Help with swing

Paul40 · December 21, 2020

Hi,

first time poster ! Any advice on why i struggle to get through the ball ?

played a lot as a junior and started up again about a year ago, had a few lessons with a local pro.

Valtiel · December 23, 2020

Lots of good things there, but you have the classic "backwards" downswing move in that instead of rotating the lower body and pulling the arms down, you're throwing your arms down and doing very little with the lower body. This will feel like you're not getting through the ball well because you're not giving yourself the room to do so. The lower body needs to be leading the downswing and your move through the ball to give your arms the room to get through it. To exaggerate the feel of what you are doing incorrectly, take a little half power swing with literally zero hip rotation, just upper body and arms, and feel how without the lower body how your arms have to chuck/flip the club through impact. Once the arms overtake the lower body, that is what will always happen:

You vs. Adam Scott. This is where we see what the lack of lower body clearing causes; you have no shaft lean at impact because you are flipping your hands and adding tons of loft. This is because of what I said above, your lower body has lagged way behind and you've run out of room. Compare that to the classic position of Scott with the lower body cleared, weight moved forward, and hands ahead of the club.

You'll want to start getting used to the feeling of starting your downswing with your lower body via rotation and weight shift forward as opposed to simply throwing your hands down from the top like you're doing now, and it will help to find some drills that exaggerate this feeling. My favorite is simply making swings where you feel like all your hands do is hang on to the club and nothing else, the sort of "hit it with your hips" approach as its often described. Just something to get used to the feeling of driving your swing with the lower half as opposed to the top half. The only thing to be careful is to not overdo this feeling, because the goal is to get everything properly synced up in transition, not to flip from one extreme to the other.

Edited December 23, 2020 by Valtiel