Please save my driver swing

[sadclevelandsports]

Hey all,

 

I've seen some similar threads, but I thought I'd post my own with a video to see if anyone may be able to diagnose my issue. I have some history with baseball and a lot of history with tennis, so my swing speed is the only part of my game that is a tick above abysmal. I don't seem to have any (big) trouble with the rest of my bag, but I cannot seem to get my driver ballspeed to a compareable level as my other clubs. As an example, my 3 wood ballspeed off the deck is around 156 mph. I struggle to get my driver ballspeed to 152 mph. I have no problems with a swing that is aimed somewhat downward, but for some reason, hitting up feels terribly awkward to me. Any help would be much appreciated. Have spent way too much time stressing about this.

 

https://youtube.com/shorts/hmbkSlByUKw

[Valtiel]

I'll be honest, based on your description I was expecting something much different. That is a pretty good looking swing! None of the normal things I would expect with someone complaining of power leaks with the driver. Are you sure of the accuracy of these ballspeed numbers? I ask not only because your swing looks good, but that also looks a lot like a practice bay at a PGASS, and the one near me has a very inaccurate simulator setup, especially with the longer clubs. Ball speed, clubhead speed, spin, all pretty dodgy with the driver. 

You also mention being uncomfortable hitting up on the ball, which is fine, but you have the ball tee'd pretty high in this video (maybe not by choice with the rubber tee) and I wonder if you do this on the course or not. I prefer to be pretty level with my driver as well and I tee it on the lower side. Without any obvious major swing flaws, the most likely culprit for low ball speed is going to be contact issues, which could easily be an issue if you're struggling with AoA and tee height. Do you have a normal impact pattern? Have you used contact tape or foot spray to check your strike locations on the face before? Have you verified these ball speed issues either on a different system or seen the problem manifest on the course?

[sadclevelandsports]

1 hour ago, Valtiel said:

I'll be honest, based on your description I was expecting something much different. That is a pretty good looking swing! None of the normal things I would expect with someone complaining of power leaks with the driver. Are you sure of the accuracy of these ballspeed numbers? I ask not only because your swing looks good, but that also looks a lot like a practice bay at a PGASS, and the one near me has a very inaccurate simulator setup, especially with the longer clubs. Ball speed, clubhead speed, spin, all pretty dodgy with the driver. 

You also mention being uncomfortable hitting up on the ball, which is fine, but you have the ball tee'd pretty high in this video (maybe not by choice with the rubber tee) and I wonder if you do this on the course or not. I prefer to be pretty level with my driver as well and I tee it on the lower side. Without any obvious major swing flaws, the most likely culprit for low ball speed is going to be contact issues, which could easily be an issue if you're struggling with AoA and tee height. Do you have a normal impact pattern? Have you used contact tape or foot spray to check your strike locations on the face before? Have you verified these ball speed issues either on a different system or seen the problem manifest on the course?

 

Hey thanks so much for the response. 

 

So the only numbers I really have are from the bays at PGASS, and I never questioned them, but I suppose I trust those values too much. That being said, I do feel as though i get more oomph out of my 3 wood than my driver. 

 

My general golf knowledge is limited as I only started playing around the start of the pandemic, but I've pretty much had the idea that I should tee it high and have the highest AOA as humanly possible shoved down my throat. I do use foot spray, but for some reason, even out of the middle, my ballspeed doesn't seem to go up. Granted, it's all over the face most of the time haha. Also, I feel like when I hit it higher in the face, my launch goes up which helps distance even though my ball speed drops. I just can't get my swing to angle up enough.

 

I know chasing numbers is not smart, but I just feel like I should be getting a bit more from my driver. I have tried teeing it lower, but my launch drops and my spin goes through the roof (at least based on the GC2 they have at PGA).  

[Valtiel]

43 minutes ago, sadclevelandsports said:

 

Hey thanks so much for the response. 

 

So the only numbers I really have are from the bays at PGASS, and I never questioned them, but I suppose I trust those values too much. That being said, I do feel as though i get more oomph out of my 3 wood than my driver. 

 

My general golf knowledge is limited as I only started playing around the start of the pandemic, but I've pretty much had the idea that I should tee it high and have the highest AOA as humanly possible shoved down my throat. I do use foot spray, but for some reason, even out of the middle, my ballspeed doesn't seem to go up. Granted, it's all over the face most of the time haha. Also, I feel like when I hit it higher in the face, my launch goes up which helps distance even though my ball speed drops. I just can't get my swing to angle up enough.

 

I know chasing numbers is not smart, but I just feel like I should be getting a bit more from my driver. I have tried teeing it lower, but my launch drops and my spin goes through the roof (at least based on the GC2 they have at PGA).  

Yeah if trying to hit up on the ball too much is compromising your ability to find the sweet spot then you lose all the benefits of a positive AoA and then some. Hitting down 5* and finding the center will always outperform hitting up 5* and pollocking the face. 😅

I would recommend forgetting about AoA for right now and start experimenting with tee height and finding what is the most consistent and comfortable for you. Then if you want to dive deeper you can take advantage of the Gapping Session that PGASS offers which basically just allows you to use a GCQuad for 90min with a technician for whatever fitting purposes you want. Take in your 3w and driver to get some accurate numbers to figure out where any discrepancies are. You may as well get your numbers from the other clubs while you're there as well. 👍

Edited April 29, 2021 by Valtiel

[BraxtonFullerton]

I don't mean to be that guy; but even with your smiley face added in, I see an awful lot of head movement in your swing too... unedited might help just a little more...

[sadclevelandsports]

1 hour ago, BraxtonFullerton said:

I don't mean to be that guy; but even with your smiley face added in, I see an awful lot of head movement in your swing too... unedited might help just a little more...

 

Not at all, I appreciate the help. My head tends to move right as my arms extend after I make contact, but I really have to actively think about it otherwise it turns into a metal headbang. 

[sadclevelandsports]

Though I guess in this swing, it's moving a bit more that I would like..

[sadclevelandsports]

Just a quick update, I went and had a driver fitting at PGASS yesterday (mostly just to use the GC quad), and found a few interesting findings..

 

- Swing speed is actually decent, between 115-118 mph. 

- 50-50 split for AOA marginally up and down, close to zero

- Face contact seems to prefer the low heel area.

- Launch seems odd? Dynamic loft seems to be 13-16*, with launch consistently below 8.5*. Can't seem to really get it higher. 

- My low ball speeds seem to be related to contact, my low heely ones are in the neighborhood of 154-158, my middle of the face ones just up to 168. 

 

So like what was suspected, the delivery and contact are the issue. Interestingly, the contact is consistently bad (as in consistently low heel). Should I just step back half a ball and raise the tee? I'm also assuming my low launch has to do with AOA, anyone have advice on how I can raise this without feeling so awkward? 

 

Thanks all.

 

[BraxtonFullerton]

Ehh, you're starting to get into the ticky-tacky here, you need to be properly fitted into a setup that works for your swing.

[sadclevelandsports]

12 minutes ago, BraxtonFullerton said:

Ehh, you're starting to get into the ticky-tacky here, you need to be properly fitted into a setup that works for your swing.

Haha what do you mean by ticky-tacky?

 

I paid for a fitting yesterday at PGASS, huge waste of time and luckily only $50. My rudimentary knowledge seemed to outpace my fitter's knowledge on fitting (I expected way more from him since he worked at club champion prior to PGASS).

[BraxtonFullerton]

I meant that with your swing as fast as it is, you're probably not going to be able to make too many conscious changes to get different results with your driver. You're in a space where you need a TXG level fitting to fine tune everything and manage your strike point, etc.

[sadclevelandsports]

Honestly, if it's worth it to slow down, rebuild a swing, and revisit speed later, I wouldn't be that averse to it. I'm early enough into my golf career that it makes sense instead of building bad long term habits. That said, it's a shame...I was hoping some wise golf gurus on the wrx could give me the magic couple tweaks to fix my swing issues and save me $$$ on lessons..

[Valtiel]

1 hour ago, sadclevelandsports said:

Honestly, if it's worth it to slow down, rebuild a swing, and revisit speed later, I wouldn't be that averse to it. I'm early enough into my golf career that it makes sense instead of building bad long term habits. That said, it's a shame...I was hoping some wise golf gurus on the wrx could give me the magic couple tweaks to fix my swing issues and save me $$$ on lessons..

Coming back to your video again with the knowledge of your miss, I would slow down and work on rotational depth. I feel like I end up mentioning in almost every topic, but it is such a common issue that it warrants being a broken record. There was another guy on here with an almost identical problem, high speed and a bad heel miss, and his lower body traveled miles towards the ball to the point that he was practically falling over. While not has bad, your original video seems to indicate a similar issue, although I can't say how much because it is cut off behind you. If you get a video similar to the original one but further back so we can see your whole body then I can do a more detailed visual breakdown of what I suspect is going on there and point you towards some solutions. 

[sadclevelandsports]

11 hours ago, Valtiel said:

Coming back to your video again with the knowledge of your miss, I would slow down and work on rotational depth. I feel like I end up mentioning in almost every topic, but it is such a common issue that it warrants being a broken record. There was another guy on here with an almost identical problem, high speed and a bad heel miss, and his lower body traveled miles towards the ball to the point that he was practically falling over. While not has bad, your original video seems to indicate a similar issue, although I can't say how much because it is cut off behind you. If you get a video similar to the original one but further back so we can see your whole body then I can do a more detailed visual breakdown of what I suspect is going on there and point you towards some solutions. 

 

Thanks for the tip. I found a video from a few months back, but don't think my swing has changed drastically since then. Sorry about the smiley, I don't think I'm that important, but it's the internet so can't be too cautious. 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHLTig3UKYU

 

Edit: just fyi, the hitting direction is slightly off to the left, sorry I don't have a straight on view

Edited June 30, 2021 by sadclevelandsports

[Valtiel]

On 6/30/2021 at 4:44 AM, sadclevelandsports said:

 

Thanks for the tip. I found a video from a few months back, but don't think my swing has changed drastically since then. Sorry about the smiley, I don't think I'm that important, but it's the internet so can't be too cautious. 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHLTig3UKYU

 

Edit: just fyi, the hitting direction is slightly off to the left, sorry I don't have a straight on view

No worries, that was all I needed to confirm what I was hypothesizing. 



Lots of great stuff here including a steep takeaway and a lovely shallowing/laying off of the club putting it very close to your original plane line. I'll use Rahm as a comparison since he is obviously similarly laid off at the top:



Here we'll highlight the few bits that just need cleaning up in your overall motion. Starting with your address posture, you're a little bent over and appear to leaning out towards the ball a bit with your shoulders out in front of your feet. This is a bit of an unbalanced position and is one of the causes of the loss of hip depth we are seeing as your body is correcting the imbalance during the swing and thus moving towards the ball. The problem is that without moderate compensation, which you're likely still attempting unconsciously, this shifts everything else towards the ball, including your hands, which naturally starts lining you up for heel strikes.

Despite the setup issue however, you still rotate and maintain your spine angle extremely well. Comparing you to Rahm however, we see that your pelvis and hands are both moving out towards the ball. Throughout his swing, Rahm's backside is constantly bumping up against that red line, meaning that his hips are staying "centered" throughout the swing, also known as maintaining their depth (distance from the ball). This means his hands are able to come down much closer to where they started which is one of the keys to consistent ball striking. The bottom line is that if you are going to rotate aggressively to generate power with an equally aggressive shallowing of the club in transition, you need to maintain your hip depth to take advantage of these positions. 

The first things I would work on then are getting more balanced at address and really focusing on maintaining your hip depth in transition. It looks like a lot of your energy is going towards firing that right hip out in the downswing and from a more balanced setup position you'll want to shift that intention more towards your left hip turning back. The goal is for the axis of your hip rotation to be your spine since that keeps your hips in place depth wise. Pumping on your right leg/hip really hard shifts that axis more towards your left hip, causes your hips to swing towards the ball more like a door, creating the strike issues you're talking about. 

I hope that helps! Please post some more videos if you get a chance to work on this things. 👍

[sadclevelandsports]

1 hour ago, Valtiel said:

No worries, that was all I needed to confirm what I was hypothesizing. 



Lots of great stuff here including a steep takeaway and a lovely shallowing/laying off of the club putting it very close to your original plane line. I'll use Rahm as a comparison since he is obviously similarly laid off at the top:



Here we'll highlight the few bits that just need cleaning up in your overall motion. Starting with your address posture, you're a little bent over and appear to leaning out towards the ball a bit with your shoulders out in front of your feet. This is a bit of an unbalanced position and is one of the causes of the loss of hip depth we are seeing as your body is correcting the imbalance during the swing and thus moving towards the ball. The problem is that without moderate compensation, which you're likely still attempting unconsciously, this shifts everything else towards the ball, including your hands, which naturally starts lining you up for heel strikes.

Despite the setup issue however, you still rotate and maintain your spine angle extremely well. Comparing you to Rahm however, we see that your pelvis and hands are both moving out towards the ball. Throughout his swing, Rahm's backside is constantly bumping up against that red line, meaning that his hips are staying "centered" throughout the swing, also known as maintaining their depth (distance from the ball). This means his hands are able to come down much closer to where they started which is one of the keys to consistent ball striking. The bottom line is that if you are going to rotate aggressively to generate power with an equally aggressive shallowing of the club in transition, you need to maintain your hip depth to take advantage of these positions. 

The first things I would work on then are getting more balanced at address and really focusing on maintaining your hip depth in transition. It looks like a lot of your energy is going towards firing that right hip out in the downswing and from a more balanced setup position you'll want to shift that intention more towards your left hip turning back. The goal is for the axis of your hip rotation to be your spine since that keeps your hips in place depth wise. Pumping on your right leg/hip really hard shifts that axis more towards your left hip, causes your hips to swing towards the ball more like a door, creating the strike issues you're talking about. 

I hope that helps! Please post some more videos if you get a chance to work on this things. 👍

 

Oh gosh, thanks so much. It's crazy how much detail you got out of a single video. Really appreciate the help!! So the skinny version would be that I am too hunched forward at address and that  I need to keep my left butt out more during the rotation closer to the starting line. A question for you would be, how do the pros do the whole "jumping" up on the left leg thing while keeping the left hip out? I hear Rory talking about it all the time that he rapidly straightens the left leg at impact, but is that doable without extending the spine? Is he just jumping towards the back instead of up?

 

Thanks again, your analysis has so much detail, and I appreciate you taking the time to do a writeup!

[Valtiel]

7 hours ago, sadclevelandsports said:

 

Oh gosh, thanks so much. It's crazy how much detail you got out of a single video. Really appreciate the help!! So the skinny version would be that I am too hunched forward at address and that  I need to keep my left butt out more during the rotation closer to the starting line. A question for you would be, how do the pros do the whole "jumping" up on the left leg thing while keeping the left hip out? I hear Rory talking about it all the time that he rapidly straightens the left leg at impact, but is that doable without extending the spine? Is he just jumping towards the back instead of up?

 

Thanks again, your analysis has so much detail, and I appreciate you taking the time to do a writeup!

You're welcome!

The whole concept of using the ground and "jumping" needs to be viewed separately. It isn't a matter of jumping while trying to do anything with your left leg/hip, but rather completing your hip action and THEN jumping. All the hip rotation, depth, and clearing happens first, with the jumping just being a form of aggressive extension to create more power. 

With regards to spine angle, that is a matter of flexibility and yes, will often result in at least a little bit of loss. That is why the more prolific "jumpers" tend to have more upright swings and/or posture as someone much more bent over like say, Keegan Bradley, would be forced to either lose a lot of his tilt when trying to jump which would create a lot of consistency issues, or exert a tremendous amount of compression on his lower spine to maintain that tilt, likely resulting in injury. 

[sadclevelandsports]

On 7/2/2021 at 6:26 AM, Valtiel said:

You're welcome!

The whole concept of using the ground and "jumping" needs to be viewed separately. It isn't a matter of jumping while trying to do anything with your left leg/hip, but rather completing your hip action and THEN jumping. All the hip rotation, depth, and clearing happens first, with the jumping just being a form of aggressive extension to create more power. 

With regards to spine angle, that is a matter of flexibility and yes, will often result in at least a little bit of loss. That is why the more prolific "jumpers" tend to have more upright swings and/or posture as someone much more bent over like say, Keegan Bradley, would be forced to either lose a lot of his tilt when trying to jump which would create a lot of consistency issues, or exert a tremendous amount of compression on his lower spine to maintain that tilt, likely resulting in injury. 

 

Made a couple changes, slowed down a bit and followed your advice. Still feels really uncomfortable, but I feel like progress is slowly coming. Thankfully I have tall ceilings so I can practice at home without angering the wife...

 

https://youtube.com/shorts/cV9HBR7Mn4I

[BraxtonFullerton]

Geez. I wish I could do that move at the top of my swing to shallow out.

[sadclevelandsports]

14 hours ago, BraxtonFullerton said:

Geez. I wish I could do that move at the top of my swing to shallow out.

Thanks to y'all's advice and some clay ballard on the YouTube 😁

[phizzy30]

On 6/29/2021 at 8:41 AM, sadclevelandsports said:

Just a quick update, I went and had a driver fitting at PGASS yesterday (mostly just to use the GC quad), and found a few interesting findings..

 

- Swing speed is actually decent, between 115-118 mph. 

- 50-50 split for AOA marginally up and down, close to zero

- Face contact seems to prefer the low heel area.

- Launch seems odd? Dynamic loft seems to be 13-16*, with launch consistently below 8.5*. Can't seem to really get it higher. 

- My low ball speeds seem to be related to contact, my low heely ones are in the neighborhood of 154-158, my middle of the face ones just up to 168. 

 

So like what was suspected, the delivery and contact are the issue. Interestingly, the contact is consistently bad (as in consistently low heel). Should I just step back half a ball and raise the tee? I'm also assuming my low launch has to do with AOA, anyone have advice on how I can raise this without feeling so awkward? 

 

Thanks all.

 

I'm right there with you in terms of ss.  I have a baseball back round as well.  We baseball guys are taught to drive with our hips and incorporate as much hand speed(late release) as possible so we are already ahead of the curve compared to most golfers.  168 ball speed is pretty low.  Mine is at 175.  This tells me your issue is probably contact and you could have a dead driver head.  Also, you don't need to really hit up on the ball, just a little bit.  My AoA is 0 to +3 and it works perfectly fine. 

[Valtiel]

On 7/4/2021 at 9:47 AM, sadclevelandsports said:

 

Made a couple changes, slowed down a bit and followed your advice. Still feels really uncomfortable, but I feel like progress is slowly coming. Thankfully I have tall ceilings so I can practice at home without angering the wife...

 

https://youtube.com/shorts/cV9HBR7Mn4I

Hah! Angry wife prevention is definitely a good swing tip as well 😅

Can you describe what feels uncomfortable? Even though you have a lot of great stuff going and some enviable lines like Braxton commented on above, none of that is any good if it feels uncomfortable to the point that you don't strike the ball well. 

We may want to visit a "too much of a good thing" theory here in terms of your takeaway and downswing. You're coming up steep and keeping the club in front of you really wall followed by the aggressive and powerful transition move you have, but the club *is* rerouting a decent amount. It is rerouting to a good place mind you, but that much movement might not be agreeing with your head, in which case I would look at actually connecting your backswing a little more and bringing your hands and club more straight back. Right now your hands work away from you a decent amount in your takeaway, and that combined with the aggressive shallowing means that despite all the good positions, the clubhead is moving around quite a lot and may never be fully "stabilizing" in a path sense, at least as far as you feel is concerned. I'll give an example; I idolized Fred Couples as kid, but any time I tried to mimic that sort of swing, namely the wide, steeper takeaway, I would feel like the necessary rerouting took too much time in transition for how my body wanted to move, and thus I felt like the whole downswing was spent shallowing and I never got a sense that I was working towards the ball in a neutral enough path. Just a thought!

[sadclevelandsports]

On 7/5/2021 at 7:42 PM, phizzy30 said:

I'm right there with you in terms of ss.  I have a baseball back round as well.  We baseball guys are taught to drive with our hips and incorporate as much hand speed(late release) as possible so we are already ahead of the curve compared to most golfers.  168 ball speed is pretty low.  Mine is at 175.  This tells me your issue is probably contact and you could have a dead driver head.  Also, you don't need to really hit up on the ball, just a little bit.  My AoA is 0 to +3 and it works perfectly fine. 

That's good to know!  Also learning that the true center of mass is actually the upper outer quadrant of the drawn sweet spot circle, and I'm on the opposite spot, so no wonder my efficiency is crap..

Edited July 7, 2021 by sadclevelandsports

[sadclevelandsports]

10 hours ago, Valtiel said:

Hah! Angry wife prevention is definitely a good swing tip as well 😅

Can you describe what feels uncomfortable? Even though you have a lot of great stuff going and some enviable lines like Braxton commented on above, none of that is any good if it feels uncomfortable to the point that you don't strike the ball well. 

We may want to visit a "too much of a good thing" theory here in terms of your takeaway and downswing. You're coming up steep and keeping the club in front of you really wall followed by the aggressive and powerful transition move you have, but the club *is* rerouting a decent amount. It is rerouting to a good place mind you, but that much movement might not be agreeing with your head, in which case I would look at actually connecting your backswing a little more and bringing your hands and club more straight back. Right now your hands work away from you a decent amount in your takeaway, and that combined with the aggressive shallowing means that despite all the good positions, the clubhead is moving around quite a lot and may never be fully "stabilizing" in a path sense, at least as far as you feel is concerned. I'll give an example; I idolized Fred Couples as kid, but any time I tried to mimic that sort of swing, namely the wide, steeper takeaway, I would feel like the necessary rerouting took too much time in transition for how my body wanted to move, and thus I felt like the whole downswing was spent shallowing and I never got a sense that I was working towards the ball in a neutral enough path. Just a thought!

 

I appreciate it! That's actually close to my iron swing as well. I think the discomfort is still related to getting away from a downward AOA, but it's getting more comfortable with time.

[rooski]

On 7/6/2021 at 11:19 AM, sadclevelandsports said:

I think the discomfort is still related to getting away from a downward AOA, but it's getting more comfortable with time.

 

FWIW, according to Jack Nicklaus and the teachers I've learned from, much of this can be fixed in setup. If you're addressing the ball with a driver the same way you do with an iron, it's going to be an incredibly hard move to adjust your swing to hit upwards when you're all setup to hit down on it. 

 

Purely from my anecdotal thoughts, when I address a driver, I put the ball very slightly more forward in my stance, and I adjust my spine angle so that I'm just very gently leaning backwards (away from the target) compared to where I would be with an iron. This sets you up to hit marginally up on the ball.

 

Granted I'm no golf teacher so please don't take anything I say as fact, but I do have 125-130 mph driver swing speed and drive the ball 330-340 at sea level so I must be doing something right with the dumb club.

 

The teacher that originally had me setup with a driver like this taught from an old school method pioneered by a guy named Mike Austin. There's lots of videos if you look it up and want to explore this idea further. Not too long back I got a lesson from one of the top teaching pros in Oregon who also teaches an old school fundamentals based game, and he set me up similarly. The way he put it was that I should feel like I'm pushing my left hip very slightly to the target at address.

Edited July 8, 2021 by rooski

[Righty to Lefty]

On 4/28/2021 at 2:18 PM, sadclevelandsports said:

Hey all,

 

I've seen some similar threads, but I thought I'd post my own with a video to see if anyone may be able to diagnose my issue. I have some history with baseball and a lot of history with tennis, so my swing speed is the only part of my game that is a tick above abysmal. I don't seem to have any (big) trouble with the rest of my bag, but I cannot seem to get my driver ballspeed to a compareable level as my other clubs. As an example, my 3 wood ballspeed off the deck is around 156 mph. I struggle to get my driver ballspeed to 152 mph. I have no problems with a swing that is aimed somewhat downward, but for some reason, hitting up feels terribly awkward to me. Any help would be much appreciated. Have spent way too much time stressing about this.

 

https://youtube.com/shorts/hmbkSlByUKw

You have a great swing motion..but you are inefficient and I can tell because you are hitting down on your driver.   This is evidenced in two ways...the first obvious one is where the ball hit on the net even though the ball is teed up pretty well. The second one is the plane of your shoulders should be much more to the right of the target line than it is if your intent is to hit a ball with a positive angle of attack and heavy leverage.  This perfectly explains why you hit fairway woods well and struggle with driver and that is because you are creating fairway wood  impact conditions with your driver.  You should be feeling like your shoulders are oriented well right of the target line to hit up on driver with leverage. 

 

This is a video  of me hitting a straight ball with driver.  The plane of my swing is aimed at the building in the far left of the screen and barely visible. Your shoulders are parallel to your target line and that is where you are compromising leverage.  The more up your AoA is the more right your plane will be of your target line for a right handed golfer hitting driver.  This is just literally the math of things and please ask further questions if you are unclear on something that I said as I'm tryin to not get to wordy until you are catching on to the concept. 

 

 

This video will seem dense at first but this is the math of the game that we are all subject to and the more you understand it the steeper your learning curve will become as you can then quickly diagnose any shot that you or anybody hits.  

 

Edited July 8, 2021 by Righty to Lefty

[sadclevelandsports]

19 hours ago, rooski said:

 

FWIW, according to Jack Nicklaus and the teachers I've learned from, much of this can be fixed in setup. If you're addressing the ball with a driver the same way you do with an iron, it's going to be an incredibly hard move to adjust your swing to hit upwards when you're all setup to hit down on it. 

 

Purely from my anecdotal thoughts, when I address a driver, I put the ball very slightly more forward in my stance, and I adjust my spine angle so that I'm just very gently leaning backwards (away from the target) compared to where I would be with an iron. This sets you up to hit marginally up on the ball.

 

Granted I'm no golf teacher so please don't take anything I say as fact, but I do have 125-130 mph driver swing speed and drive the ball 330-340 at sea level so I must be doing something right with the dumb club.

 

The teacher that originally had me setup with a driver like this taught from an old school method pioneered by a guy named Mike Austin. There's lots of videos if you look it up and want to explore this idea further. Not too long back I got a lesson from one of the top teaching pros in Oregon who also teaches an old school fundamentals based game, and he set me up similarly. The way he put it was that I should feel like I'm pushing my left hip very slightly to the target at address.

Dang you're crushing your driver..

I'll definitely check him out, thanks!

[sadclevelandsports]

13 hours ago, Righty to Lefty said:

You have a great swing motion..but you are inefficient and I can tell because you are hitting down on your driver.   This is evidenced in two ways...the first obvious one is where the ball hit on the net even though the ball is teed up pretty well. The second one is the plane of your shoulders should be much more to the right of the target line than it is if your intent is to hit a ball with a positive angle of attack and heavy leverage.  This perfectly explains why you hit fairway woods well and struggle with driver and that is because you are creating fairway wood  impact conditions with your driver.  You should be feeling like your shoulders are oriented well right of the target line to hit up on driver with leverage. 

 

This is a video  of me hitting a straight ball with driver.  The plane of my swing is aimed at the building in the far left of the screen and barely visible. Your shoulders are parallel to your target line and that is where you are compromising leverage.  The more up your AoA is the more right your plane will be of your target line for a right handed golfer hitting driver.  This is just literally the math of things and please ask further questions if you are unclear on something that I said as I'm tryin to not get to wordy until you are catching on to the concept. 

 

 

This video will seem dense at first but this is the math of the game that we are all subject to and the more you understand it the steeper your learning curve will become as you can then quickly diagnose any shot that you or anybody hits.  

 

Tried to watch the D plane video when I woke up this morning, didn't go so well 😂😂

[Righty to Lefty]

On 7/9/2021 at 1:11 AM, sadclevelandsports said:

Tried to watch the D plane video when I woke up this morning, didn't go so well 😂😂

That is how I was initially when I was exposed to it as it seemed like it was a foreign language!! I was determined to understand it though and kept watching it over and over and then all of a sudden it clicked and a whole new level of understanding was opened up.  

 

The basic premise is that there is only one point along the swing arc that will produce an intended shot and so you have to marry club face and club path inline with those intentions to execute any given shot.  If you need further explanation please don't hesitate to ask and I will try to explain it in a different way until it clicks. The D Plane and ball flight laws are all that are required to understand the math of hitting every possible golf shot and also interpreting ball flight. Here is a more simple version that I found years ago that I used to help a former tour pro understand the concept of why the train track reference that was often used was wrong and can't be because no shot is stuck at low point. This is by far the most simple basic and best explanation of the D Plane I've ever seen even though the video is 8 years old. This also is the reason why I know that you are inefficient with your driver just by looking at your setup. When I saw the plane of your swing or shoulder line was parallel to the target line with a ball on a tee you were doomed from the start unless you understood that to hit target with leverage would need to play a fade OR hit way down on the ball and play a draw which I wouldn't suggest. 

 

 

Edited July 11, 2021 by Righty to Lefty