tickbomb

Swing update. Swing has been good. I don't really mess with it anymore. It's gotten to a pretty good place. Mostly focusing on body movement. Miss has always been a heel strike, so I spent a lot of time working on the trail leg and foot to keep me away from the ball through the downswing. To be specific, I changed how I used the trail foot. I used to use it to create hip rotation through the hamstring, but now I do the complete opposite. I push almost back away from the ball into the inside heel of my trail foot, almost like a 45 degree back/forward, with the lead foot pushing more so straight back. Skill development. When I hit a bad shot, I used to think about my swing, but now I know that pretty much all my bad shots were just impact location. I'm pretty sure those bad shots are preventable through more consistent ball position and just skill development AKA adam young, really around strike. I created what I call the leaf drill. I put a leaf on the mat with the grain parallel and start with my club centered on the outward portion of the leaf. Then I try to hit the inside portion of the leaf. I still don't have a net, but the drill gets me a sensation of not letting the hands go out. Then I can review where I hit the leaf on video. Seems to be working well on the range and course. Next steps. On days where I make great contact, even just for half the holes, I'm not surprised anymore to make 3-4+ birdies in a round. Putting has been excellent, so birdies will happen. It's all about continuing to eliminate the bad shots. So we are going to continue to work on a consistent strike on the fall and over this winter.

Been a good summer. Lots of score in the 70's and that 66 that I will never be able to recover from. Still progressing my swing. I went through a long long focus on driver. I really swung it different that my irons and fairways. Always prioritizing speed. But it was always sketchy. A little mistake and I was way out of position. So I moved towards unifying my swings, focusing on setup (body alignment, ball position). That has made a great difference in consistency and scoring. Specifically on the swing, I've been keeping the takeaway more in front of me, getting the hands down in transition, and really getting the lead hip back through impact. I broke my net, so I've been hitting leaves, but on the course I've been focused on one or two of these feels to grove it in.

Honestly, I stopped going to the range and only really work on my swing in my backyard, no ball. Just focusing on setup and sequencing. Then I go to a short course and practice those feelings. Then play the long course when I get the time. I also started using a heavy rope to get the ground forces feelings, especially for driver: Setup: Really try to get the hips more over my ankles. Hands - Trying to get them more away from my body to give me more room to rotate. Swing - I really just focus on getting the arms down first, My current miss is a pull left when I don't get the arms and hands down. Driver - Feeling is Cast as hard as I can from the top while squatting. Then I use the left side to push up while trying to swing the club left as hard as I can.

Don't know how this happened....

A lot of balls later and a broken shaft. Pelvis more inward, front foot more flared to give me more flexibility to turn.

Things I am working on: Staying centred in the backswing. Takeaway - I'm working on getting some wrist set to get it less inside. This feels really high from where I was. This session my coach and I spent a lot of time trying to turn left through the ball so my club finishes more on plane. I have a tendency to fall back and I really had to exaggerate almost like my head was falling to the screen on the follow through to even get here: After focusing on these things, we decided that would be enough big changes for the season because every time a make a change, I have to adapt ball striking wise. I'm just ready to play golf. So my practice will shift to a focus on tempo and target/distance control.

Was in mexico. After a couple rounds getting used to playing in real life again, I played to a 6-7 cap for the week, which is a good start to the year. Course was really hard. The wind was really strong, however it was the same direction every day. Back working with my coach neutralizing my path. Mostly a pivot/shoulder turn issue. Last year: Working on keeping more centered around the ball: Definitely reduces the pushes and seems to help with face control. Still have to figure out what to do with my legs and hips. Feel like I am keeping all my weight on my left side in the backswing by bending my front knee and my trail leg gets more straight with lots of tension. It's resulting in much better impact and flight. But not sure I'm exactly doing it correct. I know there are lots of youtube videos on hips, back extension, etc on turning more pure. I get the sense there is a component of flexibility that dictates how pure you can turn, maybe I'm wrong. So still trying to figure it completely out.

Here is my swing in Sept 2022: A million things wrong with it. Setup looks awkward, probably too much weight on my heels, not really over the ball enough. Take away is really awkward, arms/elbows are really far apart. Rotation wise, head rotates with the body. Probably too much depth in the hands. At the top, I get across the line. Downswing and transition isn't the worst thing on the planet, but I definitely don't get back to an optimal plane (steep). Winter 2022-2023: So I really focused on the take away and keeping the arms together. The face is super closed face at the top. Ya my back swing is inside, but it's mostly because I go from a cupped wrist at setup to flat/flexion and have zero wrist hinge. The backswing is very stiff. Transition, I don't lower the arms and mostly swing at the ball from the top. So it's going to be steepish every time. I was hitting it well like this, but had to do a lot of right side bend (for me), which put a lot of pressure on my trail hip. So swinging with a steep transition, with trail side bend to compensate was just not going to be a good long term solution. 2023 A ton of experimentation. Keep searching for improvements. It was a roller coaster. Last year I peaked in the high 70's and shot 9's at ~37-39. But then I would get the hooks and shoot high 80's or even 90's. There is nothing more demoralizing. Anyway, the solution to the hooks was always getting my hands high and getting back steep. Wrist less flat: But not really how I want to swing, but I made it work. Winter 2023-2024 Started seeing my winter swing coach again on a trackman. Really, we worked on getting past my fear of left. Part psychological, part data driven. My swing, is typically always 3+ degrees in to out. Doesn't matter how steep I am, my swing arc is always hitting the ball at the point where it's going right. Face control-wise, I have a very strong grip, flatten the wrist in the takeaway and get to some flexion through impact. That combination makes it very hard to have the face open at impact. Basically impossible. So let's say I have a 7 iron, if I swing 4 to the right and have a 1 degree closed face, that's overdrawing left every time. So my choice was either to weaken my grip to have an open face to hit push draws, open my stance to move the path left and hit a pull fade, or reduce flexion. I chose to weaken my grip. Other things we worked on were flattening my swing so I don't get across the line, keep my trail arm more connected, decreasing the length of my backswing, keeping posture through the backswing so my head doesn't lift up. Here is the progress: You can see the tracers in the top right when I actually keep the face open and the ones that go left for an overdraw. So that's basically where I'm at. For driver, I decided to play a fade with an open stance as I find it very hard to swing driver with a super weak grip. Just have to get a ton of reps to close in the dispersion a bit and get comfortable with that setup:

I deleted some a while back for some reason, I guess I forgot they were linked here. Maybe I'll upload my progression and do an update to all the things that got me to where I am.

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Progression. Still trying to figure out hips and legs through impact. I feel like it's the next puzzle piece.

Honourable mention.

You are still rolling the club. At this point the club should still be in front of your chest: Look at your hands and club position vs homa: Your hands are still in front of your chest, but your club is behind you. The take away and back swing are about syncing the body turn, arms, and club so everything stays in front of your chest. If things get unsync'ed then you have to resync things later which is impossible. Keeping the arms, hands, and club connected to your body is important. That's partially why you have a ton of down stream swing issues causing you to throw your arms at the ball in an attempt for the club to catch up etc. Practice in a mirror every day for 2 months keeping the arms, club, and body connected in rotation.

I started off playing the Kirkland balls this year. I haven't seen scuffing any different than any other tour ball. But I usually start with a new ball every round and retire the used ball to the practice pile. I've gone through maybe two dozen balls, losing some and retiring some. But last round I played a TP5 and now seriously having second thoughts on the Kirkland ball. I think the Kirk's perform well in a simulator but in real life they just don't fly as far, launch lower, and have too much spin on the driver (for me). Sure you can spin the crap out of them with a wedge. But there must be a difference in the aerodynamics. With the TP5 I was hitting my drives 10 to 20+ yards further on average and much higher launch (hole by hole vs last time I played the same course). But that was just one round so who knows (e.g. temperature, wind, fairway firmness, etc). But definitely a difference off the driver. 5 wood carry was 15 yards further. You can look at data on MyGolfSpy at the differences: https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/golfspy.t/viz/MyGolfSpy2021GolfBallTest/2021GolfBallData But do they do these tests by actually hitting balls into a real range and measuring where they land? I doubt it. Simulator tests assume an aero profile given the launch and spin. So is kirkland a good value, absolutely especially if you lose balls every round. But is there something left on the table? Probably. Maybe not 20 yards of driver, but my gut says it's not exactly optimal for me. So i got a box of TP5's and am going to test out the difference next couple rounds.

I would say is that when the club gets too inside on the take away, what it means for me is that I'm getting the club ahead of my body rotation. You generally want your arms, hands and the club to stay in front of your body or "connected" to your body turn. The arms, hands, and club, don't really rotate independently from your body's turn. See how Max Homa keeps the club way more in front of him. Next, we don't have a side view, but you are definitely coming off the ball and hanging back through your swing. Your downswing pivot and turn needs a lot of work. You're getting stuck, extending, etc, a lot is because you're not pivoting properly and rotating properly in the downswing. Porzak describes how to do a better take away here: Porzak caters to more of a lower handicap audience, but I like some of his explanations. If I were in your situation, and I had a lot of this stuff last year, I would start working on the takeaway, then the rest of the backswing. Focused on keeping the arms connected to the front of the body and not swaying off the ball. Without eliminating sway off the ball, it's impossible to eliminate fat/thin shots, have good rotation through the ball, and be consistent. For me swaying leads to hooks/pushes and all other kids of issues.