Sliding hips the biggest issue?

[stenis]

WRX,

 

Only been playing golf for about a year with self analysis of my swing. Been struggling with the hook, trying to not swing too much inside out has been my main objective for a while. Right now I note that my biggest issue seem to be that my hips slide too much parallel to the target line in the downswing instead of rotating. Would this be my biggest issue which needs attention, or is there something else lingering about which causes trouble? See DTL and face on with an 8-iron below.

 

/Eric

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 12, 2021 by stenis

[Valtiel]

There some really good things going on here, but a few foundational problems that you'll want to look at. Hip sliding however is not one of the things I would worry about. 

First, as a taller skinny guy, you need to get into a good athletic posture to keep yourself grounded throughout the swing. You're standing very narrow, flat footed, and straight with your legs, and you're bent over pretty far at the waist. This is a pretty unstable looking foundation and you should get yourself as little more "poised" for motion at setup. A bit more knee flex, feet wider apart, and your weight towards the balls of your feet (not your toes). The next thing I would at is your grip:



That is definitely an overly strong grip, and if you're struggling with a hook then it seems like a no brainer to neutralize that a few notches. Through impact it looks like you are hanging on to the club to keep it from shutting down as opposed to naturally releasing it, and weakening/neutralizing your grip should help there. For the rest of these panels i'll compare you to Justin Thomas since you have some similar positions. 

            

To start, you get the club inside your hands a decent amount and it looks like you're doing a bit of manipulation in trying to keep your right arm really straight. Neutralizing this takeaway a bit would be nice, but not a huge priority since you steepen quite a bit from here:

              

A similar very high handed position at the top, but this is where the lower body problems come into play. Looking at the face on view, we can see JT is loaded up into that right hip/thigh and is in a powerful position to then make his lower body move in transition. If you were to stop him there and ask him to hold that position, you could walk up and shake him by the shoulders and he'd be secure on the ground in that back leg. If I did the same to you, you'd likely lose your balance and have to shift your feet to keep from falling. You've rotated your hips, but you haven't really loaded any weight/force into the back leg and your upper body is almost leaning towards the target a bit. Your arms have also broken down, and this is overall a bad position to attempt to generate power from, which is unfortunately what you need to do. 



Now from the top down to impact you actually shallow the club beautifully and get to a very nice impact position in terms of your hands, however the weak foundation at the top as resulted in what it always does; your hands outrace your lower body and your hips don't clear, leaving you in a stuck impact position that will cause you to flip the club unless you resist heavily (which you do) but this both robs you of power and consistency. So get yourself into a more athletic position, almost like you're bracing for someone to tackle you or throw you something really heavy, and make sure you're turning back into your right hip/thigh to then use that stored power to start your transition. Your high hands are fine as long as you keep shallowing well like you do, and your strong grip will likely need to weaken to get rid of the left miss as you get more comfortable.