golfaddict1

thanks for the response. I agree I think the position at the top is far more important than how you get there. I've always felt the weight was in the balls of my feet at address so maybe i'm falling back at touch during BS. You're right about the arch. I have pretty weak core muscles and I need to engage them more at address.

yup. looks all arms and no body to me. strike will be very unpredictable when you're relying so much on hand eye coordination and timing. good drill i do to get my arms in sync with my body and get me turning more is put a ball between my elbows and hit these little half swings with very passive hands. Ball will force you to stay connected and keep the width in your swing, which will get you rotating better.

How important is it to have the club in a 'good position' at parallel point 1 i.e. 1st point shaft is parallel to ground in backswing. I know ideally the club would be a little outside the hands and the face matching the spine angle. I'm not a million miles away from this but as you can see my arms have come away from my body slightly, the club is a touch open and slightly behind my hands. But the top of my backswing is pretty decent. Club neutral, parallel to target line. Thing is my coach has got me working on these exaggerated feelings of club outside hands, hinging up much more vertically and getting way more laid off at the top. Admittedly these are all 'feelings' and when I actually do them whilst hitting a ball I've actually only moved the club a tiny bit closer to the 'better' positions. But I honestly feel so awkward and horrible doing them. It just makes me hit it so much worse and come down very steep on the ball. I've always enjoyed the flatter more baseball like feeling in my golf swing. I feel like my arms are trapped against my chest in the backswing and I cant rotate properly. My coach says changes like this are always tough and will feel horrible for a while, but I've made positional changes in the past and yes they've felt odd at first, but I've usually been able to adapt to them pretty quickly and my swing has improved quickly as a result. But these changes he's trying to make to my backswing have been going on for a while now and every time I focus on implementing them, whether it be on the range or during a round, my ball striking deteriorates. Im a 7.0 hcap and improving, but he says if I want to reach a more elite level I need to bite the bullet and make these changes to my swing. Thoughts?

Yeah your grip is gonna be causing you all kind of issues. Both hands look weak to me - it looks like you need to hold more in the base of your fingers in left hand and feel your right hand is way more 'underneath' rather than 'on top' of the club. That'll help close the club face down at impact, which with your current swing path will result in massive pulls/pull hook at first, but you'll see and feel this and your body will quickly adjust your path accordingly to sort out your ball direction i.e. making you hit more in to out. I think right now you have to swing left and fade the ball because if you didnt you'd just hit it way right because of your grip.

Monte quite clearly states in other videos that he has told 'a bunch' of people to try this and not one of them did manage to flip it it, so just cos you don't like the message doesnt mean its BS. And so what if Bill wants to 'promote' Monte. He's a great teacher and good teachers should be promoted, instead of ones spewing the usual cliched drivel that doesn't actually help...but my guess is you prefer the cliches.

Thats because you do need to make a different swing with your driver than your irons! The fact we're trying to hit up with the driver versus down with the irons makes for a very different feeling swing. That's were so many go wrong i.e. trying to swing all clubs the same way. Also adding an inch to your clubs is quite severe! Unless you're 6'6''+ tall or have very short arms I'd be very wary of having length added to any club. I'm 6'3'' and made that mistake thinking I needed the extra length but it just makes clubs heavier and less stable and I play far better with standard length. A lot of pro's have their clubs shortened (especially driver) for added control. BTW I too struggle with and am working on removing lateral hip movement and the 'feels' you need to have during the swing to achieve it are ridiculous and feel awful! I have to feel like my right hip is turning backwards and around towards my left heel whilst my left shoulder is going away from my target towards my right toes. I can honestly say for myself that my bad driver swings come from not rotating properly behind the ball and coming a little over the top on downswing as a result so be aware of that. You cant get away with it a little more with irons but driving requires a good turn whereby you dont lose spine angle or bump your hips away from target.

Couple of quick and easy setup changes you can make today that should help you out: 1) Adopt a more athletic and dynamic posture by standing further away from the ball, getting rid of hunched shoulders, having a straighter spine and having hands a little further from body. You simply cant play good golf with posture like yours. 2) Have a wider stance (feet further apart) and flare your toes slightly. Will help with balance, stability and using your legs more dynamically. 3) Once you've widened your stance, have the ball a little further forward (closer to left foot) and at address have your hands slightly ahead of ball (except with driver). This will help you sweep the ball a little better, get more height and discourage a steep angle of attack. The hands forward at address is simply a sort of 'preset' impact position all good players do. I imagine fixing these issues will improve a lot of things in your actual swing automatically. As for your swing itself, It's far too much arms and hands and not enough core and legs. You also hang back on your right side through impact, which is probably due to the fact it looks like you're trying to help the ball in the air - a big no no if you ever want to strike it well and get distance. Also you swing far too much across the ball out-to-in, which will only cause pulls and slices: 1) Feel like your whole torso (shoulders, chest and stomach) rotates WITH your arms in sync on your backswing. Once you cant rotate it any more, stop, as that is a complete backswing and any further will result in your arms becoming disconnected. Chances are to you this will feel like a much shorter backswing, maybe even a half swing. But that is just a feeling and on camera you'll see you'll actually have a bigger backswing than you think. 2) Try to have your hands ahead of the clubhead at impact, feeling like your hitting down through the ball. With your weight on your right foot this will be impossible to do so make sure you're shifting your weight onto your left side on the downswing. A good drill for you would be to hit some balls with your right heel off the ground throughout. 3) As for your path, try to come at the ball much more from the inside, like you're trying to push the ball to the right of your target. At first you'll hit some big pushes and push fades, but your hands will quickly adjust to close the face more through impact. This is the only way to get a draw and cure a slice.

So up until fairly recently I was a struggling 10 handicapper. I'd really been struggling to even shoot near my h'cap for many months and my driver was all over the place, so I decided to fork out on some lessons with a reputable pro who uses GC2/HMT software. I hit some shots with 7 iron, then driver, then we discussed my game and I said I like to shape it from right to left. He then had me hitting with a more out to in path, ball further forward and more passive hands. I immediately struck it better, flighted it higher and saw a nice baby fade developing with all my irons. He told me that most tour pro's hate to miss it left so opt for a shot that will just leak right as its safer, more predictable and more consistent in both direction and carry distance. He also used to want to draw it but changed to a fade when he realised it would provide more accuracy. I took it to the course and was striking it so pure. I found it weird aiming left, but I quickly gained confidence to just 'swing left' knowing it wouldn't go left. In the month since my 'epiphany' i've dropped from 9.7 to 8.7 having only played two comps. My confidence is back. My driver is still not great as I'm hitting a lot of big blocks/push fades, but otherwise I wish I'd 'converted' earlier. Everyone seems so obsessed with hitting a draw. I once asked one of the scratch juniors (who hit big draws) if he ever faded and he laughed "nah, I think it's a sh*t shot mate!". Naivety of youth perhaps, but it seems the fade is seen as weak players shot whereas a draw takes skill?! I certainly feel fading your irons provides a crisper, more descending blow, higher flight, more carry and less roll out, which is surely all a good thing?

....what? How does that justify it in anyway? A driver works on every shot. Game Golf doesnt....this isnt even a logical comparison!

Well I know that after 20+ rounds or so the inaccuracies will average out to give fairly accurate distances and tendencies but still for such an expensive investment I find the amount of work I have to do in post round editing annoying. And you're right it is frankly ridiculous that you cant declare where a ball is at any time. An egregious oversight to say the least. I've asked them to introduce this feature and its one of the most voted for 'feature requests' on their forum so hopefully they sort it out soon.

I've been in touch and they have remapped some of the holes (they say) but I tried moving my tags around and the mapping is still wrong. If they are basing their 'mapping' on what they can make out on the blurry google maps view then there's no wonder its wrong as its impossible to tell rough from fairway on those images. I also notice that parts of the fairway cast in shadows by big trees arent recognised either. Dont get me wrong; if this was a £40 unit I wouldnt expect super accuracy, but at £140 I find its inaccuracy very disappointing to say the least. I feel like im doing all of their work for them and its costing them nothing. Why have a course on your system you havent checked is mapped accurately? This wouldnt be so bad if the editing suite allowed you to declare whether a ball is in fairway, bunker, rough etc. without having to move it miles away from where it actually lay. Just so many flaws . Like I said, I think they released it before properly testing it and ironing out the cracks.

Got my Game Golf few weeks ago and have to say I'm very disappointed and frustrated with it. It has one humongous and fundamental flaw, the GPS is horribly inaccurate. Sometimes it has me 10-20 yards away from where I actually tagged!? Worse yet is the course mapping software has no clue (of my course Addington Palace at least) whether you're in fairway, green, rough, bunker. And even in the post round edit I can move it to where I know its fairway and it still wont recognise it. If I untag a shot it says is 'on green' it suddenly shoves the shot 10 yards in a random direction, altering the yardage of my approach shot. Utterly useless. For a device saying it offers 'PGA Tour' levels of stats the editing software needs to allow more freedom to specify where a shot is and the GPS needs to be vastly improved. For something that cost me £140 this is a real joke. Its clearly been released too early and should have been far more thoroughly product tested.

Yes exactly. See how his hands are leading through the ball. I think your bent arm is caused by you lifting up and flipping the wrists through impact. I should say there are plenty of good players who have bent lead arms (Spieth, Westwood) but for them I think its anatomical i.e. they cant really straighten it fully whereas it looks like a compensation with you.

Yup was gonna say the only thing thats gonna cause your hook is that super strong left hand combined with what already looks like a strongish right hand. Look at your clubface at the top of your backswing - its pointing to the sky! So closed! It should ideally match the back of your right hand. Get your left hand 'lifeline' to cover the top of your right thumb. This will feel super weak and awful at first but will stop you flipping the club at impact. You're also losing your wrist angle and bowing your right arm at impact. Try to keep your right hand bowed slightly and leading through impact. This should also help straighten that right arm a bit and help you compress the ball more. Practice hitting some short low punch shots with a 6 iron, trying to hit the ball as low as possible by delofting through impact, leading with the right arm and hitting down through the ball.

For me there's pretty much only two things that are different about the A swing from a normal swing and they are the grip and the backswing, which in itself is just an exaggerated form of the 'clubhead outside hands' mantra which most good golfers do anyway. Other than that there's nothing revolutionary about it, but I quite like its ideas. I tried it on the range the other day and for me I felt like if anything I had to do more with the club before in terms of the big path re-route and the top of the backswing than I did in my old normal swing.

Few things I notice which no doubt contribute to inconsistent ball striking. 1) Sort your posture and address out - you're too much 'sat back' in your heels and slumped in the upper back. Try having a touch less knee flex, your back less rounded and lean forward by hinging from your hips, not your mid back. A good image is to imagine you're on the edge of a pool about to dive in. This should move your weight more towards the balls of your feet and away from your heels. 2) Rotate around your spine - your swing is all arms and elbows. One reason you lack power is because you're not using your body rotation to create clubhead speed. You basically pick the club up on the backswing and barely rotate your shoulders at all. This causes you to lose your spine angle and stand up away from the ball, which is never good for consistent ball striking. The bend in the left arm at the top also indicates restricted shoulder turn. Try feeling like your arms and hands are more passive and that you're using your trunk to rotate about your spine. A good drill may be to stick a towel under your armpits and try and maintain pressure against them with your arms throughout backswing. This will keep them more connected and in sync with your torso and also force you to rotate your upper body more and stop over swinging. 3) Dont try to help the ball get airbourne - you have the classic 'flippy' wrists at impact which is again another recipe for ball striking disaster! Your hands should be ahead of the ball at impact with the irons, not on top of or behind. Work on keeping your hands ahead of the ball at impact and hitting slightly down on the ball to compress it. Don't overdo this by going to steep into the ball, just focus on the club bottoming out AFTER hitting the ball and taking a nice shallow divot. I think those 3 things should be your main focus. They're essentially fundamentals and once you get those right golf becomes a lot easier. I cant really tell from that video but it also looks like your grip is an issue i.e. too much in the palm of your left hand creating a 'weak' grip. So my advice for a relative beginner like you is focus on your grip, posture, setup and ball position the most right now. In other words get all the stuff before you hit the ball correct and thats half the battle won already. Then make sure you know how you want to be hitting the ball with the club your holding e.g. slightly up with the driver, flat with the woods and long irons and down with mid to short irons. I've found with most beginners simply having them understand how they ought to be hitting the ball (in regards to angle of attack at least) makes a huge difference to their game and fixes a lot of faults with their swing automatically. Also, GET LESSONS!

"Are you trying to make different swings"....well...yes.....because if i made the same swing I'd get the same shape of shot!? When someone draws the ball onto target, at impact their club face was putting right of target (e.g. 2 deg) whilst their club path was travelling further right of target line (e.g. 4 deg). Its vice versa for fade. So although changing my alignment may encourage a certain swing path in reality it wont necessarily result in a certain shot shape. The old adage's of "point your club at target, align left for fade, right for draw"; whilst for some this may result in a fade/draw, what they think they are doing at impact is not what they are actually doing at impact. Mark Crossfield has done some good video's explaining this. Launch monitors have kind of dismantled many of the old perceptions of what is happening to cause certain things.

Hi guys, I've been having regular lessons for 6 months now and as such have been going through various swing changes and improvements. I've gone from a 15 hcap to 9 in that time and although much has improved I've kind of hit a brick wall over past few months and I think a lot of it has to do with the indecision I have over shot shape I want to hit over the ball. I'd describe myself as a pretty capable shaper of the ball in that I can bend it both ways at will, though often not with as much finesse as I might like! My 'natural' shape is a draw, but its only 'natural' becuase I'm consciously swinging in to out and I can just as easily swing out to in for a fade. My dilemma is this. Although in my head I'm nearly always playing for a draw with my woods and irons, the reality is I'm not getting a consistent enough flight for it to be a reliable stock shot. A lot of my attempts to draw (especially with driver) result in pushes, push slices or hooks. I also find off the deck I can come at the ball too much from the inside (6-7 deg on trackman), particularly with the longer irons and woods, resulting in poor strike (usually a fat with the woods) and/or hooks. Also, in general I'm picking the ball off the turf a little bit too clean, especially with short irons, where I often barely bruise the ground, and ideally I'd like to take a divot and compress the ball more. Whereas when I consciously go for a soft fade my strike improves, I compress the ball better, my plane is less flat and the ball's curve is less pronounced. I know it seems like i'm answering my own question here, but both shots have their pros and cons. For me, when im drawing it nicely the flight is penetrating, the distance is good and the spin on the longer clubs is less. When I'm struggling the draw is either too pronounced or just a straight push, the strike is inconsistent, the ball is hit too cleanly with the irons and I can put myself in trouble, particularly with tee shots. With a fade, I feel I can be more aggressive at the ball, come at it a bit steeper with more lag, compress it more and see less curve. But the downsides are I can sometimes come too steep and chunk it, the ball can often balloon on me (especially in wind) and theres a little less distance. As my 'new' swing is really taking shape I feel I need to decide now which I work at as my 'go to' shot shape and fine tune my swing accordingly. Am I going through a sort of golfing 'identity crisis' in that I want to draw the ball and prefer to see that shape, but the reality is I hit a fade better and more consistently? Thanks

well i think the "hahaha" and "#commentgold" comments are very condescending, especially to someone who appears to be (or was!) a follower and a fan. What he's trying to achieve by insulting and alienating someone simply asking for justification I dont know.

https://twitter.com/stevenjguitar/with_replies

just look at the conversation he's having right now with @stevenjguitar . Steven merely asks him to justify why he thinks people are wrong about Tiger's dipping causing/or not causing him issues and he basically insults him for daring to question him. So defensive and self righteous.

Well just go and look at his twitter feed now and look how he responds to those who question or disagree with him. Its appauling frankly and he's basically trolling. Has he got mild autism or something. He gleefully criticizes pundits whilst offering no evidence to support his reasoning. I honestly think he's on a slippery slope. If his offensiveness and ego keeps escalating the way it has been over past year or so he'll soon find he's shot himself in the foot. He's already lost Nike. A few more big names boycott him and suddenly his #originalcontent wont be worth watching, even with his 'hilarious' #personality.

It's fair to say Crossfield has become a bona fide (mini) celebrity in the golf world. I think it's also fair to say he knows so too. In general I find his SOLO video's entertaining, but with other people he comes across as a bit of an arse to me. He also seems to take great delight in being a contrarian and debunker. That wouldnt be a bad thing if he wasnt so blunt and abrasive and cocky about it. What bugs me most is how arrogant and insulting he is on social media. Anyone who dares offer a different opinion to his usually gets shot down and mocked. He is unprofessional and without class which is a real shame. Also this whole 'original content', 'I was first to say this/that' etc. stuff is not only b.s. but it smacks of jealousy and childishness. oh, and not forgetting #STOPTRYINGTOMAKEEVERYTHINGINTOAHASHTAG #thoughts?

Hi, can anybody recommend a good pro or academy for me to go to lessons with in SE London. Im looking for somebody who can get me down to low single figures, currently play off 9. They must have access to trackman/GC2 type equipment. thanks