High Fade with Woods - What is wrong here?

[rwillis978]

Hi all - I have been struggling the past two seasons keeping my 3 wood to my natural ball flight (average height, slight fade). When it comes to my three wood, I am almost always hitting a ballooning fade - losing distance, lots of spin, and just simply unreliable. From the videos below, anything in particular stick out as recommendations? 

 

Video 1

 

Video 2

Edited April 12, 2021 by rwillis978
video

[BraxtonFullerton]

Couple things I noticed immediately. Especially in Vid 2:

 

 

Your grip here is SUPER off. That V shape between your thumb & fingers should be pointing at your back shoulder, it's pointing towards your front.

 

And now that I'm seeing it, seeing the rest of your swing feels like it's a byproduct of "wiping" the clubface across the ball. You trail arm gets stuck coming into your body and you're not generating the torque and speed you could be... don't be afraid to get that bottom elbow even lower:

Get it right onto your back hip & have it along for the ride as you open up:

 

Edited April 12, 2021 by BraxtonFullerton

[rwillis978]

Thanks @BraxtonFullerton! I appreciate the time you took into breaking this down.

 

Time for me to hit the range and work on this. I will report back.. hopefully with some positive results. 

 

One note that I should have pointed out - the grip is certainly off, I agree. I was tinkering with the grip during that range session, and generally isn't as severe as shown in that video. Ill definitely keep this in mind though!

[rwillis978]

@BraxtonFullerton - take a peek at todays work. Not sure that it LOOKS a whole lot different, but things sure felt different. Will take plenty of more practice, but i was starting to see some results... or at least I hope I was 

 

3 Wood - 4.12.21 - Update

[Righty to Lefty]

On 4/12/2021 at 4:13 AM, rwillis978 said:

Hi all - I have been struggling the past two seasons keeping my 3 wood to my natural ball flight (average height, slight fade). When it comes to my three wood, I am almost always hitting a ballooning fade - losing distance, lots of spin, and just simply unreliable. From the videos below, anything in particular stick out as recommendations? 

 

Video 1

 

Video 2

You have the single weakest bottom hand grip I have ever seen!! Yeah you are going to have to sure that up first which may take a while as even going to a neutral grip is going to feel terrible I'm sure.  But yeah first things first work towards getting that grip at least back to neutral.  

[Righty to Lefty]

5 hours ago, rwillis978 said:

@BraxtonFullerton - take a peek at todays work. Not sure that it LOOKS a whole lot different, but things sure felt different. Will take plenty of more practice, but i was starting to see some results... or at least I hope I was 

 

3 Wood - 4.12.21 - Update

The ball flight looks to be pretty straight with that one but it will depend on what your end game is. Yes you come over the top...but...if you can control the club face which it appears you did in that shot, and you feel like you can reliably repeat it, then learn to aim it and go play golf!  So long as you know your "flaws" and manage them there is no reason you can't play functional golf. I say this because correcting one thing will require an adjustment in another area and it takes a lot of time and effort which you may not be interested in giving. Best of Luck. 

 

R to L

[rwillis978]

This is the honesty that I was looking for @Righty to Lefty... I might just start from scratch and go lefty at this point

[Righty to Lefty]

3 minutes ago, rwillis978 said:

This is the honesty that I was looking for @Righty to Lefty... I might just start from scratch and go lefty at this point

That is exactly what I did! Hence the name!! I wouldn't exactly suggest it but it is up to you!! 

[rwillis978]

Haha I think I will stick to righty for the foreseeable future

[Valtiel]

I agree with Braxton, and i'll add a few things as well. The first being that there are several severe flaws here that will likely feel very weird trying to correct on your own. 

1) Unorthodox grip. Your grip is both overly weak in both hands and not connected well (hands appear very far apart). I agree with Braxton in that this the source of of many issues. A weak grip requires face rotation be kept to a minimum throughout the swing (see Morikawa as a good example) since the weak grip gives you less wrist power/range of motion to square the clubface. Unfortunately.....

2) Massive clubface rotation throughout the swing:



The clubface should be similar to the plane of your right arm, and we can see they aren't close, it is extremely open. You have also overotated and your arms have disconnected from your body, especially that flying right elbow and heavily cupped left wrist. EVERYTHING about this is working against your weak grip and your brain knows this, hence why it is now going to deploy a number of compensations. 

First you come very far over the top and your lower body thrust towards the ball. This is all to get your path going out to in so you can manage the extremely open clubface. Next you throw away all of your angles and get into an extremely cast/flip position, again to manage the open clubface:



These positions are very problematic as they are extreme flip/cast moves that will rob you of consistency and power. The fact that you play to a single digit handicap is pretty impressive, because this is a 15+ handicap swing to put it very bluntly. You'll have to decide whether you want to unpack all this with a professional to improve or just continue as is if you're having fun. You have obviously found ways to compensate for all these swings flaws and fixing them will likely be tough. If you want to start on your own, neutralizing your grip is a must first step:



Use this as a general guide ^^^

Hopefully that will actually help everything downstream if you practice with it. If it doesn't then post some more vids here if you want to go deeper. 

[rwillis978]

Thanks @Valtiel - Ill tell you one thing... im not here to just keep having fun. There is plenty of work to be done. You've lit a fire under me. I will not remain to look like a "15+ handicap." I will be back with updates next week. I've always been aware of the "flip" that occurs to correct for other mistakes... but you are right when it comes to reducing distance and consistency. 

 

In all honesty - thank you for the time you put into analyzing this, it is appreciated. 

Edited April 13, 2021 by rwillis978
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