A little bit lost on what to do.

[SJ789]

Iron down the line

 

Driver Face on

 

I'm a little lost on what I'm doing here and to be honest I don't know what I'm asking really could do with some general help here, As you can tell I'm a very "Tap it up there" player. I don't hit it very far but pretty consistent with a fairly straight ball flight. 

 

[Valtiel]

If you are consistent with a straight ball flight then you'll have to ask yourself how much effort you're willing to put in to improve. Not necessarily because it will take an insane amount, but because you will almost certainly get worse before you get better. This is the case for most of us, but the fact that you're hitting the ball straight with your swing means it is likely pretty well ingrained, and there are lots of things you are compensating for. 

The basic summary of your swing would be "Extremely flat and inside being compensated for with completely stalled lower body rotation". Like the opposite of your typical "over the top" move, but with similar problems. You get the club in a flat, Matt Kuchar-esque sort of position which is similar to what would be considered a "one plane swing", except you then shallow even further from there which basically requires you to completely shut down your lower body rotation to give your hands and arms time to rescue the club from this stuck position. You obviously have quite good hand/eye coordination to be able to hit the ball straight from here, but it is basically a "backwards" golf swing in that it is completely driven by your arms, hence the lack of distance overall. 



At the top of your swing, we see that you're in a pretty deep, one plane sort of position. "Deep" meaning that your hands are pretty far behind you (distance from your right shoulder marked by the red line), which normally means that your downswing move will require your hands to work straight back down towards the ball (yellow arrow). If this seems confusing/conflicting due to any notions of "shallowing in transition" that you've likely heard about, that is because the shallowing component is what is necessary in a more common "two plane" swing which would see your hands higher and closer to your body, which you then drop down in transition and shallow to get back on plane. A one plane swing seeks to do away with that extra shallowing movement by getting deeper and flatter in the backswing, and then returning back on roughly the same path in the downswing. Your backswing position calls for that one plane approach, but...



As we trace the butt of your club, you actually move even further behind you in transition and implement a shallowing move that would be great for a more conventional two plane swing, but in your position only serves to get the club stuck too far behind you. From here you are  forced to do two things; completely stall your lower body rotation and reroute the club to the ball using your hands/arms while dumping your wrist angles. Consistently hitting the ball straight with this type of swing means you have gotten very used to those compensations, and any attempt to "fix" the issues here means you'll have also move towards abandoning those compensations as well. If you were to rotate correctly then the club would end up hopelessly stuck behind you, and if you were to hang on to your wrist angles you'd likely send the ball a mile to the right and/or shank it. 

I think a good thing to focus on first would be resolving this conflict between your backswing position and your transition since they are at odds with each other. If the connected feeling of the backswing being flatter and deeper feels like something you'd prefer to keep then working on getting your hands working much more towards the ball in transition would be a good start, especially removing that first move down where your hands actually get further behind you. If you do this correctly then you'll likely find yourself immediately yanking the ball straight left since there is a good chance your lower body will not be firing correctly as a leftover habit. Therefore you'll need to work on both getting the club more in front of you in transition AND making sure your lower body is leading the way. 

The other option would be getting your hands working higher in the backswing so they arrive closer to your right shoulder and keeping the shallowing move you have now. With higher hands, your current shallowing move would drop you down into a better "slot", but the same caveats about correct lower body action apply. 

Feel free to follow up with any questions or additional videos. 👍

Edited August 6, 2021 by Valtiel

[SJ789]

Wow thanks so much for taking the time, a lot to take in. I've actually been trying to get a bit vertical in my swing. I "think" I have made a small amount of progress but looking at what you just said I need a lot more. Before I'd say just past parallel  on the backswing the butt of the club would be facing outside of the ball.

 

I didn't notice my hip stall until I saw my driver face on swing and saw it was pretty bad, by going by what your saying it's happening because I'm trying to compensate for the club being behind me? and if I turned properly it would get even further behind and I wouldn't even be able to hit the ball?

 

Screenshot is me at impact with the driver, (Had to cut out the weird face haha)

Edited August 6, 2021 by SJ789

[Valtiel]

38 minutes ago, SJ789 said:

 

 

I didn't notice my hip stall until I saw my driver face on swing and saw it was pretty bad, by going by what your saying it's happening because I'm trying to compensate for the club being behind me? and if I turned properly it would get even further behind and I wouldn't even be able to hit the ball?

 

That is the main issue, yes. The key is to get the upper body and the lower body working together in sequence, but this becomes difficult to impossible when you put yourself into certain positions. Using Matt Kuchar as an example, we see exactly how you need to start a downswing from this deep hand position:



You and Kuchar are starting from very similar positions here, and we can see that Matt's first moves are towards the ball. This is because the club is already in a very flat, shallow position so all that is needed is to move towards the ball. We also see Matt's left hip rotating back as his lower body starts clearing. His hips are almost square to the ball by the end of this short sequence. On your side however we see what we discussed before with the club dropping even further behind you in transition. We also see virtually no hip rotation happening, likely because your brain has figured out that you can't rotate with your hands stuck behind you like that and still hit the ball decently. This is the sequencing issue I was referring to that you would address by one of the two methods I described. 

Your face driver video also shows quite a bit of swaying/lateral hip movement, but these backswing positions feel like the more pressing thing to address.

[Scottbox]

Yeah, you definitely would benefit from keeping your right elbow more in front of your body and getting your arms higher. The two are pretty related. I had to work through a similar issue. A nice feel is to push down on the handle with your left palm so the club sets up a bit more (imagine you're flipping the club upside down as you go up). Then, feel like you lift your right elbow up to the top. You want to feel like your shaft is very light going up. If you looked at yourself in the mirror from down the line, your shaft should be a little higher than your right elbow on the way up, and point somewhere between your feet and the ball.

 

This will really help you (if you choose to do the work)- you won't have to do so much work to get the club back in front of you, and you will start to compress your irons. You'll be able to stall a lot less with your body, because you won't have to stop everything to enable your arms to catch up. I do this two-part drill every time I practice:

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-5w6UAFx8u/?igshid=14rd8nauhxsx

 

Also, dumb question for everyone: how do I get IG or YT vids to embed in posts? Thanks!

Edited August 7, 2021 by Scottbox

[SJ789]

Thanks Scott, Defo going to try and work on this stuff, I want to be able to go to golf courses without being overwhelmed by how long the course is (even though it's not long). I'll try and post more stuff in the next coming weeks to see if I've made any progress. 

[Scottbox]

1 hour ago, SJ789 said:

Thanks Scott, Defo going to try and work on this stuff, I want to be able to go to golf courses without being overwhelmed by how long the course is (even though it's not long). I'll try and post more stuff in the next coming weeks to see if I've made any progress. 

You're young and in good shape. There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to add 20 yards to your drives with a more efficient swing!

[BraxtonFullerton]

Quiet down that lower body. You want your legs stable and balanced. You're shifting way too much and losing way too much stability throughout the swing.