HitemHard

No doubt he had a great round (after a crap round) but that does not put him in contention when he's 7 back. I can't stand undeserved rahrah fanboy noise from the announcers. It just bugs me.

Ok, here's a perfect example of what I HATE about the announcers "worship" of certain players. Just now at the Player's Championship Justin Thomas makes a 15 foot put and the announcer says "now he goes from trying to make the cut to being in contention!" JT MADE THE PUTT TO GO TO 2 UNDER WHILE THE LEADERS ARE AT 11 UNDER! HOW THE HECK DOES THAT PUT HIM IN CONTENTION!!! Ok...rant over...sorry about that!

Have you made an assessment of your body dynamics and strength. I watch a lot of the myTPI videos and they are always analyzing upper body strength, core strength and lower body strength as well as mobility. Then they see if the player's swing utilizes their body strengths. They also talk about muscle strength and muscle speed and how they are not the same. So if you move your muscles fast enough you need to work on strength whereas if you're strong enough but your muscles don't move fast enough you need to concentrate on speed. Mobility, strength and speed is where i would start analyzing myself. If you are experiencing back pain with speed training however I would suggest you may have a technique issue that needs to be addressed first before you really hurt yourself.

I just returned from a trip to Page Arizona for a photography trip I've been wanting to do for a few years now. It was a much needed break for me. The Antelope Canyons have intrigued me for years and I finally got to experience them for myself. They were beautiful in person but I was amazed at how the camera and post processing captured the colors in a way the eyes don't see them. Here's one of the images I took at the Lower canyons.

I watch a lot of mytpi. Some of the best instruction on youtube imo. It amazes me how many pros struggle with early extension. I thought that was a problem reserved for us amateurs and hacks! Lol myTPI has helped me assess and address my mobility and strength issues as well as my release and early extension. I love this level of detail...I feed on it!!

Personally, I can't stand the announcers bias to some players over others. One player hits it to 8 feet and it's "What a spectacular shot from Scotty Scheffler"! Then somebody else...not a favorite... hits a shot to 4 feet and they say something like "well he needs a few more of those if wants a chance on the weekend". Azinger was the worst at gushing over his favorites but now it's every announcer.

Club choice is made after looking at the lie so for that reason alone it could be any club in the bag. Have to fly it high and land it soft then that eliminates a lot of the clubs. Is the pin on the front, at the back, is the green elevated, flat, undulating, are you on hard-pan, tour quality turf, wet, bone dry...many different situations call for many different shots with many different clubs.

Was it played as "par's your friend" and were "mulligans" bought or given to each team? Seems the only way I could half way believe the score with all four of them being 20+ handicaps. I enjoy charity scrambles for the social aspects of it but I never go into them expecting to win. There's always that one team who seem to turn their cards in last and either win by one stroke or some team that remarkably shoots the best golf of their combined lives scoring 52's or better! Two man scrambles are much better as it keeps people honest IMO. "Par's your friend" is always a horrible way to play the game. Mulligans are great to sell for charitable purposes but unrestricted amounts make it so that someone can just "buy" the win...in some cases...but are great for the charity of course. In the end, scrambles are just for fun and shouldn't be taken too seriously.

I'm a big Hogan fan. I've read and re-read five lessons dozens of times. Given away a dozen or more copies of the book as well. I've always felt the best way to figure out what you can't quite understand is to take another bit of his advice; dig it out of the dirt. Go out to the range and say to yourself, how can I hit hard with both hands and not think about my hands at all? You may find that what I describe for me in my swing may be different from how you describe it in yours yet we both can be correct. That's where "feel" comes in. My "feel" is connected to a certain number of triggers or positions where yours may be different. So in my mind... my interpretation of Hogan's instruction is this: You must understand the manner in which your hands, wrists and forearms need to move through impact. By knowing how they need to move through impact you can put them in the correct position at the top of the backswing that will allow them to move that way naturally in the quarter of a second that is the downswing...without trying to think about what position they are in. Now to "hit hard with both hands"...again, my interpretation...is less about the hands and more about activating the muscles of both arms. You can imagine that you could let the rotation of the body simply pull your left arm down while your right arm uses all it's muscles to "throw" the angles out into the ball, can't you? Conversely, you can imagine pulling hard with your left arm down towards the ball and let your right arm straighten out kind of by itself, right? I think what it felt like to Hogan was that he was doing both. I know different people that feel one of these three things in their swing. Each will swear that their way is correct and the other ways will wreck your swing. I knew one guy that used to feel like he pulled through with his left if he wanted a fade but threw hard with his right if he wanted a draw. That's why it's so hard to give general instruction. What works for you may not work for someone else. What's correct? What feels correct in your swing is what is correct for you. If it produces the repeatable shot shape that you want then it works with the rest of your swing. Change some other part of your swing and you may have to tweak the feels. I hope this makes sense and helps in some way.

I might describe "engaging the legs at setup" a little differently. I'd say to bend at the ankle a bit more to get the knees more towards the balls of the feet. It actually looks better in your old set-up and wouldn't be the cause of a sway. A sway is when...well it's when you do in the backswing what you are currently doing with your knees/legs in the downswing. When your knees move laterally away from the ball it will cause you to move your center of rotation...your spine... back behind the ball and make it almost impossible to get back to the ball in the downswing. As for your knee action in the downswing, that's causing you to get no benefit of the ground forces and wasting a lot of potential for speed through impact. How should the knees work? Think about jumping straight up with your feet close together. Your ankles bend forward, your knees bend and you push straight up through your pelvis and body. Now stand with your legs apart like in the golf set-up and think about if you wanted to jump to the left. You would still bend both legs the same way but you would push up through your right leg harder than your left and again, you would push up the leg into the pelvis. Now do the same jump to the right. More push up the left leg into the pelvis than with the right. That's what your left leg needs to do through the downswing to use the ground forces. Your left leg will push your left pelvis back and behind you as you come into impact instead of straightening after impact. I hope that makes sense.

Your concept of the swing is off. Think of it this way. The club travels in a circle around your spine. The larger the circle the more speed you can achieve. So how do you make the circle bigger? By pulling your hands into the spine or by pushing them away from the spine? What will this fix in your swing? Your collapsed right arm and bent left arm. So, from the beginning of the backswing I would have you feel like both your right arm and left arm are pushing away from your body. Your right arm is collapsing...your right bicep is contracting...feel your right bicep extending as you take the club back. While you're doing this make sure that your right elbow stays pointing to the ground...that is external rotation of the humerus. Think of it as if you are losing an arm wrestling match. The right forearm and right hand rotate behind the elbow. On the downswing you have to maintain the external rotation of the humerus. You have to continue the feeling of losing the arm wresting match while pulling the right elbow around the body. Right now you are slamming you opponents arm to the table with internal rotation which is partly causing your pull. Your left arm isn't externally rotating either...it must...and it should push out away from the spine through the swing as well. Everything you are doing is shrinking your swing circle instead of expanding it. Your set-up will have to change obviously as currently you have the ball positioned where you will hit it only if you pull in and not if you push out. There's more but that should be a good place to start.

If your swing is repeatable and give you the distance and ball flight you like and you can score well with it...well...there's absolutely no reason to think you need to change it! Now do I think your swing is the prettiest in the world? No, I don't but I don't like Matt Wolfe's steep take away or Scotty Scheffler's footwork either! Will all 3 of you score better than me day in day out? Probably so!!! All that being said, if you wanted to change anything it looks like your backswing is what looks off while the downswing mostly looks fine. I would suggest trying to implement small changes and not overhaul everything all at once. Two areas I see would be keeping your left arm straight and turning your upper body earlier in the backswing. To straighten the left arm you actually need to think about the right arm. From the beginning of the backswing try to feel both right and left arm pushing the club out away from you. Your right arm does not need to collapse to less than 90 degree angle and in fact should be greater than a 90 degree angle. The more it collapses, the more you will bend your left arm. What causes it to collapse? Either you are pulling in with your right arm contracting your bicep or you are pulling your right shoulder blade back into the center of your back too aggressively. You will need to figure out which you are doing and how much is good and how much is too much. It's difficult to push away with your right bicep AND pull your shoulder blade aggresively across your back so addressing the arm may fix the shoulderblade. Turning the upper body should be an easier fix and may be easy to accomplish with simply thinking about it in different terms. Everybody refers to it as a "shoulder turn". I'd have you think about it as a "chest turn" or even "turning the entire rib cage" in the backswing. The point of it is to make sure your sternum...the center of your chest...is turning back away from the target. Those are the two big areas of your backswing that make your swing look less aesthetically pleasing than others. I hope this helps some!

I am loyal to the same ball for as long as the model is current. If they change the specs of the ball, I'll give some other balls a try and decide from the results. I'm in the process of switching out of the ProV1x into the ProV1 in an attempt to reduce spin off my driver. I've played many different brands over the years but stay with a single ball for as long as possible during a season or two. I also commit to chipping and putting only with my gamer as well. It's not just a feel thing but to learn how the ball reacts from different lies and different shots.

I'm not an "official" instructor but I've been helping people for a few years now. I find that most beginners never get taught a proper concept of how the swing works. I also find that most people need a better understanding of what the arms and hands do before even working on the grip or the rest of the body. This is because what your concept of how the arms work through the downswing will dictate how strong or weak your grip must be. And if your arms work correctly then you can get away with a lot of variation in the lower body and still hit the ball decently. This will be long by the way... now...I get technical because...well...if you're writing it, you have to make it understandable. So let's understand the swing structure of the left or lead arm. The clubhead is controlled by the left hand, the left hand is controlled by the left wrist which is made up of the two bones of the forearm; the ulna closest to the pinky finger and the radius closest to the thumb. The forearm is attached to but can work independently of the humorous or upper arm which ends at the shoulder joint. That's the structure you are working with. Now how each section of that structure can work in different ways so let's talk about them starting at the upper arm. You may have heard people use the term "external shoulder rotation." It's usually used in reference to the right arm but that's okay you need to understand it in the left arm as well. First off...that's not a correct term. The shoulder is a complex structure of three bones; the clavicle in the upper chest/neck area, the scapula or shoulder blade that glides across the back and the end of the humorous bone that is the upper arm. So when you hear that term what they really are saying is "external rotation of the humerus." A simple way to understand this is to think about arm wrestling. If you are arm wresting someone with your elbow on a table you are trying to force your opponents arm into external rotation while your upper arm would be internally rotating. If you are losing the wrestling match you will find that while your elbow stays in place, your forearm and hand will be pushed back behind the elbow as your humerus externally rotates. So in the golf swing we don't want to be the winner of the arm wrestling match... at any point in time! Both upper arms need to externally rotate. The right upper arm externally rotates in the backswing and stays in that position through impact or for some people just before but very close to impact. The left arm must externally rotate in the downswing from impact through the finish. Some people choose to set-up with both upper arms externally rotated...think elbows pointed at the hips or biceps up. Others will start with just the right arm in this position...some people describe it as the "giving blood" position. Others start with both elbows internally rotated...biceps facing inward toward each other. You can set-up whichever way feels best to you but in your backswing and downswing the upper arms MUST externally rotate. Now back to the left arm...with which you should try to control the swing...and the forearm. The forearm is where most people get in trouble because it can rotate left or right no matter which orientation your upper arm is in...try it...it's just how the forearm is structured to work. And this is where you MUST make the decision as to how you want the forearms to work in order to choose how strong or weak your grip must be. Ben Hogan in his book 5 Lessons uses the terms supination and pronation. To illustrate it simply grab a club in your left hand and hold it out in front of you. Rotate your forearm to where your knuckles point to the sky (this is pronation) and then rotate your forearm the other way so that your knuckles point to the ground (this is supination). When your lead forearm is in pronation (knuckles up) the ulna will be on the left side of the radius. In supination (knuckles down the ulna rotates under the radius and the radius is now on the left side of the ulna. Very important that you relate this to the position of the ulna. At the top of the backswing you should be in a position where you feel that the knuckles of the left hand are pointed to the sky. As you rotate your body open and your chest pulls your arms down and into impact you will need to be aware that your ulna stays on the left side of the radius as long as possible. This is the position instructors are trying to have you achieve by pulling the butt of the club into an invisible wall past your left leg while maintaining the 90 degree angle formed by the shaft and your forearm. You've probably seen or heard of that drill as we all have over the years. Now here is the IMPORTANT part that no one seems to ever speak of...what happens from there!?! From that position...ulna on the left side of the radius, shaft and the forearm at a 90 degree angle, hands directly over the ball...you have two choices. 1) You can keep the ulna traveling toward the target on the left side of the radius and only release (unhinge) the wrists to lower the clubhead down into the ball or 2) while you unhinge your left wrist you can rotate your left forearm from the pronated position (knuckles up) to the supinated position (knuckles down) and let the ulna rotate under and eventually to the right side of the radius. If you choose to release the club with method 1 you will need a strong grip. The clubface will stay stable and square to the target throughout the swing but you probably will lose distance and have a very spinny ball flight. If you choose to release the club with method 2 you will probably require a much weaker grip as the clubhead will be less stable as it closes down coming into impact. This method requires more timing but results in more power through impact and usually more distance. You may also hook the ball if you start with too strong of a grip or a closed clubface at address. Method 2 is what most pros use but not all. Method 1 is what causes most people to hit weak, spinny slices and requires an unusually strong grip because with method 1 the left forearm has a tendency to open more coming into impact where the ulna stays in front of the radius too long. Here's the catch...you need to learn both releases. Release 1 is how you want to use your wedges when you want to make sure the bounce interacts with the turf or if you need to hit a cut from left to right around a tree. You'll get more height and more spin with release 1. Release 2 will let the leading edge tear through the turf taking a nice crisp divot and can be used to hook a ball from right to left. Congratulations to anyone that read through all of this! I believe that once your brain understands precisely how it needs to control the different parts of your body it can do it repetitively on command. Your swing will repeat and not fall apart from day to day. Learn how you want to use your forearms and you can choose your grip and clubface position at address. Either method will work and both methods are used by the best players in the world for different shots.