Extremely Closed Face in Back Swing

[mustang6298]

Hey guys, been having trouble with shutting the face too much in my takeaway. I feel like this shut face makes it difficult to sequence my backswing, hit solid shots, and maintain good arm structure. Could anyone provide feedback on the cause and how to fix this issue?

 

I've attached a slo-no DTL video as a YouTube link. Please let me know if it doesn’t work! Thanks in advance

 

https://youtube.com/shorts/E8L27r0WmTs?feature=share

[Valtiel]

Your clubface is definitely shut in your initial takeaway up to P2, but by the time the club reaches the top of your backswing I would say it is only *slightly* shut, nothing extreme. 

The main thing that is going to cause issues is your steepness coming down into the ball. Your hands get very high and deep at the top of the backswing, a bit too much for a 7i in my opinion, and from this position your hands come out towards the ball in transition and the shaft steepens. It is that steepness that will be the main factor in difficulty hitting solid shots since it forces you to time your low point with more moving parts. I will do a sequence breakdown tomorrow showing you what this looks like and leave some suggestions. 👍

Edited May 3, 2021 by Valtiel

[mustang6298]

3 hours ago, Valtiel said:

Your clubface is definitely a shut in your initial takeaway up to P2, but by the time the club reaches the top of your backswing I would say it is only *slightly* shut, nothing extreme. 

The main thing that is going to cause issues is your steepness coming down into the ball. Your hands get very high and deep at the top of the backswing, a bit too much for a 7i in my opinion, and from this position your hands come out towards the ball in transition and the shaft steepens. It is that steepness that will be the main factor in difficulty hitting solid shots since it forces you to time your low point with more moving parts. I will do a sequence breakdown tomorrow showing you what this looks like and leave some suggestions. 👍

I appreciate the feedback, thank you. So how would you like to see my backswing restructured? I’ve tried to eliminate the flying elbow and keep it more tucked, but I’ve had a lot of difficulty changing that move. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

[Valtiel]

17 hours ago, mustang6298 said:

I appreciate the feedback, thank you. So how would you like to see my backswing restructured? I’ve tried to eliminate the flying elbow and keep it more tucked, but I’ve had a lot of difficulty changing that move. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Sure thing! So there are a few things to address here I think:



There is lots of markup, but bear with me and i'll explain what they mean.

Starting in Panel #1, we have a line on your backside monitoring your hip depth, a line on your head for posture/height, a dot on your hands which will be references at the end, and the shaft plane you have established at address to be referenced late. On the surface this looks like a nice neutral posture, but take note of your hand position. In order for your hands to return to this spot, which is the goal, that space needs to be available to get to. More on this later. 

In Panel #2 we see what you were talking about with the shut face, but I don't think this is an issue. Hip turn is alright, maybe a little too much travel in the left hip, but the problems don't really start until...

Panel #3 shows the hands and arms starting to get around more behind you and rotating the clubface more open. Normally we'd want to see the hands somewhere in front of your chest, but yours are in what would be considered a disconnected position here.

On to Panel #4 at the top of your backswing and your hands are very deep with the club pointing across the line somewhat. This is just simply too much backswing for what looks like a short/mid iron and far too disconnected. If we look at someone with high hands like Justin Thomas:



His hands are right over the balls of his feet and the club is square and neutral. 



Your hands however are off your back heel and the club is pointing right of target. 

Returning back to Panel #4, we now have a kinematic problem. Your goal is to get the shaft to match that line you established at address by the time you reach the ball, but the club is facing a very different direction and your hands are really far behind you. In order to get the club on plane from this position, you would need some pretty aggressive bowing of your left wrist coupled with some extension (bending back) in your right wrist. Your hands would also need to drop straight down and your hips would need to maintain depth in order to keep the space free you created at address.....

Unfortunately the opposite of all of those things happens in Panel #5. Your hands come out towards the ball, the shaft steepens instead of shallows, and your hips come towards the ball. All of these things are bad, and I want to highlight the red and green dots to further explain. The red dot is obviously where your hands are now, and the green dot is where they were in the backswing. 



This is your classic "shallow to steep" pattern, whereas with Rory:



Steep to shallow, exactly the opposite. This will obviously vary a lot from player to player so you'll see different lines and different paths, but you will never see a pro go shallow to very steep. A steep shaft coming down to the ball presents more timing issues and requires extra hand eye coordination compensations to make contact. 

Back to Panel #6 now and we see something interesting; the clubface is actually quite open here. It was shut going back but now it is open coming down, another fault that needs to be managed. 

At impact in Panel #7 we see that despite your best efforts, the loss of hip depth in transition back in Panel #5 has taken away the room you needed to and now you're scrunching up in an attempt to manage a club that is steep and open. We see your head popping up as your body works to keep the steep club from digging into the ground behind the ball. 

That is a lot of information so I would sit with it for a bit and make sure it all resonates. This would be a great start to work with a pro once this all makes sense and I wouldn't necessarily try to go change it yourself without at least another set of good eyes. Feel free to ask any follow up questions 👍

[mustang6298]

1 hour ago, Valtiel said:

Sure thing! So there are a few things to address here I think:



There is lots of markup, but bear with me and i'll explain what they mean.

Starting in Panel #1, we have a line on your backside monitoring your hip depth, a line on your head for posture/height, a dot on your hands which will be references at the end, and the shaft plane you have established at address to be referenced late. On the surface this looks like a nice neutral posture, but take note of your hand position. In order for your hands to return to this spot, which is the goal, that space needs to be available to get to. More on this later. 

In Panel #2 we see what you were talking about with the shut face, but I don't think this is an issue. Hip turn is alright, maybe a little too much travel in the left hip, but the problems don't really start until...

Panel #3 shows the hands and arms starting to get around more behind you and rotating the clubface more open. Normally we'd want to see the hands somewhere in front of your chest, but yours are in what would be considered a disconnected position here.

On to Panel #4 at the top of your backswing and your hands are very deep with the club pointing across the line somewhat. This is just simply too much backswing for what looks like a short/mid iron and far too disconnected. If we look at someone with high hands like Justin Thomas:



His hands are right over the balls of his feet and the club is square and neutral. 



Your hands however are off your back heel and the club is pointing right of target. 

Returning back to Panel #4, we now have a kinematic problem. Your goal is to get the shaft to match that line you established at address by the time you reach the ball, but the club is facing a very different direction and your hands are really far behind you. In order to get the club on plane from this position, you would need some pretty aggressive bowing of your left wrist coupled with some extension (bending back) in your right wrist. Your hands would also need to drop straight down and your hips would need to maintain depth in order to keep the space free you created at address.....

Unfortunately the opposite of all of those things happens in Panel #5. Your hands come out towards the ball, the shaft steepens instead of shallows, and your hips come towards the ball. All of these things are bad, and I want to highlight the red and green dots to further explain. The red dot is obviously where your hands are now, and the green dot is where they were in the backswing. 



This is your classic "shallow to steep" pattern, whereas with Rory:



Steep to shallow, exactly the opposite. This will obviously vary a lot from player to player so you'll see different lines and different paths, but you will never see a pro go shallow to very steep. A steep shaft coming down to the ball presents more timing issues and requires extra hand eye coordination compensations to make contact. 

Back to Panel #6 now and we see something interesting; the clubface is actually quite open here. It was shut going back but now it is open coming down, another fault that needs to be managed. 

At impact in Panel #7 we see that despite your best efforts, the loss of hip depth in transition back in Panel #5 has taken away the room you needed to and now you're scrunching up in an attempt to manage a club that is steep and open. We see your head popping up as your body works to keep the steep club from digging into the ground behind the ball. 

That is a lot of information so I would sit with it for a bit and make sure it all resonates. This would be a great start to work with a pro once this all makes sense and I wouldn't necessarily try to go change it yourself without at least another set of good eyes. Feel free to ask any follow up questions 👍

I really appreciate the detailed write-up. Loads of good information here, my friend! 
 

From my interpretation, you prescribed working on setup and backswing hand depth (these issues are most likely causes of later faults). Would you like to see me stand more upright and further from the ball at address? And what would be a better way of steepening my backswing and keeping my hands more in front of me?

[Valtiel]

On 5/3/2021 at 6:10 AM, mustang6298 said:

I really appreciate the detailed write-up. Loads of good information here, my friend! 
 

From my interpretation, you prescribed working on setup and backswing hand depth (these issues are most likely causes of later faults). Would you like to see me stand more upright and further from the ball at address? And what would be a better way of steepening my backswing and keeping my hands more in front of me?

No problem! I would be careful about altering address position too much since it can become a bandaid. You can try backing a little further away, but my guess right now is that the backswing path you'll want to shoot for will feel VERY steep to you given what you have tried so far. Your downswing plane is almost identical to Rory's backswing plane, so you really need to be trying to reverse the feel of what is happening in these positions. How you go about doing that is tough to recommend since it can be a bit of a hands on thing, but for right now I would attempt simply feeling like you're taking the club straight back away from the ball with no guiding anywhere from the hands. Feel like the path of the club is being guided by your shoulder rotation instead of your hands and you will get much steeper in the backswing. The goal is to have that setup correctly so that the next move that happens naturally is the shallowing move. Take some videos of you trying that if you can!