kilbyman

What my pro recommended based on my swing and fit me for.

Dipping in the backswing means that you must have some extra lower body action in there. Get it on video to make sure your right leg is straightening on the backswing.

Less lofted club, shorten backswing, you can play the ball more towards your back foot.

Keep the driver and see if you can get a shaft that may work better for you. As others have said (and I have experienced) forgiveness is on hits off center. If it's a swing path issue, and not a center of the clubface contact issue, I don't think any driver will really change that too much.

yes, definitely

So I've been having trouble with fat/thin shots, feeling like I get stuck on my downswing and am not getting my weight shifted through the ball well. I don't know how many times I've tried to put in internet tips that might help for about a bucket of balls, but no more than that. Seeing my actual swing showed me that I was dropping my right shoulder to start the downswing, which was leading to the fat shots (or bailout thin shots). Knowing this, I realized that I collapsed my leg to start the downswing. Hurray, I'm working on keeping by right (back) leg solid on the backswing (straightening) and downswing (keeping it straight until my weight shift naturally causes my leg to kick in). I'm striking the ball better than ever (since about Thursday when this was discovered). Moral of the story, taking a little bit of time to tape your swing and posting it or getting a pro to tape your swing and go over it with you is worth almost a year of trying to get tips on how to stop hitting fat shots.

I know I didn't explicitly state it, but I wanted to talk about the full swing, not short game or course management. Please keep the discussion to that.

What do you think it is, why it's holding us back from shooting good scores, and how to improve in this area.

Yes... I'm quite familiar with the head dipping myself :)

Hands deep is universal.

A major difference I noticed is that your body dips a lot towards the ground on the first video, but you do a good job maintaining your inclination to the ground on the third video. You also look like you are losing your angles early and casting a bit (hands look behind ball at impact based on the pics). But take what I say with a grain of salt, and hopefully someone else posts to agree/disagree.

check my avatar out :)

So this week in my lesson we worked some more on my ball striking. I had mentioned that I had been having some trouble where I felt like I had a good backswing but was unsure about my first movement with my arms in the downswing. Turns out that there are two things plaguing me. First, I compress my body towards the ground sometimes to start the downswing, which causes either a fat shot or a chicken winged bailout into a thin or topped ball. Second, P6 really didn't exist in my swing until my instructor pointed out to me that I was throwing away my angles right after P5 (aka casting). So by teaching me the correct move (straight down from P5, maintaining wrist cock to P6, instead of the early release), I felt for the first time I think what people mean by a "buttery" feel. The longer clubs are still a little bit of an issue, but my instructor told me that it's the exact same problems, just with longer shafts and less loft = just makes the mis-hits stand out even worse. So this week at the range, I will be working on maintaining my inclination to the ground at the start of the backswing and a correct move from P5 to P6.

My putter has a center shaft and an insert?

I posted this in my blog, but I will post it here too. I think I need to do this at least 50x a day.

I'm also a high handicapper and I find that all fairway woods are very hard to hit (as far as a 3W). I'd look for a 5W or 4W. Try the Nike Sumos, they should be at a decent price and are pretty good fairway woods imo.

How do you work to lose the bad habit of turning the right shoulder up and towards the ball after the hips fire, instead of bringing it down and in and keeping the same distance towards the ball? Looking at some video, I've realized that this is the root cause of me going OTT.

I think that's kind of what I'm realizing. Making a fuller shoulder turn helps me to get my hand action down, and prevent spinning out my shoulders.

Flexibility is not the issue here, it's just bad habits I need to break. I can turn past 90 degrees pretty easily.

Found this video Sounds like my problem. I'm going to try this tomorrow at my next practice session.

Today I tried to implement a bigger shoulder turn, and to my delight, this helped a bit with reproducibility. However, I am still fighting that tendency to spin out with the shoulders and hit behind the ball, or compensating for this by bringing my body up at the last minute, only to hit it thin or flat out top it. I need to make sure I am getting my arms in the slot. The OTT shoulder spin gets worse as the club gets longer (or at least, the results get worse). Thankfully, I have a lesson on Thursday, and I am definitely going to talk to the pro about this.

I hit my worse shots when I've only turned my shoulders about 45 degrees and have used my arms to set the club where it normally would be if I would have turned 90 degrees. You guys can guess what results. My problem is not physical limitation, it's just being a hacker without a grooved swing. I want you guys to leave comments about what you think of making a full turn (or being fully stacked if you want to go by that verbage). Doing a google search on full shoulder turn is a mess, so I'd prefer comments from Sand Trappers. I'm also interested in what you guys think a restricted turn can lead to in terms of poor contact.

Hit the practice range. Started off making very poor contact, as I continue to fight being horribly off plane. I realized a big flaw in my swing was a lack of shoulder turn. Maybe only 45 degrees or so. Fixed that and started hitting some good balls. I'm going back to once a week lessons (haven't been able to have one for a month). I still need someone noticing when my flaws creep in. But I also need to nail the basics, like a full shoulder turn, a good take away at a good pace, and a consistent stance and grip.

Yeah, pretty nasty hook.

Good for you for not stooping down to his level! Your group did the right thing here. "If you hurry up we will be quiet." What an absolute child.