yanni

No those were max 1-2 topics per lesson. We only focussed on one thing. Lets say the swing plane. When this was right we worked on weight shift. I don't think he is a bad teacher. I am just missing seeing the whole concept. I think even more important for me is recording myself. The pro told me that I am casting as hell. And he gave me tipps like shift weight forward more to hit the ball as if I were to play tennis. I tried hard and thought I was not casting anymore. He made a recording and showed it to me. Still I was casting way to much. Yesterday I did record myself again to see if the casting went away. Not at all. Now I did what Shawn said in his videos. "Dont hit the ball. Throw the club at the target". Also I tried to move right elbow more towards the target. To me this feels really extreme and not like a slight correction. But finally I can see that it looks correct on the video. The main things I learn from Shawn is the basic body movement and the thoughts behind the strike like "cutting the grass" "not hitting the ball". Those are more like general concepts.

Recently someone on this forum who struggled with his swing recommended 2 Shawn Clement youtube videos. I watched those 2 videos and this was quite a game changer for me. I watched tons of other videos most with complicated instructions and no focus on "the whole" swing idea. I always had the impression with all those little details I will never get it. Everything what he does is easy to learn and feels just natural. In his videos for the first time I was understanding the whole concept of the swing. Its not about concentrating on tons of stuff at the same time . Its just about a pretty natural movement. Which as a site effect improved my clubhead speed by 10mph. Just cause I am letting everything go now. This with the combination of recording myself on video really boosted my progress. I noticed he does tons of videos but repeats the basic concepts over and over again. I think this is NOT a bad thing. He sticks to the basics but shows them in different contexts. With my pro its like "correct this part. OK. now correct this part. OK". And at the end I don't cannot hit the ball anymore. But he never explained the whole, natural swing or the concept behind this to me. I wondering what others think about his videos and if anybody tried the premium content ? Don't really understand the difference to the free content which is already outstanding?

I did some measurements yesterday with my iron 7 and a low cost swing speed radar. So in reality swing speed might ab bit higher (when I look at my actual distances) But this does not really matter. Here are some results. 1) Swing speed with focus on the wrist. Not much body movement. I am was getting speed from 65-75. But this speed was very inconsistent. 2) Swing speed with focus on hip/body turn. Also similar numbers. 66-75. Also not very consistant. With both on this options to reach 75 I had to put a lot of effort in my movements which probably would give a very bad ball strike. And 75 did not happen most of the times. On time I managed to control the hip turn and active wirst snap with both hands and I got close to 80. But this was very difficult to do and just happened once. Then I tried something different. As I am not very flexible and only play golf for one year I realized that I do not fully turn my body during the upswing. My back tilts around 45 and not 90 degrees normally. So this time I really put some effort in twisting my body as much as possible so my back is pointing to the target. This gave me 70 mph. But every time (!!) now. So this was way more consistent than the other options. The next thing I did is to completely loosen my wrists. This gave me another 2-3 mph as this created more lag. So looser I felt after this tension the higher the speed. When I tilt up that far I have no chance to actively control my arms, hips or wrist any more. So this movement is 100% passive (compared to the others). It feels very uncomfortable but I think it has to be that way to build up tension. When I add active hip rotation this add add another 2-3 mph which will get me close to 80. But at the moment this difficult for me and I think gives no enough control I think. I yet have to try if I can hit any balls with this "new" swing thought.

Even if its more about a feeling I find it very interesting what other people feel or think of when they swing. Everybody seems to have different thoughts about this.

I think there are different thoughts on where swing speed actually comes from. I think you can separate it like this. From the body This can be trough hip rotation and/or weight transfer (through your legs) From the arms I think most will agree that arm rotation by itself is pretty slow. Form the wirst Either by actively or passively hinging the wirst and than snapping. Of course at the end some of those factors will add up. But I think you can only concentrate on one thing at the same time. So I am pretty sure most people have one basic concept they think about when hitting the ball. For me its a combination of shifting my weight and using the wirst (actively) to add more power. on top. This takes place after another and not at the same time. And don't think about hips and arms at all. Probably just shifting my weight and and do the snapping of the wrist more passively would also work. But I have to compare ball speed on this. Probably this also depends on your body a lot. I have a strong wrist so I can get a lot of power from there. Very athletic people who do body building and stuff like that will probably gain more speed if they think about using their hips. What are your thoughts about this when you swing ?

Thanks. This makes sense. I only noticed recently that position at setup and impact is pretty different and I think many beginners won't notice at first.

If you look at videos you will see when the club hits the ball it has way less loft than in setup position. People say an iron 7 actually becomes something like an iron 5 or 6 when you hit the ball. This only occurs if you do your wrist hinge quite late (which is the correct way). In this case the hand position is way left from the clubhead. My wrist hinge was way too early all the time. So what I did was to deloft the club already at setup position so I had the same loft at setup and at impact. Even though my wrist hinge was wrong the ballflight was quite OK cause the position of the club head still was quite OK during impact and I did not hit too many fat balls or did top anymore. I took a trainer lesson now. Obviously the trainer told me to not to shift the club handle as extremely to the left as I did in the past (so not to extremly deloft it) during setup. While this is "correct" this leaded to fat shots. He told me I have to move my weight to left (which I did not do in the past) so actually the club again is delofted a bit. Using a late lag will further correct this. And when I do all this I will get the correct delofted position on impact again (Hands way left from the clubhead) Now to my question ;) I tried to deloft extremly again during setup and did all the rest "correct". Than I did the setup like you should do (which is only very little delofted) and I can hardly see a difference. Why is it the position of the club during setup is different than position at impact ? Why don't just place the hands way left in relation to the clubhead on setup just as it will be on impact anyway ? Especially beginners probably don't even notice the position of the shaft should be difference on impact compared to the position on setup and this is why they are hitting fat or topping.

It has been quite a long time since I opened this thread. Back then I said "my swings seems correct" Well as many people already mentioned it was NOT. I am not topping or hitting the ball fat anymore (or very seldom) now. I changed many things in my swing. But I think here are the 2 important ones 1) Hit DOWN on the ball. I heard this many times before but could not really do it. Once I could do it my problem was solved. Try to work with a lot of lag and place your wirst way before your club during impact. Really overdo it now to get a feel for this. Try a half swing in really hit down on your ball as if you want to smash it into the ground. You won't believe it but the ball really flies this way ;) My swing plane was also way to steep. This maybe something you also could change. 2) Try to keep your posture and don't shift up your body when I you swing way back. I had this problem especially with my driver where the swing is really quite huge. Once your posture is stable your head does not really matter any more. Its automatically fixed as well. Still 1) is the most important point.

Thanks for all your answers. This means the more I practise the longer I will hit (genetics aside). I will work on flexbility and technique now...

The length of the driving range is limited by houses and a road. So the ball flight is way shorter as with normal balls. So what reads 200 yards on the driving range in reality is much shorter. But I think this does not really matter for now. What I found out is the following. When doing my grip I twist my left wrist extremly to the right. At impact this delofts my clubs a big time. The head is very closed. The iron 7 I was talking about at least becomes an iron 4 loftwise ( i am judging this by eye on comparing to my other clubs). So now numbers maybe begin to make sense. Loftwise we are talking about an iron 4. What happens to the driver is that it even gets a negative loft which explains why balls just go up in the air with a very long tee. The 3 wood on the other hand gets the loft the driver should have. So this makes the longest shots. This is also explains why I had a very hard time hitting my hybrid. This hybrid (4 iron) becomes something like a club with loft 0. So probably I am twisting my wrist to much ( there is a special term for this hand position which I don't remember). But this gives me 2 advantages. 1) I don't slice the ball with the driver 2) It is easier to hit down on the ball with the iron for me. Before this I had the wrist turned to the left (I think this is called neutral grip) which did not work at all for me. So I think in general this hand position helps a lot when not overdoing it. The V of the left hand index and middle finder should point to the right shoulder as far as I know. My V pointed right of my shoulder. I will tweak this position a bit. I think I am just overdoing it at the moment. I am pretty sure the iron 7 distance will get down when doing this and the driver distance will get up. We will see.

I dont know how accurate those numbers are. Those driving range balls just fly 60% the distance of normal balls. So they also make some corrections to the distance markings. The only point I want to make is that I hit the 3 wood longer than my driver and my 7 iron pretty far. So there something wrong with my driver swing or driver

I measured swing speed with my speed swing radar. My driver is default length with 10.5 Loft. I am myself confused by the iron length. As I said this was from a hard practise matt. Just subtract 20 yards maybe. Its not about total length. More about relations.

Ok. I think I made big progress now. I practised swinging with speed yesterday (without hitting the ball) and measuring club head speed. What I noticed is that rotating my hips and body faster did nothing for speed. But keeping my wrists and arms loose and do everything from there gave at least 10 mph more speed. Also I worked on my timing. I measured 80 with my 7 iron, and around 85 with my 5. Could not measure my driver at home though. Today at the range I hit the ball around 200-220 yards with my seven iron which is pretty insane compared to how far hit it before. I was doing this on hard practise mats though. So on the fairway this might be less. Also I used a lot of lag. So my 7 iron probably behaved more like 6 or even 5 iron. Ok. Now for the driver. I did some corrections to my hand position and stance. No slice anymore which of course makes the ball flight straighter and longer. I hit is pretty consistently 220 yards. Which is pretty interesting since this is NOT a lot of longer than I hit my 7 iron. I also tried my Hybrid (its like a 4 iron) but did only gain about 10m of distance and more much inconsistent shots. Now I took your advice and tried a 3 wood. Wow you were right. I hit the ball 240 yards. Whats is all means to me that I could probably hit the driver 250 yards or more but at the moment I still have a swing problem with this. I should mention that I use a very cheap driver from a complete Wilson set (whole set around $300). Maybe my timing with arms and wirst are just wrong with the driver. Could also be the driver itself. But I doubt it since I hit the 3 wood from the same Wilson set much longer it seems.

I am 42 years old and started playing golf about 2 month ago. I am making progress and just learned how to take a divot after the golf ball which took quite a long time. Now the rate of fat or thin shots have changed totally. This has improved my game a lot. Also with the driver am making progress. But what die not really change a lot compared to the beginning is the distance of my shots. I feel I am more flexible now and maybe have a bit more clubhead speed. I am hitting the driver about 180yards (average). So I am lightyears away from those younger players (and also players in my age) that just hit the ball around 250yards. I am wondering if this mainly genetics or technique they developed? I heard Oliver Heuler say (some of you might know him) that the type of people of can run very fast can also swing the golf club very fast (even if they normally dont play golf at all). This has to do with the ability of their muscles to contract very fast. If you look at your career. Were you gaining distance you more you practised or was this pretty much set from the beginning on ? Of course you can add distance through better technique, fitted driver etc. But can you actually change your swing speed fundamentally ?

This is very interesting. I am wondering if other people do actually focus the ball ? In the beginning I focussed 3 inch behind the ball and it really worked great. It seems I cannot do this anymore though.

Yes I know the swing is not correct when hitting the ball. But its correct when NOT hitting the ball. This is the strange thing to me.

I am hitting almost all balls fat (sometimes I top also) for example with a 7 iron (Drivers with tee are no problem). The reason for this is that I am hitting the ground first and then the ball. It should be the other way around. First ball then divot. I am keeping arms straight, hold the lag as long as I can and move the weight to the left a bit. When doing practise swings next to the ball the club hits the ground about 2-3 inch after the ball. This shows me my technique is "correct". As soon as I move the club over the ball I am hitting ground before the ball. So it seems my mind is focussing so much on the ball it is impossible for me to hit the ground after the ball. I practise this extremly slowly with practise balls. But still it does not work. Did anybody have the same problems and are there any exercises or solutions to this? Thanks alot.