amoline

Progressing nicely! Keep at it. Enjoy seeing the updates.

Very well could be. Your grip is your only connection to the club. If something is off, it can cause a host of problems.

We always fight the same things. As a side note, height doesn't necessarily mean a long swing -- I think it's more your arms out traveling your turn instead of "length" of your swing. See how you do with the tilt first though

That's what the result will be, but that's not how to attain it necessarily. A small bump forward of your hips will do it. It will feel like you are way behind the ball but that's normal. Just make sure you aren't dumping your shoulders out of alignment. Photo of Bubba that I just have because he's a great example of spine tilt -- (flipped him right handed). Ignore the ball position of course. As you can see, his trail shoulder is lower than the lead shoulder because of the position your arms take on the club (your trail arm rests lower on the grip). Bubba is a lanky guy but even for him his hip is the part of his body that is most targetward (excluding his foot in the stance)

Full disclaimer -- I don't do golf instruction for a living but hopefully I can offer some advice. You have a very long swing. The longer your swing, the more rotational speed you need (and by extension clubhead speed) to be able to properly connect the club to the ball at impact. You don't need a long swing to hit it far. You should also add some secondary axis tilt (spine tilt away from the target) in your setup. It's important to maintain the tilt throughout backswing into impact. You can see at impact that your body is trying to get you into tilt. The more you start tilting toward the target the steeper you are going to get, which leaves your only option to flip your hands at it. So give yourself some tilt at impact, and don't let your arms and hands overrun your turn (much easier said than done) Hope some of this helps. Let us know how you do.

Welcome! First and foremost, really glad you got a new driver to enjoy! I use an R15 (the white driver that came after the SLDR). It's very similar and has the same sort of weights as your SLDR. It's a great customizable club. I love my driver (even though we aren't friends right at this moment). MrFlipper posted some great info of course on that, so be sure you take a look. Second, nice swing -- already. It's easy to see that you have a lot of talent. The instruction you'll get here is great and the folks are really nice, too, so we hope you stick around. I'll post a few things about your swing, but full disclaimer I don't do golf instruction for a living so you can pick and choose what you'd like to read. And funny that actually you have the same stuff in your swing that I am fighting right now too (though you are obviously compensating better, lol). Not sure how terminology familiar you are here so forgive me if I am preaching to you something you're already aware of. And another thing to note -- if I post pictures or something of tour players (really, anyone who does) isn't doing so necessarily for you to copy exactly, but just to show you what along the lines it should look like. Something you will want in your swing is called secondary-axis tilt, or SAT. What it is is a little tilt away from the target at your setup. You will maintain this tilt throughout your backswing into impact (the best players in the world even increase the amount of tilt they have in transition -- but that's a different topic.) It's a little hard to tell from the camera angle but it looks like your spine is set up quite vertically to the ball, and especially with a driver you'll want to be away from it. Bubba Watson has a great driver set up in terms of tilt away from the target. With the magic of photoshop, I flipped him to be right handed here. Because your bottom hand on the club is lower than your other hand and arm, your trail (in your case, right) shoulder is going to be set lower too; therefore, your body ought to have some tilt as well. See Bubba's shoulder line and how his spine is tilted here. There's a lot of good things this tilt will do for your swing and physical wellbeing, but in general it's a good thing to have. (ignore his ball position because it's a little unusual [further back] for a stock driver swing. Bubba gets away with really weird stuff the rest of us can't.) Next, your arms and hands are overrunning your turn in your swing. This can be a power leak and lead to general inconsistency in trying to deliver the club back to the ball. You're also an extremely flexible person so it's probably going to feel "powerless" stopping shorter. However, take note here in the capture from your swing video how in relation to your chin, the dark line on your shirt hasn't moved any further back. (I also lightened the photo a bit) This could also be contributing to your right shots -- when your right arm disappears behind you like that, you have no choice but to reroute it back in front of you to wipe across the ball, which would cause it to go right. You have a nice turn as it is. Take these photos as a guideline and not a "this is where you have to stop" -- just wanting to show that your arms overrun a little bit. Also, the further that you go back with your swing, the more clubhead speed you're required to have to get it back to impact. I superimposed two images of your swing on each other, and you can see your body is the same position but your club has traveled a lot farther. From what your mother has told us, you swing pretty dang fast already, but the position that your clubhead gets to in the top of your swing is really a 120+ MPH position, and even for people who do swing that fast isn't always ideal. Have you ever seen JB Holmes? Take a youtube search for his driver swing and see how far he takes the clubhead back, and he is one of the fastest swing speed players and longest drivers on the PGA Tour. The key will be, as you will discover the more you practice and play, is knowing where your swing ought to stop so you can get maximum consistency and acceleration. Hard to say with just a driver if it's a driver thing or other clubs, but your shoulder turn also looks a little flat on the backswing, which isn't an ideal position to be in either. Pause at the top of your backswing, and pretend you drew a line right across the top of your shoulders through your neck. Your shoulders would be pointing out into the trees whereas preferably you'd like it a little more pointing toward the ball. When you have a flat shoulder turn your options will be either to dump your right shoulder to the ground on the way through to stop from getting steep, or to actually get steep and wipe across it which would again cause a right side miss. Lastly, a small question and a bit of just general playing advice for you. When you say "fade" do you mean an actual fade (starts slightly left of target and ends slightly right of target) or a slice (starts left or even right of target and curves WAY right of target). If you mean an actual fade and it's still a nice shape of curve, I wouldn't mess with it too much. Of course, you don't want to be banana curve slicing it either, but because you are young you will find lots of people coming up to you on driving ranges wanting to give you advice. Something you may come across from a person at some point or another will be that a draw is a "pro's shot shape" -- which is not true. Many PGA tour players favor fades over draws and are very successful with it. Fade VS draw is not the key to good golf. Of course, as you get more practiced you'll want to be able to work the golf ball both ways and different curves -- and that's fine. But what you'll also want is knowledge of what your "stock" swing does so you can go back to it under pressure. As they say there's not pictures on scorecards so there's an infinite number of ways to get the number done. I say this as a word of warning -- a fellow teammate on my university club team did himself no favors by insisting to himself that a draw was the way to go ALL the time and it was the only way that he could play successful golf. A slice, while certainly not pretty or ideal, is, in general, more manageable a miss than a nasty snap hook left that you'll never see again.This is why I am proud of my fade and never let anyone tell me otherwise! Here's how things break down for my club team: There are 10-ish of us total 2 of the guys can work a ball either way at will and do so often (they are the best players on the team) 3 of the guys play draws and can fade it if need be 2 of the guys play fades and can draw it if absolutely needed (this is where I am, if my life depended on it, lol.) 3 of the guys play draws and couldn't hit a fade if their life depended on it and 2 play fades and couldn't hit a draw if they had to. The need be, for me, is hitting a draw on the course maybe 2 or 3 shots per round. It really isn't often. Unless there's a significant dogleg left hole or something I'd like to go for (say there's REALLY bad trouble right but it's OK to miss left - I'll try and hit a draw). My draws usually actually draw a little bit or just go straight with no fade. But you'll want to find your shape. If you want to be successful at golf, you should learn how to at least do both and practice as needed. However, the moral of that little story was simply to tell you that it's not life or death if you have one shape or another, and the other point of the story was don't buy into random driving range advice. And finally, just a word of encouragement: Kudos to you for going at golf and learning so much on your own. That's really awesome. My university's club team goes to local high school and middle schools to show students what college golf can look like, and that it isn't always playing for Ivy League schools and shooting under par. It can also be a good time to hang out with friends. Keep golfing, no matter your goals or where golf ends up taking you. It's a very frustrating game at times, but it's very rewarding and I'm thankful for all the opportunities that golf has given me. Kudos to you if you stuck with my post and actually read all of that, haha! Hope some of the advice helps - you have a good swing to start building on already! Keep us all updated on how tryouts for your high school team go, and hope to see you posting around with progress updates. Let us know if you have any questions Andrew

Not bad at all for your shoulder turn. What @billchao posted is great too - even in your set up though you set up a little tilted toward the target, so do that wall drill and you can put a little axis tilt in your setup to begin with.

First of all, nice swing. I've not been playing a super long time either but still hard at it. I put some comments in italics above.

Thanks @macksmom ! I appreciate it a lot. It's a work ever-in-progress. On a side note -- would anybody be willing/able to give me feedback on my putting stroke? I've been having some issues. I played my practice green game today where basically the point is not to three putt and I ended up three putting a sad number of times, my biggest misses on 4-6 foot putts. Can I film it just like a regular face on video and would anybody be able to tell me what I'm doing perhaps incorrectly, or is putting just something that can't be helped with on video? I'm afraid there's not a whole lot of excellent putting instruction in my area.

I know it's not quite the same but Srixon has a u45 utility iron that goes down to 18 degrees. I have one and it's also one of my favorite clubs. Might be worth taking a look for if you like that style of club.

Far be it from me to offer advice to a 4 HI but a hip stall would be the case if you were actually rotating too fast from the top then your hands and arms have to take over and roll to save the shot. It's hard to tell from the video, but you don't look to have a ton of hip turn for as far as your shoulders and arms go. This is where Rory gets his "hip stall" from -- a light hip turn and firing fast from the top means his hips outrun his shoulders and arms and have to wait for everything else to catch up. Again, though, I'll leave the certain advice to the pro instructors in this case. You have an awesome swing! I'm jealous of your rhythm.

Oh, of course -- I didn't mean that as an actual example. It wasn't actually the case and didn't happen. I was just using it as an example phrase of how something might be said. :) In fact, it was with my own swing a little while back, a little across the line was causing me some handle yanking issues. As you say though, that's OT

Fair point @Golfingdad. As natureboy said in the above posts, I wouldn't have felt it perhaps quite as unusual if it were a coach going off at a team as a whole. I know coaches can get intense, and the questionability of yelling at a team aside, I think especially how golf works as a sport, so mental and confidence driven, it's quite strange to see a single player taken down like that. I'm certainly not trying to "one up" any of the other posts about intense parents. Just wanted to share the most recent situation I'd seen on the course that it reminded me of Thank you for the points, @natureboy! I agree, sometime I'll point it out. We often point out things like that in each others' swings, too. Even if it's not so much instruction as another eye to say "Hey, just so you know you're a little across the line if you don't mean to be" -- or whatever. Thanks for the post. I agree entirely with what you said especially coaching re: golf. I feel at the very bare minimum it is a coach's job to never demoralize his or her players. As I pursue a teaching degree myself, I know there is a big difference between giving students a verbal lashing that is a kick in the pants to get going, and flat out telling them you suck, basically.

Thanks a bunch, @mvmac! We'll take a look into those things. 20 y/o college student unmarried, but my mom likes jewelry a lot.

You know I'll almost amend this statement. I shot my best round the other day with a Callaway Chrome soft (even better because I got 2 dozen free from Callaway because they screwed up my wedges!). I love the Chrome Soft. I may end up switching even though it'll cost me more... ack!

It's not a bad golf parent, per se but a coach is close and this was just the other day, so I think it applies. I saw one of the local high school girl's team coaches the other day at the driving range, set up complete with tent for sitting under to watch a team member/good friend of mine hit balls (she's just a couple years younger than I am and going to the same college I go to in town next year. We golf together a lot) Anyway, she's having trouble with the tops and fatsies, and it's easy to see why even for me as a swing enthusiast and not a PGA pro. She's developed over the summer it seems one of the most severe reverse pivots/overall changes in spine tilt throughout the swing I've ever seen. She's obviously a fantastic athlete to compensate for a flaw that severe, and when she does manage to (somehow) she hits some beautiful shots. I of course not wishing to say anything at all, but it's obvious it's becoming frustrating to her and both because she's not "on" this day and isn't able to correct. Anyway, I went up to the clubhouse and got another bucket of balls so I could nonchalantly edge a little closer to eavesdrop on the conversation. So I'm back and the coach has found the ultimate swing key for her and it's going to fix everything. His advice to her... You need to hold the lag. And he proceeds to demonstrate by doing a "pump" drill that would probably break my wrists if I tried it. So what was chunks and tops with the occasional great shot has now turned into an excavation effort for buried treasure. Coach actually starts practically screaming. "Why can't you do this?!? YOU NEED TO HOLD THE LAG!!!" Girl is freaked out, almost speed hitting golf balls, coach is doing no better, shouting at her to hold the lag, and nothing is going on. Coach finally just gives up "UGH, you'll never play any good golf if you can't hold onto any lag!" Stomps off. Friend of mine just drops to her knees and starts crying on the driving range. Have to admit that this sport has made me want to cry before but never quite like that. Had to go over and tap her on the shoulder, just said "Hey, it's all right -- sometimes coaches aren't swing coaches." So we hit the rest of our buckets together and played 9 afterwards. So fortunately what was an absolutely insane event ended with a great few hours of golf with a good friend. All the same, just goes to show that swing coaches and golf coaches are two very different jobs and being one does not make one the other. Sadly, I see parents ruining their juniors every day at the range. I'll come back to this thread when I have more cringe-worth tidbits...

Isn't that the truth! The things that keep us coming back to this crazy game. And I know what you mean! As I say, I don't mean to be a jerk in saying that a round "should" be anything when in reality it is what I shot it. But it is a good feeling to know that all my issues with the round are ultimately good things. The hole the 7 happened on was one I have always had issues with though -- a par 3 about 155 yards over water (the water isn't a big issue to carry or anything; it just sits in front of the teebox so as long as you don't top/shank something less than that, which I have been known to do...). I figured it would be a pretty simple 8i. The only thing you can't do on that hole is go left, so of course I end up going WAY right, by a factor of curve I didn't know I could actually make an 8i do. Way right, and actually way long (about 15 yards long!). So I'm not sure if that's just the best 8i I'll ever hit, or maybe the swing improvements are making a big deal and I'm gaining some yardage. (And please don't mistake me for a long hitter, lol. I am admittedly at altitude so you can comfortably take 8-10% off everything). Still, that's not a bad distance to hit an 8 either, especially considering where I was at a year ago... My biggest takeaway from that small round will be I know I can go a full round without making any "bad" swings and I know that when my swing is under control I can make good shots. Honestly that was the scariest part of the round, trying to mentally get over the "OK, I know this shouldn't be happening... when is the topped shot coming... I shouldn't be hitting this many good shots." With swing improvements and hard practice, I should be hitting that many good shots! Thanks for all the feedback and reading my essays @RandallT... :) Following your awesome swing thread now too!

Played 9 on a small executive style course today, and shot a new personal record! -- 45 through 9 holes. It's nothing extraordinary, but the bonus is I can count probably 7 strokes that just shouldn't have happened how they did. Either unlucky breaks or stupid mistakes on my part. (3 putt(s) and a horrible series of 3 lost strokes because my ball landed under an evergreen tree and that was painful. Anybody have any tips for those, by the way? When your ball is just sitting up on mud and you can barely get a club on it. Other than pray. ;) ) So I know that seems silly to say. A 45 that "should" have been about 38. But 38 would have left me at 6 over through 9, which is nothing to scoff at for my game. The score did include a four hole run of par, par, bogey, par. Having driver issues which is why I was able to still score OK because the course is short and I used 3w or 2i off every tee except for one I did hit driver on. Just a matter of not overswinging with the longer clubs at this point I think. So hard to do.

Welcome! I'm a member of my college club team and have a 14 year old younger brother who is a very avid golfer. Let me have a think and reply to your other thread, too. Hope you stick around, even if we're all a bit crazy!

I agree, gregsandiego! That would be convenient. alas, we do have a friend in Phoenix we're going down to see for a few days, so that's what the location is for! I didn't know TM or Callaway did visits, however. Good to know if we are out that way in future.

Glad to have you and hello!

Thanks for the suggestion! We'll definitely keep an eye out for other things too. I really appreciate it! Still over a month to look for stuff, so if we see something better we'll jump on it.

Fair point @iacas! I know what you mean. That said (typed, lol), the champions course at TPC actually has a less expensive green fee than the resort's course. If it changes your opinion at all, we are playing two of us at TPC for $41 per person, which is actually $4 than my home course here in the city, lol. I certainly wouldn't pay the multiple hundreds during peak time.

I tell you I think we are the same person! At my practice today I felt like I couldn't assertively hit any short game anything. It's so difficult to learn how to stop your swing where you want it, and it's three times as worse learning to fire from that shorter position if you get there. Something I found really helpful for both stopping and firing correctly was feeling like my right arm stays ramrod straight. It never does and never will but it has had some good results with my own swing, so if it's something you haven't tried or haven't looked at in awhile, maybe consider it again! Following to see how your progress goes.

Left arm is looking good. A little harder to tell without the face on view, but you are definitely overswinging -- you can see the clubhead come out of the other side of your torso on your backswing. Sadly we are not all John Daly and for the rest of us mere mortals this is going to destroy your consistent contact and in all likelihood make your swing slower. An earlier wrist set can help with overswing issues. You look like you have a pretty late set. Your swing should stop when you have turned 90 degrees to your spine. Just from the swing you posted I'm going to guess those were huge fades/banana slices. You are definitely leading with the handle of the club -- not what you should do. If you enjoyed the last video I posted, here are a couple more from the same instructor (my instructor, too, actually -- he really is fantastic) that both have similar results/ideas, so you just have to find the feel that works for you. I like both of these drills for the feels they give. Good luck, and awesome progress already! Let us know how it goes. Andrew