Be Better, Brad! (Update 4-11-2024 with new swing videos)

[bortass]

Mind if I give you a possible short game drill? It made a world of difference with my UTB pitches/chips. The disclaimer is you may not have the same issue as me. Monte pointed out I use my hips too much going forward. He gave me a drill where you put the trail foot behind your lead foot. You are basically standing on one foot. The top of your right ankle joint, where Matty tells you to hold it during a quad stretch, is touching the back of your left ankle and your right toe is on the ground.  It really quieted my hips and has made a world of difference.

[betarhoalphadelta]

6 hours ago, bortass said:

Mind if I give you a possible short game drill? It made a world of difference with my UTB pitches/chips. The disclaimer is you may not have the same issue as me. Monte pointed out I use my hips too much going forward. He gave me a drill where you put the trail foot behind your lead foot. You are basically standing on one foot. The top of your right ankle joint, where Matty tells you to hold it during a quad stretch, is touching the back of your left ankle and your right toe is on the ground.  It really quieted my hips and has made a world of difference.

 

Thanks! I'll have to give that a try. 

 

I wish it was easier to find places to practice pitching/chipping. It seems like every course around here has a rule of no chipping on the putting green (for obvious reasons) but almost none have a short game practice area. San Juan Hills does have one, but that ends up being a 20 minute drive sans traffic, and longer with traffic. 

 

I'm thinking of doing it on my mat into the net in the backyard, but I'm not sure that the mat will be quite as "grabby" as turf and punish me as much as it should for hitting fat. 

[bortass]

I recommend not doing it with a green. The focus is just trying to make good contact w/o worrying about how good the shot was if you had a real target. Once you work that out, distance control should start to improve on the course. That's how I've been doing it at least. Not saying it's correct but not caring about where the ball goes makes it easier on me. All I care about is how good was the contact.

[betarhoalphadelta]

Played Oso yesterday as a single. One of my "usual" foursome just moved to Vegas, and the other two (the father/son) were in Michigan visiting family, so rather than try to wade through alternates to fill the group I just played myself, and got paired with some out of towners here for a wedding. Good group though; fun guys................. 

 

I made a total mess of the front 9, cleaned it up a LOT on the back, but then finished 17/18 with a triple/double to screw it up. 14 over on the front, 9 over on the back, for an 83 (+23). 

 

Putting was trouble. 37 total putts, with only a couple miraculous 2-putts after terrible lags saving that number from being even worse. 

 

The long game was up and down. I think that slight tempo adjustment that I spoke about weeks ago is actually really helping with contact, and at least the *feel* (although I need to get on video) is a better weight shift and improved pivot, which helps low point control. I hit some pretty flush shots. On the other hand, the path is still too in->out and I'm having trouble controlling the curve, with a lot of left misses. That's something I'm going to have to figure out. 

 

In reality, though, my trouble is simple--lack of practice. I need range time and swing time. 

 

I'm playing with my son at San Juan Hills on Saturday. He saw Monte last Monday so if he's putting in the practice time on Monte's drill, I'd better get some time on the range myself lol... 

[aenemated]

11 minutes ago, betarhoalphadelta said:

One of my "usual" foursome just moved to Vegas

 

Just what we need - more Californians here. 😉

 

(I enjoy this thread, dude! Keep at it.) 

[betarhoalphadelta]

34 minutes ago, aenemated said:

 

Just what we need - more Californians here. 😉

 

(I enjoy this thread, dude! Keep at it.) 

 

He's a Raiders fan. We've been trying to get rid of those and send them your way!

[bortass]

49 minutes ago, betarhoalphadelta said:

Played Oso yesterday as a single. One of my "usual" foursome just moved to Vegas, and the other two (the father/son) were in Michigan visiting family, so rather than try to wade through alternates to fill the group I just played myself, and got paired with some out of towners here for a wedding. Good group though; fun guys................. 

 

I made a total mess of the front 9, cleaned it up a LOT on the back, but then finished 17/18 with a triple/double to screw it up. 14 over on the front, 9 over on the back, for an 83 (+23). 

 

Putting was trouble. 37 total putts, with only a couple miraculous 2-putts after terrible lags saving that number from being even worse. 

 

The long game was up and down. I think that slight tempo adjustment that I spoke about weeks ago is actually really helping with contact, and at least the *feel* (although I need to get on video) is a better weight shift and improved pivot, which helps low point control. I hit some pretty flush shots. On the other hand, the path is still too in->out and I'm having trouble controlling the curve, with a lot of left misses. That's something I'm going to have to figure out. 

 

In reality, though, my trouble is simple--lack of practice. I need range time and swing time. 

 

I'm playing with my son at San Juan Hills on Saturday. He saw Monte last Monday so if he's putting in the practice time on Monte's drill, I'd better get some time on the range myself lol... 

Yeah, the power of a Monte lesson is nigh unstoppable!

[aenemated]

3 minutes ago, betarhoalphadelta said:

 

He's a Raiders fan. We've been trying to get rid of those and send them your way!

 

NOOOOOOOO! Yall keep that Raider Nation stuff there! Our jails are full enough 😂😂😂

[betarhoalphadelta]

BTW a bit of a crazy story from the round...

 

Obviously I've talked about hole 9 here quite a bit. Creek 220-230 off the tee on a short (317) par 4, so you have to trust driver or lay up. Well, the tees were fairly back and I was hitting into a pretty significant headwind, so I didn't trust driver wouldn't get held up and might not clear it. 

 

So I hit 7i off the tee, great contact but shorter than typical due to wind, leaving a 6i (accounting for wind) into the green. 

 

I made beautiful contact. Amazing high strong ballflight. Unfortunately turned it over and it's heading left of the green. I see it hit cart path and launch upwards into what I thought was the bushes in a big slope heading up from the path... Until I heard a bang. 

 

Turns out it bounced up over those bushes, over the practice putting green, into the patio restaurant and hit the base of a propane heater. Manager came out as we were walking up asking "who hit that?" Luckily no bodily or property damage, but I did head up there and apologize to the table of 10 having a birthday brunch lol... 

 

Ooops!

 

Afterwards the manager said a lot of players just launch balls up there due to poor shots, after I told him that it was off the path and not a bladed SW or something. 

 

So... That was a little embarrassing. 

 

At least I can say that it looked like (from where it landed) that I was pin-high, so I made proper accounting for wind on my distance control... 

Edited June 13, 2023 by betarhoalphadelta

[betarhoalphadelta]

So I finally made it out to the range to get some reps. I also REALLY wanted to get my current swing on film. ("On film"? How old AM I???)

 

Posting FO and DTL in both full speed and slow motion versions. 

 

What I've been working on is a more "measured" takeaway to try to give my body more time to recenter and then pivot properly. One of my big issues has been a slide/hit rather than a shift/turn. Leads to inability to clear the left hip on the downswing, EE, and being too "square" with the hips at impact. 

 

What I've noticed is that if I try to make that very first bit of takeaway a little slower, it almost feels like it gives me more time to get back to my left side, and I actually feel myself getting through with some right side bend at impact. The video seems to show that too. 

 

A big concern was that I was doing the old band-aid of slow tempo, which as many have said on this forum (incl. Monte) that most ams swing too slow, not too fast. I've always been within the tempo range, and I didn't *feel* like I was slowing it down too much, but I wanted to get it on video and count some frames. The good thing is that I'm seeing myself somewhere around 23:8, which is just fine. So I'm happy there. 

 

With the slow-motion, I'm still probably not getting to the left side as early as I could, but kinda last move up / first move down, which is a lot sooner than it used to be. And I feel myself hitting the ball better, it's not just good feels. And I'm not sure if it's better sequencing or the strength work I've been doing, but the distance gains have persisted. 

 

On the negative, I'm still inconsistent with path and face, mostly with a path too in->out and a left miss. That is still showing up. But I had that problem before too, so I feel like this is good progress. 

 

Anyway, here are the videos. I'd love some feedback. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[chigolfer1]

I'll take a shot at it before actual instructors chime in.  You don't seem to be moving your hips properly in the backswing.  Your right hip is just sort of stuck as you move your left hip as opposed to your right him going back and slightly around toward the target.

[betarhoalphadelta]

4 minutes ago, chigolfer1 said:

I'll take a shot at it before actual instructors chime in.  You don't seem to be moving your hips properly in the backswing.  Your right hip is just sort of stuck as you move your left hip as opposed to your right him going back and slightly around toward the target.

 

Referring to FO or DTL? I often look at the right hip DTL and I'm definitely moving it away from the ball and not crowding it. I.e. if I hover my mouse pointer over the back of the right cheek, the right cheek is to the left of that mouse pointer at the top. 

 

But I do look at it FO and if I hover the mouse pointer right over the right hip, it seems to never move towards the ball, but I've also had a bit of early sway away from the target that might be countering that... I.e. my right hip is moving towards the target in relation to my centerline of my torso, but because my centerline of the torso has swayed too much away from the target, the right hip isn't closer to the target than at address... Make sense? Is that something you're seeing or am I missing what you're saying? 

[betarhoalphadelta]

My son (at his mom's house this week) actually started a round just about the time I left the range. We must have narrowly missed each other. 

 

Good thing I'm practicing. He dropped his personal best at this course today...

 

[pappaf2]

Sorry I haven’t followed along in this thread to know if you have taken lessons with Monte or is it just your son?

 

A couple thoughts as someone who is working through some of Monte’s videos currently. If you don’t own them already you could probably benefit from the No Turn Cast video and the Powershift video. 

NTC to will help with getting your hands and arms in better positions in the backswing and subsequently the downswing. Try to get your wrists set by left arm parallel. (I’ve had to work on this)
 

Powershift to get your pivot working correctly so your pressure is already back to the left by the end of the backswing. That will help keep you from early extending in the downswing.  Your right cheek gets deep on the backswing (dtl) but pulls away from

the tushline in the downswing. Incorporating the moves from powershift is key to making this happen. Some additional good info on this in various AMG videos.

 

 

good luck!

 

*edit* just looked and saw your posts in the powershift thread, so it looks like you already have it. I’d say keep working on that. Basically you want to feel your pressure is headed back to the left side by the time your left arm is parallel (if not sooner) in the backswing. Something that helped me is feeling the pressure on the “inside” half of the right foot in the backswing and don’t left it get outside that half of the foot. For me, it helps me feel like it redirects my pressure forward instead of “posting” on the right leg at the top of the backswing. Use discretion is advised

Edited June 13, 2023 by pappaf2

[betarhoalphadelta]

@pappaf2 Thanks for the response. I took a lesson with Monte about 2 years ago, but haven't been diligent enough about actual practice that I've felt like I've improved enough to go back. Probably should do so. My son just took a lesson with Monte last week, and he's a LOT more willing and able to spend time on his golf swing (since he's on the HS JV team now) so he'll probably go back again mid-summer and towards the end of summer as he's going to make more rapid progress. 

 

We've got NTC, Efficient Swing, Power Shift, Broomforce, UTB and UTB 2.0. Guess how many drills I'm [not] doing lol 😉 

 

If you look at the swing videos from very early in the thread, I've made some pretty significant progress in the pivot move since then. But it seems (especially based on what @chigolfer1 said) that my lateral upper body move to my right off the ball (seen in FO view) is probably still too big. I feel like I do a good job of upper body staying "stacked" over my lower body, but still too much sway off the ball. So I've got a ways to go. 

[chigolfer1]

21 minutes ago, betarhoalphadelta said:

@pappaf2 Thanks for the response. I took a lesson with Monte about 2 years ago, but haven't been diligent enough about actual practice that I've felt like I've improved enough to go back. Probably should do so. My son just took a lesson with Monte last week, and he's a LOT more willing and able to spend time on his golf swing (since he's on the HS JV team now) so he'll probably go back again mid-summer and towards the end of summer as he's going to make more rapid progress. 

 

We've got NTC, Efficient Swing, Power Shift, Broomforce, UTB and UTB 2.0. Guess how many drills I'm [not] doing lol 😉 

 

If you look at the swing videos from very early in the thread, I've made some pretty significant progress in the pivot move since then. But it seems (especially based on what @chigolfer1 said) that my lateral upper body move to my right off the ball (seen in FO view) is probably still too big. I feel like I do a good job of upper body staying "stacked" over my lower body, but still too much sway off the ball. So I've got a ways to go. 

 

I was just taking a stab at in assuming some actual instructors will chime in.  Please don't read too much into my post until you get some further guidance.  🙂

[pappaf2]

38 minutes ago, betarhoalphadelta said:

@pappaf2 Thanks for the response. I took a lesson with Monte about 2 years ago, but haven't been diligent enough about actual practice that I've felt like I've improved enough to go back. Probably should do so. My son just took a lesson with Monte last week, and he's a LOT more willing and able to spend time on his golf swing (since he's on the HS JV team now) so he'll probably go back again mid-summer and towards the end of summer as he's going to make more rapid progress. 

 

We've got NTC, Efficient Swing, Power Shift, Broomforce, UTB and UTB 2.0. Guess how many drills I'm [not] doing lol 😉 

 

If you look at the swing videos from very early in the thread, I've made some pretty significant progress in the pivot move since then. But it seems (especially based on what @chigolfer1 said) that my lateral upper body move to my right off the ball (seen in FO view) is probably still too big. I feel like I do a good job of upper body staying "stacked" over my lower body, but still too much sway off the ball. So I've got a ways to go. 

nice you’ve got all the stuff! 
I’m obviously not an instructor but I think of you just work on drilling the proper pressure shift stuff out of power shift it will help your upper and lower body movements. Maybe this drill to get the feeling of where your upper body has to get to in space might help?

 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CrTOIEdO3xi/?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

[betarhoalphadelta]

My son texted me after his round at Oso with two of his golf team friends yesterday. 

 

He shot a 72 (+12). 4 shots better than his best round there. 

 

 

Degree of difficulty goes up, along with course distance, when we face San Juan Hills together Saturday. But it seems his lesson helped lol! 

[betarhoalphadelta]

Hit the range this morning. Ended up dropping after ~2/3 of the bucket as I had hit a lot of shots, but overall very good session. 

 

Started with some partial 56* shots. I was on the bottom deck in the middle, which gave me two of the 55 gal drum targets at two different distances to hit towards. Really happy with it. Contact was good, distance control was good, and consistency was good. A great warm-up. 

 

Then grabbed the 8i and was just striping it. Just felt comfortable and making great contact. A few turned over too much left, and had the occasional block right, but overall pretty straight. 

 

Went to the 4h. I don't use this club (or the 5w) much on the course because of lack of practice, so I had hit some 5w on Wednesday and wanted to hit some 4h today. Overall it was really good. The first one was a low burner off the bottom of the face, but everything else was pretty great contact, and even better, going straight. 

 

Went back to the 56* because I'd hit plenty of balls and wanted to rest a bit, and kept up the consistency of contact and distance control. 

 

Hit some driver. Had no "terrible" shots, but had some inconsistent direction control (left) on too many shots. Generally contact was decent (despite my rubber tee being slightly lower than I tee on the course). I think some fatigue was setting in from hitting too many shots in a short period of time. 

 

Went back to the 56* and continued good striking. 

 

Full swings again, with the 8i, and I could tell I was getting a little off. Hit one beautiful one, and decided to call it a session. 

 

Overall really happy with it. If I'm hitting like this tomorrow, I'll be in great shape. 

 

Thinking I need to clean my clubs, particularly including my grips (which I don't do often enough), to be ready for SJH with my son tomorrow. 

[betarhoalphadelta]

Well, my son shot a 104 at SJH. Looking back at his scoring, he's never shot better than a 52 on a full-length 9 holes. So that was good for him!

 

And... He beat me. I was playing like manure all day. It was my second-worst differential of the last 20 rounds. The less said about it, the better. 

[bortass]

9 hours ago, betarhoalphadelta said:

Well, my son shot a 104 at SJH. Looking back at his scoring, he's never shot better than a 52 on a full-length 9 holes. So that was good for him!

 

And... He beat me. I was playing like manure all day. It was my second-worst differential of the last 20 rounds. The less said about it, the better. 

Sorry to hear you had a rough round.

 

Congrats to your son though!

[aenemated]

You're dead here, dude ...

 

 

Everything you do from here will be a compensation to get back to the ball. 

 

Another thing; I know you're a tall guy. You should absolutely not be that bendy over for a 7 iron. 

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

8 hours ago, aenemated said:

You're dead here, dude ...

 

 

Everything you do from here will be a compensation to get back to the ball. 

 

Another thing; I know you're a tall guy. You should absolutely not be that bendy over for a 7 iron. 

 

 

Can you elaborate? When it comes to golf jargon, sometimes I need to be talked to like a toddler. What's the issue with the position at this point that makes it require so much compensation to get back to the ball? 

 

[iacas]

11 hours ago, aenemated said:

You're dead here, dude ...

 

I don't entirely agree, because it does kind of "calm" down at the top, and the P4 position isn't too bad… but that's on the range, too, and it's probably not as calm on the course, so… yeah, that P2-ish isn't good. And it's not as calm, in watching it a second time, as I thought at first… because it's slow motion. 😄

 

@betarhoalphadelta, your hands go out, your forearms roll, your right elbow bends too early… the club waves all over the place the whole backswing…

 

P3 to P5… not great, Bob.

 

[chigolfer1]

2 hours ago, iacas said:

 

I don't entirely agree, because it does kind of "calm" down at the top, and the P4 position isn't too bad… but that's on the range, too, and it's probably not as calm on the course, so… yeah, that P2-ish isn't good. And it's not as calm, in watching it a second time, as I thought at first… because it's slow motion. 😄

 

@betarhoalphadelta, your hands go out, your forearms roll, your right elbow bends too early… the club waves all over the place the whole backswing…

 

P3 to P5… not great, Bob.

 

 

For starters, the Dan C drill while holding an alignment rod on the RIGHT side of the body would help.  He really does have the classic hands go out, roll forearms clubhead goes in death move , which then has you react by coming down much steeper and then having to save it from there.

[aenemated]

4 hours ago, betarhoalphadelta said:

 

Can you elaborate? When it comes to golf jargon, sometimes I need to be talked to like a toddler. What's the issue with the position at this point that makes it require so much compensation to get back to the ball? 

 

 

I won't argue with @iacas because he's a pro and I'm not. 

 

But I think most everyone would agree with me ... is that when you roll over the club inside the line on the takeaway, you've thrown yourself off plane and everything that happens after it is a compensation. As iacas said, you recover well enough from it for a minute ... but then ya don't. 

 

I've spent the last ... like 4 years fixing that myself. I wasn't making consistently good strikes. On a good day when my timing was on; I could go low. (It's been a long time since I've broken par but I've shot level par a couple times in the recent past) But on a day when it wasn't ... god help me if I could break 90. Or 100. 

 

I've put an endless amount of work into getting that move out and what finally WorkedForMe™ ... was focusing on keeping my trail arm straight as long as possible on my takeaway. Like REALLY stretching and extending it till I have to let it fold. Almost like the whole single plane stuff ... but not. This actually fixed quite a few things; perhaps more important than any, my tendency to think I'm still an elastic 18 year old that would make Daly's backswing look short 😂 

 

Apologies for creepy old tattooed punk rocker nerd glare but this is what I mean on the takeaway ... 

 

 

That's about where my trail arm starts folding. But I REALLY try to hold it off as long as I can. Some might say it's the whole single plane thing but it's not past that point. Still very much the kid that learned the game from Jack Nicklaus books! 

 

When I first started with that idea, it felt super weird and like physically uncomfortable. (Which, as we know, means there's an actual change happening). What I've found is ... it really keeps me connected, my hands stay in front of me because I actually have to properly turn instead of just lift my arms, it quieted my hips down ... a lot of good stuff happened. The ONE thing I had to keep in mind is doing that makes me wanna fall off center to my trail foot so my thought is to just make sure the pressure stays on the inside till about P3 ... at which point I'm like "Go on over to the lead side, bro!" Actually makes doing so super easy. And made it even easier to work in the Justin Rose bit.

 

All credit really goes to Monte and Adam Porzak. 

 

I've been hitting it better - and far more consistent - than I probably ever have since I've been working that in. Hell, I'm considering getting "ABX" (Always Be eXtending) tattooed on the lil bit of space I have on my right hand below my thumb as a reminder haha. 

 

 

😂

[iacas]

36 minutes ago, aenemated said:

I won't argue with @iacas because he's a pro and I'm not.

 

No, no. We don't disagree that it's bad… we just disagree that he's DEAD from there. He could still recover, but it still wouldn't be great.

 

I'd still work on the early backswing stuff. It affects everything that comes after. And makes sense from a road map perspective, as the two options are:

• Fix the downswing.
• When that's good, fix the backswing… which will then change the downswing again, so…
• Fix the downswing again.

Or

• Fix the backswing.
• Fix the downswing.

I just disagreed with how "bad" the backswing was. He could recover from there. He's not totally dead. But it's not great. 😄 

[aenemated]

4 minutes ago, iacas said:

I just disagreed with how "bad" the backswing was. He could recover from there. He's not totally dead. But it's not great. 😄 

 

My all-time best friend and nemesis once told me ... "One of these days, Trent ... I'm going to teach you some tact."

 

He never did. 😂

[Dufferonius]

7 minutes ago, iacas said:

I'd still work on the early backswing stuff. It affects everything that comes after.

This ^^^^^

 

Just fixing my back-swing, early in my swing training, resulted in a night and day difference in my ball striking.  Almost entirely gone was my typical miss (a slice).  Just fixing my back-swing had me fairly consistently hitting 'em mostly straight or with a baby draw, sometimes a baby fade.

Sure, I'd still occasionally hook one, slice one, turn out a line drive or worm burner, but, they became more the exceptions than the rules.

 

My down-swing was still far from optimal (too much arms, coming down too steeply, stalling my hips), but, by fixing my back-swing it no longer had compensations in it.  I guess you could say my down-swing had become relatively consistently sub-optimal in a predictable way 

 

[iacas]

1 hour ago, aenemated said:

 

My all-time best friend and nemesis once told me ... "One of these days, Trent ... I'm going to teach you some tact."

 

He never did. 😂

 

I didn't take anything you said badly or negatively or anything. All good on my end.

Edited June 19, 2023 by iacas