mdl

I agree these all seem pretty much true except the cart thing and #11, the words/images/feels one. Though I agree that if you physically can and the course isn't ridiculous to walk, golf is a better experience walking) #11 seems just like a weird semantic point. If you're taking verbal advice, the only way you can really abide by the other things that relate to practicing (doing it enough and with a purpose) is to use images/video. You kinda need the words to understand what the feels are supposed to be getting you, and what images you need to see (and which you don't) to have good, consistent results. So it should really say something more like, you don't use video in your practice.

That's why I mentioned you could do a hybrid or something. Say start the same as now, first playoff just another tourney with extra fedex points to get into the top 70 to make it to the next week. Then maybe do a light handicapping like in the proposed system over the next two weeks to go to 50 then 32, then have a match play finale for the win. I hear you on the fact that only one tourney a year is match play, so it's making the championship about a slightly different game than what's really being played all year long. But, what the hell. You'd have a tour champion and a fedex cup winner. And it would be fun!

Why not just take the top 64 (or 32) in fedex points from the regular season and have a playoff like every other sport. Seeded match play! You could imagine some combo with the proposed change to have handicapped stroke play to say go from top 70 to top 32 or even top 16 with stroke play, then have a seeded match play to get the fedex cup champion.

Fair enough. My point was just that I'm always surprised when trying to find my NPR how close I can be to the right side of the path and still have NPR be left side. I just did the math, and assuming a flat lie and an 8 iron (mine are +1.5"), the distance at address along the ground from the points directly below the two ends of the shaft, plus the length of my size 13 shoes is 2 feet 8 inches. Figure another another 2" to the sweet spot and another 2" so my heels aren't impinged by the path, and you get 3 feet. Say a cart path is 6 feet wide, then I need to be > 75% of the way to the right of the cart path for the NPR to be right. If the cart path is skinny, you can be even closer to the right edge percentage wise and still have NPR on the left. So maybe I overstated by saying you needed to be way close to the right edge. I guess I've been near that 75% line before, or taken relief off of skinny cart paths, and felt surprised at how close I looked to the right edge while still having NPR be on the left side.

Maybe I'm just a big guy with long clubs, but unless you're on the way right edge of the cart path, as a righty, I've found that NPR is basically always on the left side of the path. If I stand with my heels on the left edge of a standard cart path, my club is quite close to the right edge of the path. When my predominant miss was right, I really liked this, as it usually meant my NPR was in the usually lighter rough towards the fairway, rather than in whatever crap was over the cart path. Now a lot of my misses are big hooks, and I like this less!

Your hips are maybe 50-60˚ open there, at most, and your shoulders are 80-90˚ open. This is not the issue IMO.

This reminds me very much of the argument around why short game is the key to all scoring. You *expect* (unrealistically) to make all your 8 footers, get it within 4 feet from around the green every time, and hit the green with every wedge, and stick it close a lot of the time. Those are incredibly unrealistic expectations (better than the best pros), but it's what a lot of golfers think they can do. But amateur golfers can't even trick themselves into believing that every drive should go 280 and split the fairway, or that every 4i into a par 3 should be within 20 feet, so when they spray a bunch of drives and a couple long irons and cost themselves 6 strokes, they don't remember that with as much frustration as the 3-putt and the 3 missed up and downs from close, where at most they're losing 2.5 strokes. Same here with Spieth. Yeah, Spieth's had a bad year with the putter. But you watch him play and feel like he's playing badly because he's one of the best in the world, and you expect (hope?) him to go out and play close to Tiger in his prime. I think Schaufelle's going to be a great player for a long time. I've got nothing against him. But you only feel like he's playing better than Spieth because you didn't expect him to do anything, so the couple times he contended in a major event, you remembered how well he was playing.

Interesting. Have you seen this pitching video? That totally changed my short game. The "float load" and paint brush feel, plus the other mechanics tips, gave me a great place to start from. And then I used to live in a place where I had space to practice pitches/chips up to ~35 yards. If you really bleed a ton of strokes around the green, this video plus some good practice could really drop your scores! Of course, some lessons so you can use your driver might help too

All the advice above is good. I'll just say that you can definitely get a nice improvement going from such old, cheap irons. I went from mid 90s RAM irons, from a cheap, SW through driver set I bought back then, to some Titleist 695 CBs, and the improvement was vast. And that wasn't even as much of a time gap, just some time gap plus a big jump in club quality. Also, on your note that most of your missed shots are inside 100, obviously I don't know your stats, but that's a very common misconception. I think it comes from the fact that everyone feels like most of the 8 footers should go in (even tour pros are only 50/50 from there), and their SW and LW shots should always hit the green and usually be really close, neither of which are reasonable expectations for someone anywhere close to your handicap. So they are mad about those misses and remember them. But they expect a decent number of tee shots or longer irons to go wayward and cost strokes, so don't focus on those. My point is, if you're shooting 83-90, unless you're honestly 3-putting 4 times a round and take 2 pitches to even get on the green twice every round from just off the green, or shank every 3/4 SW even though you absolutely never shank other shots, you probably only have a couple strokes to gain from improving short game. The path from mid 80s to mid 70s is significant improvement in tee shots and full swing irons.

Take some videos, FO and DTL, and see! And start a my swing thread if you haven't so the rest of us can see too! I like the my swing threads from super low caps. I like to feel bad about my own swing

I've found it's just practice. Every time I go to the range I line up one alignment stick close to where I want my feet, and another one fairly close to where I'm going to be placing the balls, both parallel to my target line. So then you're always perfectly aligned during practice. Do that enough and you'll get very familiar for exactly what it feels like when you look up from the ball at your target after you set up when you're aligned correctly.

@GrandStranded, I'm no club fitter, but I noticed a massive difference, and was WAY more comfortable, when I went from stock lie to +2˚ lie. And also when I went from stock length to +1.5". Sure, 2˚ isn't as much as 1˚, but if 1˚ fits your swing better, I'd say it's definitely worth it.

@iacas, ha. Fair enough. Just knew it was too high... @NCGolfer84, I'll defer to players/coaches better than me, but I know enough to point out a few basic things. Given we only have the face on, your setup looks reasonable. Not experienced enough as a coach to say for sure your grip is fine, but to my eye it looks okay. Only thing I see obvious at setup is that your feet are basically parallel and pointing straight towards the target line. There's variance in how much good players flare their feet, and a few really good pros in history have at least at times had an almost square back foot. But every good player flares their front foot. Try angling your back foot back a bit and angling your front foot forward a decent bit more. Angling your front foot forward a good bit will help with number 2 below. On your swing, again I won't claim the authority/experience to rank these in terms of highest priority fixes, but I'll throw out the things that I see. First thing is that you stand up a ton on your backswing. Do you know the position numbers (A1 - A9)? Regardless, A1 is setup, A4 (~0:03 in your vid) is the top of your backswing. Look at your head at those two positions. It's gone way up, from well below the power line at setup to above the power line at A4. If you look at top player swings, there's some give in the head going down or even a tiny bit back, but definitely not up. Second obvious thing I see is that you're not turning your hips nearly enough, nor sliding them forward enough. You do a way better job than a lot of new players in not letting them drift backwards in the backswing (good sign!), but then at impact your hips are only a tiny bit past getting back to square, and have only moved forward down the target line a tiny bit. Last thing I see is harder to say exactly without a down the line (DTL) video, which I strongly suggest you take next time you're at the range! But to me it looks like you're coming down from the top of your swing into your down swing way steep. You can search around the site for help on this. By steep, I mean that if you take a DTL video, at the point in your downswing where your left arm has just gotten back to parallel, the line made by your club should at worst point just on your side of the ball, and probably at or outside it. From your face on video, it looks like your club line at that point is probably pointing way towards you from the ball. That's steep. I'll defer to others to offer pointers in how to actually address these things (or others), and in what order.

It seems you found the thread on starting a myswing thread. I'm pretty sure there's a link in there with instructions on how to best film your swing. Short of it is down the line video should be filmed parallel to the target line, but along your foot line, not the target line. Your face on is more or less fine, though it's best to have the camera at like chest height, not looking down as much as yours is. And, as @boogielicious said, it's key you film yourself hitting a ball, since pretty much everyone's swing is different enough, in key ways, when taking a dry swing, that critiquing it isn't all that helpful. Do those things and people around here tend to be super generous helping you along.

Post videos where you're hitting a ball. It's generally not super useful to assess practice swings, as they're almost always different in key ways from swings where you're hitting a ball.