talismand

Hmm, tried it with Chrome, Chrome+IETab plugin, Internet Explorer proper, and Firefox, and I don't see the second video either...

Did you mean cnn.com? Got a link? I just tried looking for this, but couldn't find it.

Gill/Erik, this is the only thread I could find that focuses on the "jump" topic(addressed Erik as well since he is the one who started that thread): http://thesandtrap.com/forum/thread/41932/ground-reactive-forces-and-jumping-for-power From Gill's stills of my swing, I'm still certain that I've perverted this concept, so I'm wondering, what's a good middle ground for this idea? I've hit a few balls this morning trying to not dip at all on the backswing/downswing, and the few times I've made decent contact, I get much less distance, and overall the swing feels "wimpy". I know that 99% of that "wimpy" feeling is because I'm getting out of my bad habit comfort zone, and part of the distance discrepancy could also be due to the fact that I'm really trying to limit my backswing as well. Not going to post a video yet, I'd like to work on some of Gills suggestions for a week or so, and post results after that. Just wondering about the thoughts of that jump thread, and what concepts I should really be taking from it. Edit: Also, Walk18, I didn't want you to think I didn't read your relply, thanks for the comments. Getting my arm/club more on the shoulder plane is a must, and I think that the hip sliding should take care of the standing up bit. There's just too much to work on!

A lot of great stuff in here: Quote: Originally Posted by The Gill My friend, you swing like a baseball player. I know your pain as I had the same transition... Address: Buy two of these (you can use clubs too) Use them for alignment in the shape of a "T". Your ball position is too far back. That looks like a wedge to 8 iron. Your stance is way to wide. That is about how wide your driver setup should be. Your swing is throwing you off balance and the wide stance is compensation. If you truly are a former baseball player, you'll be fighting the urge for a wide stance as I still am... Good call on the sports. I'm a recovering participant in the all-American trifecta of baseball, basketball, and football. I didn't realize my stance was too wide. I just kind of choose a width that makes me "comfortable", but as you say, I probably feel uncomfortable with a narrower stance because I end up off balance at the end. If this is too wide, then trust me, you don't want to see my driver stance... Any quick rule of thumb for good widths? Quote: Your left foot needs to be rotated out more. Your right foot is fine. You should try to setup with a more narrow stance and more bowlegged (knees and toes out). Also, the ball needs to come forward. Use clubs or driveway makers as a guide for ball position. I have a yardstick with a perpendicular slide attachment that I can probably use for this. I'll line up my heel on one end, and lock the slide attachment in a position where the ball should be. The attachment is about a foot long, so it shouldn't interfere with my swing path. Do you find that you always keep the ball about two balls inside of your left foot, and then vary your right foot positioning to make that more towards the front or middle of your stance? Or do you keep your stance width more or less constant, and actually move the ball in relation to your left foot? Roger that on rotating the left foot ot more. Quote: Your first move is more down and forward than back. Look how much you come down before the club comes back more than a few inches. Just like wrestling, fielding a grounder, or playing linebacker, footwork is key. You need to stay more centered and balanced. Your left knee should come perpendicular from the target line. Your right shoulder should turn down, but your head and core should stay put. Yep. I've been trying to do this, but it's hard to feel when my head dips on the backswing. When I'm at home, looking in the mirror, I can do practice backswings and my head stays just fine. I'll continue to work on it. Quote: This is where it starts to get rough. Look how far down and forward your head has come. Your hips are already sliding forward (a little too soon) and outpaced your left knee. If you actually slid you hips forward from here you'd fall over. You need to turn around your center and less down. Yikes. This is why it probably feels awkward for me to move my hips laterally on the downswing. Quote: Your left knee is in. It should be bowed out (rotating the left foot out will help a ton) and you've over-rotated your shoulders. I have the same problem... If you can get your hands to the same place, but not let your shoulders turn past 90, you're going to be in a really good place. Take more of a "half swing" Y ou can see you're still moving down with your torso and your hips have already slid forward. Same as before, turn around your center I'll use the thought of more of a half-swing then to try to limit how much my shoulders are turning. Quote: Look at the blue lines I've drawn. The top one is at address, the middle at the top, and halfway down at the bottom. The inside red lines are your hips at address. You really haven't slid you hips forward. You're so far down right now, you're going to have to manipulate the club or stand up ... If you don't you're going to hit it REAL fat. This is the reason you feel more comfortable with the ball back in the stance. Your torso being so low with your weight not moving forward from here is why you're inconsistent. You have to do a lot of things to be able even put the club on the ball... Look what happens at impact. In a fraction of a second you're back to where your head was at address! Pretty athletic move to do that... The blue lines represent you at address, and you from the previous picture. Also look how little your hips have slid forward (left red line is you at address). Your hips should be out over a bent left knee, and your head should be in the same place, leaving you with a torso that's slanted backwards. Nice thoughts here. I think this demonstrates the danger of learning a pattern on your own, without getting feedback or instruction. When reading the S&T; book and posts on the forum, I keep hearing about the need to "jump" off of the front leg, as that's the power move for the S&T; pattern. I guess in reality I have literally built my swing around the idea of the jump, with everything done up to this point lending itself to that (over-loading on my left side, dipping way down for a huge jump). Are there any threads here that really get into the jump concept properly? Or should I shelve this part of the swing until I get the rest in order? Quote: Last is the most telling result: you're so off-balance you have to step out. Be able to hold your finish until the ball lands. Summary Left foot rotated out Narrow your stance Feel a bit "bowlegged" in your left knee throughout your back swing Keep your head level Turn your shoulders to 90 degrees, but not past SLIDE your hips forward in the down swing Here are some videos to help with the head and the hips: I'll start working on these this week. Thanks for the effort you put into that post, that was really helpful/eye-opening.

^^^ Those two videos are great. I really struggle with my driver using S&T;, to the point that I leave it at home more often than not, and tee off with my 3 hybrid. For sure my driver videos look nothing like those, and considering we're both working on the same pattern, that's sad (for me!). I'll be keeping this thread bookmarked.

The front loading was a huge eye-opener for me when I finally video taped my swing. It didn't feel that drastic at all, but the camera doesn't lie. In my second range session I was consciously trying to get more toward the 60-40/55-45 split the S&T; book recommends, along with less side tilt. This will give me more room to shift weight forward on the downswing. I still think I probably shift too much weight too early in the downswing, or I overcompensate and shift almost nothing. I just can't seem to find the right timing/feeling.

I assume you meant left arm in the comment about it needing to be more in line with the white line, and if so, I agree. I have to admit this is a problem I'm struggling with though. If you look at the swings in my first post, I feel my arm positioning was much better, but in order to get there I either turn my shoulders too flat, or (as can be seen on the face-on view), I loaded too much on my left side, and over rotated on the back swing. In my second range session, when I try turing my shoulders more steeply, I find it very difficult to get my arms back onto that line, without artificially lifting in the backswing. It feels like the Stack-and-tilt steps of shoudler down, hands in, arms connected to body always produce the lowered left arm for me at the top of my backswing. Any other S&Ters; out there struggle with this? And if not, how do you manage to do it? The ball placement is actually pretty much where you suggest. I mentioned it in my second post (right before the very last video) that I'm still trying to figure out how to correctly frame my video taping, so the camera is actually at a slight angle, making the ball appear further back than it was. For the face-on shots, in reality the ball was in the middle of my stance, or 1 ball forward of that (from my perspective). But it's definately something I should continue to pay attention to, because sometimes "feel" like its too far and that probably makes me release my hinge too early in an attempt to compensate. Thanks for the comments!

I have to agree with 1 - 3. I assume that with #3, you meant straight as in "on your line". I think that 4 isn't really a "fundamental", it's a necessity, but without the first 3, it's useless (ok, not useles, but I think you get what I'm saying). We've seen all types of stances, grips, tempos, putter types, etc on tour, and they seem to make it work, so those things can't really be considered fundamentals. It's big picture stuff like the above.

Ok, so I'll take the lack of comments as a "you should stick to tennis", haha. Two things I saw right off the bat that I could start working on immediately was standing up more and tilting less in the backswing (I looked like the "D" picture from the S&T; book in the section where they describe levels of side tilt in the backswing), so I wanted to start working on being more centered. The other thing was didn't like the position of the club at the top of my backswing. It looked like either my wrists were overhinged, or I had turned too much. Either way, it looked nothing like any of the example pictures. I spent the week at home working on those two things, and made it out to the range today to see how it looked while hitting actual balls. It ended up being one of my worst range session ever. I hit just about every type of fault shot imaginable, with one a few "good" ones. Below are two of my "good" shots, one from DTL and one face on. Any and all comments are welcome. I really need some feedback or guidance though, as it's starting to get really frustrating trying to figure out why I can't hit a nice push draw with any consistency. Also, since I believe in the notion that the same faults in a swing can lead to all types of misses, here are two videos with several swings from today's session in succession. I figure that seeing many of my swings back to back like this can help someone see a fault pattern quickly. The resulting shot shape is described at the top of each swing. If anyone wants to see a particular swing in a separate video, I can do that as well. Also, if this is something that's frowned upon here, I won't post more videos like this (I'll stick to single swings). One thing, I'm still working out the kinks on how to align the camera just right for these videos, so the face-on ones ended up at a slight angle. It makes the ball appear further back in my stance than it was. For these shots, the ball was either in the middle of my stance, or one ball forward from that (from my perspective).

Definitely! I use the mirrors when practicing in the house, where I can't get a good camera angle. Plus the immediate/real-time feedback is excellent.

Hello all. I'm a recent convert to this wonderful game we call golf, started about a year and a half ago now. I don't really get the chance to play/practice as much as I'd like, but I try to go play a round at least twice a month, and I try to swing a club at least once a day (indoors, with soft foam balls). Anyway, I haven't really had formal instruction for any extended period of time (I took 4 half-hour lessons maybe a year ago), so I mostly try to learn via youtube, forums, books, and friends. Not the most efficient way, I know. I would like to say that I'm trying to do a S&T; swing, although the S&T; folks here will probably ask me not to tell anyone that after seeing these videos ;-) I have the book, and bought the DVDs from ebay, and have been using those in conjunction with Youtube/golf forums to try to learn. My main problem on the course is hitting it fat (or thin, but I'm pretty sure the same errors cause both), and it seems to get worse the more I try to put my weight on the front (left) foot. My main miss is a straight push, with a good amount of push slices mixed in. I tend to get around a golf course by aiming my stance about as far left as I'm willing to let the ball go, on the off chance I hit it straight, or a push draw, but I'm playing for the push/push-fade for the most part. I've been meaning to post videos of my swing, but didn't have the time or equipment. I finally had both, and it was a nice day last Saturday, and I managed to record my range session. I'm going to post a series of swings with my 4 hybrid which I feel were representative for my entire session. There's a straight shot, a worm burner, a push and a push/slice. I have two DTL and 2 Face-on. This was my first time with this camera, so the framing is all out of whack (future videos will be better), and I recorded with the camera on the wrong orientation requiring me to rotate the video, hence the excessive black space. I don't have a good enough video editing program to crop these and fix them. I'll try better framing for any updates. Any and all comments are welcome. I know that there is probably a lot of things I need to fix, but I'd really like to hear the biggest flaws that I need to work on first, so that I have something to concentrate on so I can improve incrementally instead of trying to fix 10 things at once.

Actually, switching from the Rich Text editor to BB Text editor in your profile fixes up this issue.

Tapatalk is a VB forum browser, so I don't see that happening. One issue, that I just noticed while typing this response: I'm on Chrome, and like it usually does, Chrome highlights misspelled words, and a right-click usually brings up spelling correction options, however it looks like the text editor used here to compose responses takes over the right-click options.

Damn shame Tiger couldn't pull it out, but Gmac is such a good guy you can't hate Jim for pulling it out. Those clutch putts were vintage Tiger. I wonder what Woods felt being on the other side of them.

What tees do you play from? If you are finding that your second shots keep requiring you to pull our your 4-hy, maybe you should play from 1 tee up until your technique/results get better. I play from the whites 90% of the time right now for this reason. I'm just a year into golf and my scores have started dropping once I conceded this point. Like others above me have mentioned, shots off the tee are my biggest problem. Too many OOBs/lost balls/work burners, etc. Playing up allows me to use less club and stay alive a little easier.

I have a quick question about pressing the handle of a club forward during setup. There are two ways to do this, one is to rotate the club clockwise (as if there was a spike through the top of the club head directly through to the ground), which opens the face. The other way is pressing the handle forward by de-lofting the club (as if there were an immovable weight on the ground on the long edge of the club head). So which method is prescribed for S&T;? I can see both beng useful depending on the shot you are trying to hit, but which one is preferred for the "stock" shot pattern?

Wait, so because the guy couldn't instantly and perfectly apply a (somewhat) big swing change in a couple of days, on his own, that means that he was really just trying to ignore the advice? If he's not applying the advice correctly, just say so. That's the point of these types of threads. You post a swing, someone critiques it and gives advice, you then try to apply that advice as you understood it, post an updated swing to see if you're on the right track. Seems like exactly what MC's been doing here....

While its true that Nike bought them, they are NOT the same quality (not that I expected them to be). I bought a pair of Nike's from a Nike Outlet store for like $25 and they are much better quality than the Starter ones. That being said, Starter ones are only $10 and available at Walmart, and while they aren't as nice, they get the job done. Long story short, I like the Nike one the best, but I only bought one of those, and 5 Starter ones Its all about bang for your buck

Yes, I will concede that this is a legitimate possibility. Ok, the soles are 1.5" and I have 1/2" inserts (it's a running setup, I have bad ankles/shins and it helps). So in essence I should go back with shoes closer to my playing shoes? Just to make sure I'm on the right track though, standing taller WOULD translate to getting fit for more upright clubs (assuming standard length clubs) correct? Considering the difference in my results, I would have to think that this is the case. Maybe the best thing would be to get fit two more times, 1 month apart, giving me time to practice more in between, and if the fittings remain fairly consistent then I know its correct.

So I have a question about how S&T; changes the angle of approach to the ball. Before I started dabbling in S&T;, I was focused on the Jim Hardy 1-plane swing. When I would hit my irons on a lie board with some impact tape, I usually found my stock irons to be too upright (1~2 degrees). This made sense to me since most static fittings for my measurables indicated that I should look towards irons that are flatter than standard. Well, since I switched to S&T;, I've been hitting the ball well enough to focus completely on this method. I've smashed all my previous bests (which were admittedly terrible) in any ball-striking type of statistic, etc. Since I'm becoming more and more comfortable with this method, I've decided its time to graduate from my Top Flite box garage-sale set (which was actually pretty nice) to some more "professional" clubs, Ping G15s. I've been hitting all kinds of clubs at the PGA Tour superstore, and I just like the way these feel the best. Anyway, I'm rambling, the point of my post is that I decided to get a real Ping fitting today, and I was fitted for Yellow dots (+1.5 degree). This was a complete shock to me since my static fittings had me at red dots (-0.75), and as I said before, my last lie board session had me needing flatter irons. So how much of this change is due to S&T;? Seeing as how S&T; appears to be a variation of a one-plane swing, I would have thought that the fitting would point me to flatter irons as well. It makes me think that maybe I need to work more on S&T; before trying to upgrade my irons, since I'd hate to get these, then figure out a swing flaw and suddenly my irons are 4-degrees too upright. My typical miss with S&T; is a straight push right, about 10~15 yards right of my target, with the occasional nasty hook thrown in (usually when I try to play for the push by lining up left of my target, and end up hooking it 30 yards left of my aim point!). The only other thing that was different were my shoes. Previously I was measured on grass at a range, with soft spikes, and 1/2" soles on my shoes. Whereas today it was indoors with sneakers with 2" soles. Would that have made a difference? I could imagine that standing taller might make me need a more upright club, but I'd like to hear someone else's opinion...

I bought a set of Top Flites about a year ago at a garage sale when I first decided to take up golf. If you're determined to go this route with a beginners box set, then I highly recommend them to learn on. mine are XL5000s, but I'm sure the 7000s are equivalent. I've put mine through the equivalent of a war zone, and they've held up just fine. They have plenty of distance and forgiveness as well, especially for a beginner. Here are some of my average distances with these clubs: PW - 135 8 - 155 7 - 170 4-hy - 200 Which is more than enough to handle typical courses at a reasonable tee box. But I will say that the driver, 3-wood, and putter are garbage. I replaced those within the first 2 months with some decent used clubs from a local golf shop. If you can find this set used, go for it, otherwise, it might not be worth the brand new asking price if you're going to hate 3 clubs from the set, right off the bat.

I wish I had your "problem". I've been looking for a good set of used G15s and I have a GolfSmith and a PGA Superstore near my place, and both have had lefty G15 sets for a while, just collecting dust. The righty sets usually get scooped up within the first day or two, unless they have weird configurations (maroon dot +2" senior flex or something crazy like that)

If tour pros can game G15s, you'll be able to as well. Plus, the GI aspect will allow you to enjoy the game more as you improve your swing. And as a previous poster said, you will most likely recoup a good portion of your purchase price back when (if?) you decide to move on.

Because (for me at least, and probably others), my "free time" usually isn't enough for a round of golf. During the week I might get a couple of days free, where I have maybe 1.5 hours MAX, so I tend to head out to the range, just to keep working on grooving my swing, and whatever short game I can stand before the mosquitoes emerge. I do try to play when I get the time though, but it's just not as often as I would like. Granted, if I won the lottery and didn't have work or other obligations, I'd probably be spending more time actually playing though.

When you're just trying to have fun without counting strokes and there is a diverse group of players (talent-wise) then scrambles are by far the best. Very relaxing, yet still good competition, and everyone has fun since chances are SOMEONE from your team hits a good shot, and if not, well, misery loves company :)