Excessive head rotation: cause of poor impact?

Help me improve my impact! I'm a 4 index and manage to get my ball around the course OK, but weak scoopy strikes are holding me back. I seem to make it work with timing and hand/eye, but every day is a bit of an adventure.

My admittedly amateur opinion is that my hands have to get more forward at impact, but not sure how to accomplish that. Feels like there's something I'm missing that's keeping me from solving the puzzle. My best guess is that at the top of the BS, my hands get too deep and behind my pivot and there's just no way to catch the hands back up. In the video, you can clearly see my head rotates pretty far off the ball-- is that a cause or a symptom? Would love to hear your informed opinions.

When I'm swinging poorly, I tend to be outside-in and hit spinny pull fades. Another somewhat common miss is to hit the ball just a liiiittle bit fat...not a total lay-the-sod-over-it chunk, but the low point of my swing is just too far back and I'm adding loft to the club.

8 iron Face On (don't have a DTL at the moment, but if any of you experts out there are curious, I'll shoot one and update later):

Lack of spine extension in backswing causing upper body lateral shift Get right shoulder over left leg at top of backswing - you won’t but the intent causes one to extend the upper spine. Might feel like you are doing stack and tilt

Flat shoulder turn, excessive right knee straightening and right hip rotation. Looks like everything is over rotating in back swing.

Part of the flat turn is caused by your hip action IMO. Left knee kicks in too far so hips turn flat. Right hip needs to work up and back towards the target while left knee loses flex and points towards left toes. (speaking from experience, my lower body used to look very similar)

Good suggestions, thanks everyone. @crapula I totally agree that I'm way over-rotated and flat. I've always had a hard time figuring out how to NOT do that. I think I've had the wrong intent. @glk You may be on to something here...thanks. I think that feel of "right shoulder over left leg" could help me to understand spine extension on the BS. It DEFINITELY feels like stack and tilt/reverse tilt, which is probably why I've discarded the idea before ever really giving it a shot. @Krt22 Thanks for the insight. My guess is that some of this will clear up if I work on the spine extension, but could be a bit of a chicken and egg thing...I'll keep this in mind. What did you do to improve your lower body action?

The head movement is absolutely a big part of the problem. All of the other suggestions are good, but will be hard until you learn to keep your eyeline parallel to the target line.

What is your intent? What are you thinking of when you take a back swing? My guess is something like make a full shoulder turn but it ends up being too much.

You could try turning where the left shoulder doesn't pass your sternum. Just move it down, don't even think about turning.

The intent I was given was to keep the left knee pointed at the left toes in the backswing while right hip moves up and back. But you are right, Combine this with adding extension as GLK noted and your pivot will stay much more centered and you'll feel that you are shifting pressure instead of fully shifting your weight/body back behind the ball.

Thanks Monte. I've spent a lot of time just *trying not to do it* but it hasn't really worked...maybe I haven't been patient enough. Do you think that if I can effectively add some spine extension it could help with the eyeline issue? Or is this a job for the Nike drill?

Yeah, you're right. Main intent is to make a full shoulder turn, but I think probably what I interpret as shoulder turn is actually a substantial amount of arms-only...lots of overrun.

One other intent thing for me is that if I don't get into that flat position at the top, it feels like I can't possibly get the club to come from the inside on the downswing. Probably a misconception. My eyeline tilting in transition probably has a lot to do with this misguided intent as well-- I'm trying to not go OTT.

Feel like your downswing starts from here with a little bump to the left.

First off, anything up top is already inside so, like you mentioned, it's your misconception. It's a matter of what you do with it from the top. Your back swing bobble-head is way out of the ordinary and needs cleaning up first but here's a look, and a good one to consider examining more fully, at head movement setting up the strike some may suggest is faulty, but is far from it.

Put a tee all the way intothe ground 6” in front of the ball on line with the target. Make sure your eyes and especially your right, is focused on that tee.

Then Nike drill ?

Watched this on my phone while I was working out - looking at it again, I'd say issue is probably a lot more of lack of left side bend than spine extension - as noted, instead of thinking shoulder turn think over left shoulder down to left toes - same as thought to have left knee go out to toes and let pivot bring it inside a bit. Get more left side bend along with a good turn of the sternum will naturally restrict the length of the swing - but it's going to take time and feel very different given how horizontal you turn now - been there done that. I've posted this drill before, it's a good one for this issue.

Good luck.

Thanks everyone for taking the time to weigh in. Lots of good ideas here.

It's pretty clear that I need to clean up the over-rotation/flat shoulder turn/rotated head/shifted eyeline in the backswing and stay more centered and not laterally shifted off the ball at the top (please feel free to correct me if this description is off-base).

I'll try to achieve this perhaps by adding side-bend or spine extension, maybe with keeping flex in trail knee, maybe with keeping visual focus in front of the ball to prevent the over-rotation. Hard to tell what will work until I try a few things.

But the BIG question is:

What would you guess will be the result of this change in regards to impact? How would you expect my downswing/impact position/contact to change? My guess is that my upper body won't get so far behind the ball, so it will be easier for my hands to get in front at impact, adding shaft lean, descending blow, etc etc. Any thoughts?

I like to understand the WHY of any swing changes I work on...it helps me to actually commit to it.

In other words, what good things do you think my current faulty backswing is preventing me from being able to do?

Besides setup having a good backswing pivot with good arm structure sets up making a transition with minimal comspensations giving the potential for that tour impact position, open body, shaft lean, etc. right now you have little to no chance of of making that impact conditions a reality.

Um...may i ask what is the Nike golf drill? Google only gives me shirts and shoes.

Haha. I saw a video that Monte did a while back that said the best way to shorten a backswing is the Nike drill: “Just Do It.”

As your still images show, you definitely need to work on getting more shaft lean at impact as well. You actually added loft to your club at impact right here. Obviously not something you want to do with your irons. This helps promote those slightly fat shots you mentioned. You want to compress that ball impact. Tons of drills out there to help you get that feeling. One of my favorites when I need to work on ball striking is hitting shots with a 3/4 swing while imagining there is a table 10 yards in front of me and I need to flight that ball underneath that table. This should help the over rotation and head movement issues as well.

you have to think of your head as suspended on the C vetebrae top of spine and everything happening underneath . So the head is not part of the body per se. You have to keep the head weight suspended and supported by your back.. and as noted your eye like should feel neutral. if your head is joined to your rotation, you have the weight of the head to deal with and will lead to painful inconsistent swinging..unless you practice every day

That's helpful, thanks. I have a big heavy melon, gotta keep it centered!

Incremental Progress Update:

Still have a ways to go, but changes in intent (not rotating so far off the ball in an attempt to create power, attempting to stay more centered) have led to pretty quick small improvements in impact position. Will continue to work on the head movement. Thanks to everyone for the input.

That is a lot more than incremental improvement, nice work.

I'm working hard on this.

In the update pic, it looks like you've slid your body forward, which has pulled your hands a little forward. However, your chest/shoulders are now closed at impact. Don't we want the shoulders/chest opening and downward-facing at impact? That's what pulls the hands forward, form what I've been shown.

It seems to me that, initially, you were simply dropping your right shoulder and raising your left on the downswing, and there was very little rotation of your chest/shoulders. They were pretty square at impact -- but you weren't "covering" the ball at all with your chest (your chest was pointing out instead of down, showing that you lost your posture).

Check out Jake Hutt on Instagram/Twitter. Consider that if you held the club in good posture at P6, didn't change your arm/wrists conditions at all, and simply rotated your chest/shoulders down and around into your left leg, you arrive at the ball with hands forward and with trail wrist bend. Ant then consider how different that impact position feels from what you've been doing.