, so you'll want to wait until someone more expert chimes in but here are my thoughts for you to take with a grain of salt: I don't see very much hip rotation I see you upper body moving toward the target, perhaps factoring into more forward shaft lean and why you're getting pretty good distance with your irons and/or you aren't getting as much elevation as you'd like with your fairway woods For a possible solution, I'd look here for the threads/videos on keeping a steady head (not "still," but relatively steady) and/or centered hip turn in this topic below (TONS of good links from this main page- you may have seen before if you've been lurking): Anyway, welcome! And I could be mis-diagnosing your "priority" piece but that's just what I see jump out at me right off the bat.

Oh, and welcome to TST! Lots of resources here for you to continue improving.

Exactly! @No Mulligans I almost included another “No” that said pace was overall faster. Then I chastised myself for overthinking the no opinion. I kinda wanted all no’s to be lumped together and people could write their opinion in a post. Plus I was in a hurry!

Oops! Did I override?? Oh well you can fix my mess if I goofed it up! Gotta cook breakfast

I’ll bet you could make a case for this with anecdotes, but I agree with the previous responses thus far: my hunch is that with just a slight bit of effort, the rangefinder can help pace of play more than it hurts. The people who are slow with rangefinders are perhaps just slow, no matter what method they use. Edit: I’ll add a poll.

My thought is: does it matter? You do the best you can with what you’ve got. Enjoy the game and enjoy the learning process. You can even learn how to learn better as you go(which I think many miss out on). If I were to say, “gee, I’d have guessed you would be in 70s by now,” would you now set about learning golf differently? Or if I said you were fine, would you stop trying to figure out if you are learning effectively? I think you should constantly strive to improve in a smarter way, regardless of others’ opinions. And yes, by the way, your progress has been pretty solid!

By plugging those tee distances into the strokes gained chart here, you get an average round of upper 70s. Not sure if that adds to the conversation! Lots of variables to consider, but probably a decent starting point.

For your first birdie, it is customary to tell everyone you know all the gory details until they die of boredom: how long the hole was, what club you hit, how well you struck the ball, what the ball flight was, where it landed and rolled, and include the length of putt (and break of the green)! But seriously, congrats!

Seem near Ohio State last week.

I wouldn’t consider the tide stemmed until you can convince either Merriam or Webster to alter their stance on the issue. Bingo. And this is how it should be. Nobody should decide rules of our language, although we are each free to have our own standards. I judge people all the time based on their vocabulary or grammar. But that’s using my own set of rules and preferences- I don’t expect everyone else to agree with mine. For me, “golf” seems fine as a verb. I just don’t buy the “you don’t go tennis-ing” argument at all.