Foot Wedge

Until you see what doing the right thing does to the ball flight. But yes, it feels strange. Do the instructors you're considering have websites? if so, when reading about them is there anything that jumps out at you? I decided on one when while reading his site's page about his teaching philosophy, he stated that he happened to fall in love with teaching. To me there's a big difference between teaching something because you can and having a passion for teaching it, so I knew we'd be able to work well together. Read their sites, give them a call, if something jumps out at you, your gut is probably right.

Interesting, I hadn't worked on that during my lessons since I had much more glaring issues to correct. I'm assuming this hurts consistency. I appreciate you pointing this out, I'll make it a practice priority.

@iacas Thanks for the response. I agree that it's not too steep, but I'm not sure if you looked at the video of the nasty pull that I posted. Here are the screen grabs: Backswing: Downswing (looks a touch steeper than BS): Club looks like it's coming over my hands a little: Impact looks like it should have been ok, but it wasn't:

From video it looks like my downswing is on practically the same plane as my backswing. If I come in too steep I can end up trapping the ball and hitting it left. Do y'all have any tips or drills to get a feel for shallowing the club on the downswing. Thanks!

Patents are a strange animal. A lot of it comes down to the verbiage of a particular patent and how vague it is to cover similar technologies that while not identical, would infringe on the particular patent. I think the difference between other clubs filled with a material and PXG is that previous clubs had thick faces and Parsons' irons had thin enough faces to cave upon without internal structural support. The elastomer served to support these faces as well as provide sound/feel tuning. Taylormade's combination of a thin face with internal foam is where PXG smells foul play. PXG's patent is probably vague enough to include a thin faced iron that requires the injection of internal supporting material. Material isn't specified so whether it's elastomer, 'speedfoam', or molasses, it's covered by the patent. Taylormade's case would be to show that their faces don't need the foam for adequate structural integrity, but rather tuning purposes because, as someone's already pointed out, PXG wasn't the first to do that. TBH, I have't read the patents in full and my patent knowledge is limited to what I learned towards the end of studying mechanical engineering in college so as always, this is simply my $0.02 and should be taken with a grain of salt. Just thought it would be an interesting topic to discuss.

Background: A while back I got my driver shortened and to keep the swingweight the same, the shop added weight to the head with what I think was lead powder. Last week most of it fell out and now there's something rattling around in there. I hit it into my net, and even though it looked like it was launching a little low on video, I still seemed to swing it fine and contact felt good. Problem: So I went to the range and after I had hit my wedges and 6/7 irons fairly well, I jumped to the driver and made what felt like good contact only to see that the ball got ZERO height. Absolutely none. Maybe 15 feet only because the range takes a dip right after the hitting area. After this happened several times, I got curious and hit my 5 wood. It's not the best I ever hit that club, but when I felt like I made good contact, the ball flight and distance were exactly like I expected. Normally I'd assume it's the indian, not the arrow, but I can't help but wonder if the weight falling out of the head has anything to do with this since it didn't happen with any other club. I plan on getting the driver weight fixed, but the shop that did it closed down and the other one around here is further and only open while I'm at work. Any input on this would be appreciated!

Maryland, Connecticut, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Washington State...7 states plus Mexico.

Have you received instruction yet? Playing a whole bunch could potentially ingrain bad habits. I made that mistake. I moved close to a cheap little course and figured for the price of a handful of lessons I could do the the yearly under-25 membership and play as much as possible to improve. This did help me get to the point where I was playing some fairly consistent golf, but I was really just developing a hodge-podge swing built from tips and compensations. I could put together a decent round, but if my rhythm was a touch off I fell apart quickly. Much like a car being held together by duct tape. It runs...for now. My $0.02 is to first take lessons. It's a lot harder to put a REALLY bad swing on the ball if your fundamentals have been worked on and solidified. Now if you've already taken lessons and just want the reps, then play to your heart's desire as long as you're not powering through fatigue each round. You'll get sloppy.

Kind of stumbled on to something when I played a terrible round a few days ago. I need to shorten the backswing. I was at perfect distance for a 3/4 sand wedge. The first shot went way long and left. It was obvious that A) I made a full swing, B) I came down fast with my hands, and C) what felt like a 3/4 swing was a full swing! So then what was a "full swing"? Something that was getting me out of position and in a hurry to get to the downswing. A recipe for pull hooks. I hit another ball for practice and shortened up the swing (or so I thought, really I just ACTUALLY did a 3/4 swing) and was spot on with distance and line. Going to start practicing this with all clubs without worrying about much else. Just swing shorter than what I "feel" is full, and let the rest fall in to place. Hopefully this improves consistency.

Thanks! I'm usually up there visiting my folks, but if I'm in the area when they're out of town, I'll be sure to shoot you a PM to play a round.

Whiskey Creek in Frederick, MD. Old distillery ruins can be seen in the far right and left. The left ruins split the 18th fairway...not a fun par 5 but a beautiful course.

@nevets88 and everyone else, thanks for the insight. It makes sense that some variation doesn't matter all that much as long as you get into a good position at the top. I do a little of it all on the takeaway as can be seen in my swing thread progression. I'll try to find out what feels best and gives me more consistency at the top and stick with that.

Yup, I can kind of tell if I'm in for a good or bad swing based on how I feel at the top. I was just thinking that this club orientation during the takeaway may get me to the right position more consistently. This may be the reason why the days that I'm grooving my swing better are when I feel like I'm taking the club back almost vertically, which I'm not if I see video, we all know about 'feel'...I was just wondering if this is the right thing to do so I can focus on repetition rather than hoping I feel right at the top.

I can attest to the effectiveness of the link that @Vinsk posted as just a few weeks ago I was in your position. Another thing is that swinging 'hard' is kind of relative. You're swinging 'hard' for the distance that you are from the pin, which would be 10-20 yards. But you don't want to crush the sand. You want to swing smoothly. The bounce of the club will keep it from digging into the sand and will skate under the ball. This is the 'thump', and you have to trust that it works. It's a strange mental issue because you know how close you are distance-wise so you may decelerate, which causes a miss. Or you know that you need some power to get the sand to lift the ball out so you whack it, which also causes a miss. Follow the thread's advice, swing confidently, and once you get a feel for the swing that gets the results REPEAT. If there's a range that has a practice bunker, track your progress. I tracked how many swings it took to escape a bunker with a high lip 10 times. First Session: 17 Second Session: 13 Third Session: 11

I started revisiting my takeaway in some of the practice video I took and noticed something in the takeaway of my better shots. It looks like at the point that the club shaft is parallel to the ground, it is also running parallel to my target line. Is this something I should try to keep doing? The strange part (to me) is that it only happened because I was focusing on feeling like my club was coming up more vertically, specifically less shallow. I just happened to notice that in video, the club head was covering up my hands which I hadn't seen before. I've attached an example picture, what I'm talking about is seen in Frame 1.