Help wanted for golf's Flattest swing

[jebb]

Hi guys,

 

I am in golfing hell at the moment. Any help would be very much appreciated as I'm getting desperate. Here's the problem.

 

My backswing is so flat I can't describe. Think baseball crossed with Ray Floyd. At the "top" of my backswing the club is almost travelling horizontally and my right elbow is almost welded to my right side.

 

Consequently my ballflight is way down and I'm prone to a snap hook. I play off 9 handicap (UK) but my scores are entirely dependent on timing and hand corrections (eg last week 74 this week 86). I also cant get the ball out of even semi rough with any flight and fading it is impossible.

 

I am at my wit's end. My coach is trying to get me to "lift" the club into a higher position at the top. other peole have suggested its my flat shoulder turn that causes this.

 

If anyone can come up with any drills or methods to work this out I would be hugely grateful.

 

Please be gentle and any help very much welcome.

 

Jebb

[raidernut1234]

fill a bucket 1/3rd full of water. swing it back and forth slowly until you havit the bucket up to shoulder height w/out spilling any water. thats your new swing path. Harvey Penick special i believe.

 

EDIT: By the way, I had this same exact swing for 10 years. The pro I took lesson from had me do EXACTLY what MikePGA is recommending below. try and extend your right thumb away from your body on the backswing outside the target line (almost like Furyk). finish to the top then swing. this will offset your muscle memory of the inside swing you've been doing. eventually you should be able to settle on the middle ground. HOWEVER, I would recommend you 1. Get lessons to help you and 2. Video tape your current swing and your progress so you can reprogram your mind to accept the changes... whadday think Mikepga??

[mikpga]

Visualize and attempt to execute the opposite of what you are doing...

 

Hit intentional cut shots...

 

Swing the club away from your body...

 

Stand taller/closer to the ball...

[jebb]

Thanks guys.

 

It is driving me mad and will probably take some time to work out but htis is all great advice.

 

Thanks again!

[rosskoss]

Use a mirror or video camera and practise your swing with the correct swing plane slowly. Basically, make it look right.

[thatswhatshesaid]

It could be that you have poor lat and shoulder extensibility which is causing your to swing on a flat plane. If you lay on your back, put your butt about 2 feet from the wall with your feet flat on the wall. Put your arms over your head and if they fall back on the floor no problem, then you have proper extensibility. If you can not get your wrists/forearms to touch the ground, you have tightness in your lats and shoulder complex. If that's the case, a proper stretching program would be most valuable for you.

[Furrankee]

Hi guys,

 

I am in golfing hell at the moment. Any help would be very much appreciated as I'm getting desperate. Here's the problem.

 

My backswing is so flat I can't describe. Think baseball crossed with Ray Floyd. At the "top" of my backswing the club is almost travelling horizontally and my right elbow is almost welded to my right side.

 

Consequently my ballflight is way down and I'm prone to a snap hook. I play off 9 handicap (UK) but my scores are entirely dependent on timing and hand corrections (eg last week 74 this week 86). I also cant get the ball out of even semi rough with any flight and fading it is impossible.

 

I am at my wit's end. My coach is trying to get me to "lift" the club into a higher position at the top. other peole have suggested its my flat shoulder turn that causes this.

 

If anyone can come up with any drills or methods to work this out I would be hugely grateful.

 

Please be gentle and any help very much welcome.

 

Jebb

 

Do you know how to trace a straight plane line?

[MB1981]

Flat is ok, too flat is not obviously. I'm very flat, a nice one plane swing. I have a little trouble out of heavy rough because of it though. (club enters grass 3 inches behind ball) But I can make the swing a little more upright for those situations, plus, because the one plane "flat" swing is great off the tee, I do not miss many fairways!

[jeffy]

Hi guys,

 

I am in golfing hell at the moment. Any help would be very much appreciated as I'm getting desperate. Here's the problem.

 

My backswing is so flat I can't describe. Think baseball crossed with Ray Floyd. At the "top" of my backswing the club is almost travelling horizontally and my right elbow is almost welded to my right side.

 

Consequently my ballflight is way down and I'm prone to a snap hook. I play off 9 handicap (UK) but my scores are entirely dependent on timing and hand corrections (eg last week 74 this week 86). I also cant get the ball out of even semi rough with any flight and fading it is impossible.

 

I am at my wit's end. My coach is trying to get me to "lift" the club into a higher position at the top. other peole have suggested its my flat shoulder turn that causes this.

 

If anyone can come up with any drills or methods to work this out I would be hugely grateful.

 

Please be gentle and any help very much welcome.

 

Jebb

 

First, I'd try bending over more at the waist, which will automatically steepen your swing; second, straighten your right leg as recommended by these two fine fellows:

 

http://www.southlandgolfmagazine.com/t-av-...tour-swing.aspx

 

Third, ignore anything JeffMann says.

 

Good luck!

[Furrankee]

Hi guys,

 

I am in golfing hell at the moment. Any help would be very much appreciated as I'm getting desperate. Here's the problem.

 

My backswing is so flat I can't describe. Think baseball crossed with Ray Floyd. At the "top" of my backswing the club is almost travelling horizontally and my right elbow is almost welded to my right side.

 

Consequently my ballflight is way down and I'm prone to a snap hook. I play off 9 handicap (UK) but my scores are entirely dependent on timing and hand corrections (eg last week 74 this week 86). I also cant get the ball out of even semi rough with any flight and fading it is impossible.

 

I am at my wit's end. My coach is trying to get me to "lift" the club into a higher position at the top. other peole have suggested its my flat shoulder turn that causes this.

 

If anyone can come up with any drills or methods to work this out I would be hugely grateful.

 

Please be gentle and any help very much welcome.

 

Jebb

 

First, I'd try bending over more at the waist, which will automatically steepen your swing; second, straighten your right leg as recommended by these two fine fellows:

 

http://www.southlandgolfmagazine.com/t-av-...tour-swing.aspx

 

Third, ignore anything JeffMann says.

 

Good luck!

 

 

Original poster, you can sustain the lag or maintain the law of the lever without the reverse pivot/S&T method. You can have a ball position so far forward, i.e., outside your left foot and still compress the ball.

[jeffy]

First, I'd try bending over more at the waist, which will automatically steepen your swing; second, straighten your right leg as recommended by these two fine fellows:

 

http://www.southlandgolfmagazine.com/t-av-...tour-swing.aspx

 

Third, ignore anything JeffMann says.

 

Good luck!

 

Original poster, you can sustain the lag or maintain the law of the lever without the reverse pivot/S&T method. You can have a ball position so far forward, i.e., outside your left foot and still compress the ball.

 

Heap big non sequitur. Who said anything about a reverse pivot, stack & tilt or any other method? The guy wants to get steeper, and steepening his arm swing doesn't seem to be working for him. Bending at the waist and straightening the right leg might.

[jebb]

Furrankee- trace a straight plane line?

 

Can you explain the significance of this for me so I can get an idea of how it would help me.

 

Thanks.

[addamsmith]

Hi Jebb

This post explains the plane lines

http://www.brianmanzella.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9335

Hope this can help

Addam

[truck13]

im no teacher but i too have a fairly flat swing plane, the best advice i have gotten is to do the opposite..whenever i started hitting low pull hooks i set up for and tried to hit high fades...then after the round i get in front of a mirror and try the feeling of getting my hands really high...i figured during a round if i got the hooks i had nothing to lose by trying to hit fades, just my 2 cents i hope you get straightened out

[jebb]

Hi guys,

 

Just a big thank you to all for the info. Really helpful and plenty of good stuff to work on.

 

Question for everyone. I recently saw the top pro at Ping's UK Academy who is in the Golf Monthly UK Top 25 of teachers.

 

The pro said my problem was that my arm swing and shoulder plane were both on the same plane. His answer was to lift the arms ABOVE the shoulder plane.

 

As a naturally rotary swinger am I making life hard for myself or should I find a teacher of a one plane swing?

 

You guys have way more knowledge than me about this so any thoughts would be very much appreciated.

 

Thanks.

[jeffy]

Hi guys,

 

Just a big thank you to all for the info. Really helpful and plenty of good stuff to work on.

 

Question for everyone. I recently saw the top pro at Ping's UK Academy who is in the Golf Monthly UK Top 25 of teachers.

 

The pro said my problem was that my arm swing and shoulder plane were both on the same plane. His answer was to lift the arms ABOVE the shoulder plane.

 

As a naturally rotary swinger am I making life hard for myself or should I find a teacher of a one plane swing?

 

You guys have way more knowledge than me about this so any thoughts would be very much appreciated.

 

Thanks.

 

Ask your teacher if he thinks Hogan would have been a better ballstriker with his left arm above the shoulder plane. This guy is in an instructional time-warp and is still wedded to two-plane conventional wisdom. Seek out Hardy's one-plane, Bennett & Plummer's stack & tilt, or Mac O'Grady's MORAD information if you want to learn more about various one-plane methods.

[jebb]

Jeffy,

 

Thanks for the reply.

 

This might be asking the impossible but is there any website or book/dvd where I can get One Plane theory explained in not too technical terms.

 

Any help very welcome.

[jeffy]

Hardy's dvds are pretty easy to follow. Except for the two Golf Digest articles, which are available for free on the GD site, the published B&P/MORAD stuff is pretty limited. It is also TGM-based, so a lot of the on-line discussion uses TGM jargon, which makes the conversation hard to follow if you haven't studied Homer Kelley's little yellow book.

[addamsmith]

Jeffy is Right on track with Hardy's Dvd and Books he has and best explains the one and two plane swing.

There are just as many two plane swings on tour as one plane with both having equal benifits. What hardy says is it is important to find which swing you have and try not to mix the two up into your one swing ar you will end up with a hybrid swing. His book is available here

http://www.jimhardygolf.com/index.htm

I bought it and it makes great reading.

Good luck

Addam

[jebb]

Thanks again guys.

 

Food for thought and very helpful. I have a real hard time lifting my arms into a position at the top and maybe need to consider some other ideas.

 

Thanks again.

[Young04]

i didn't read all of the others' suggestions, but mine would be to swing with a wall behind you. don't put your rear end right up against the wall, but using a mirror, get to the top of a "good" backswing and then back up against the wall right to the point where your club is almost touching it. take some practice swings to groove that more upright shoulder turn/arm backswing. if you get too flat, you'll hit the wall.

 

like others have said, if you're trying to take more of a two plane swing approahc, you have to get a correct downswing - there are many differences but the biggest is that in a two plane swing, the arms are much more independent.

[pocketfulladoubles]

A video camera down the target line really really helps. I took some video lessons that recorded my plane onto a PC and used colored lines to adjust my plane. This really helped. I was watching the swing of some pros on the computer and what I saw in essense was, if you draw two lines, one from the ball through the top of your shoulder, and another from the ball through your hip, the swing plane was the line that bisected the vertex of those two lines at the ball, approximatley through the chest. It's hard to see for yourself while swinging without the aid of a camera though.

[jebb]

Big thanks again to everyone.

 

I know what you mean about a camera or mirrors as you don't always do what you think you are doing. Feel isn't real(?)

 

Thanks to all...lots to work on.

[Medici999]

jebb....pm me with what works best for you as i too am really struggling with being too flat. many thanks and all the best.

[Swingtheclub]

You know I accept the one plane methond as a way of swinging the club, but it is not the only way.

 

I think Mike gave you some good advice.

 

Ken

[jebb]

Medici,

 

I would trade you swings in an instant!!

 

I've seen a few coaches recently and am now wondering whether to go with getting it more upright or

stay with a more rotary action which is probably more naturally me.

 

Most of the teachers have had me lifting the arms high. I just find it hard to do with the ball in front of me. I'm wondering whether I might be better stepping away from it and grooving it in front of a mirror/video for a while if that is the way I go.

 

Thanks again everyone for all the advice.