Driver Swing - trouble shallowing

[BradL13]

Here is a little off angle driver swing. Having trouble shallowing and I’m picking up my whole body on my downswing. My miss is always right, usually a high slice across the fairway. 
 

Currently playing at a 11 handicap and driver is by far my worst shot. 
 

 

[golfarb1]

Far too much weight behind your heels at setup. You need less thigh bend  and a little less knee bend - more like Rory.

Too much weight on your heels at setup affects weight distribution during the rest of your swing 

 

Too much roll of the forearms during your takeaway 

Too correct this , move your alignment rod closer to your body so that it is directly under your hands. Take your hands back over that alignment rod for the first 18 inches of your takeaway with ZERO ROLL of your forearms . 

 

 

Edited July 25, 2022 by golfarb1

[Valtiel]

Two main things to focus on. One, your address posture is out of balance. With that much knee flex and your butt stuck out that far behind you it is very difficult to maintain any kind of posture throughout the swing, and your impact position tells us that you aren't:



You're basically setting yourself up in a position/posture that you can't maintain or get back to, so you come WAY towards the ball in transition and into impact. Compare to Emilliano Grillo on the right who is my favorite example of the extreme opposite. His hips/pelvis are actually further away from the ball at impact, something that a number of top ball strikers throughout golf history have done. It's not necessary to go that far, but its the concept that is important.

Second is your takeaway which you manipulate to the inside and open very early:



At P2 (club parallel to the ground) the shaft should be pointed somewhat down the target line (like Tiger on the right). Yours is pointed miles to the right and the club face angle, which should generally match your spine angle, is VERY open. Inside and open leads to the common reversal as a compensation in transition; outside (over the top) and shut which creates a pull slice or just a regular slice if you can't shut the club fast enough. Keeping the structure in your wrist and arms (like Tiger here) and moving all of them with your shoulders as one big unit up to P2 is how to avoid getting out if position like this.

[BradL13]

Thanks to both of you.  Will definitely pay more attention to that, did not even realize how squatted I looked in my stance so that's really eye opening see the other pictures of Rory & Emilliano.  Will also work at my wrist pathing and twist.  

 

I keep looking back at my posture and it looks so funky seeing the others lol now sure how I have gone this long and not noticed, I guess I exaggerate it since I feel like being taller I need to squat so much more but I don't actually need to.  Feel like this may help with me hitting my irons fat at times since I am trying to force myself into that same shrunken posture on my downswing.

Edited June 2, 2022 by BradL13

[Valtiel]

1 hour ago, BradL13 said:

I guess I exaggerate it since I feel like being taller I need to squat so much more but I don't actually need to.

I'd say its not necessarily a matter of need, but more a matter of when. A lot of the golf swing is a "Chinese finger trap" in that we often have to do the opposite of what we think, specifically in how we address the ball. My uncle has a similar issue here in that he often skulls/tops the ball because of extreme posture loss in the downswing, similar to what you're doing. His intuitive solution was to keep lowering his hands more and more at address, which only makes the problem worse because without a LOT of deliberate resistance, anything we exaggerate at address tends to reverse later in the swing. In my uncle's case, the lower he sets his hands at address, the worse his problem became. Lets look at Emiliano again, this time the full sequence with markers to track head movements:



He squats/drops down a TON, but critically he does this in transition, not as something preset at address. Not only that, he actually presets the opposite by standing taller and very "neutral" in terms of posture. This gives him all that room to move "back" and maintain and actually increase his distance from the ball, which means his hands and arms have all the room in the world to come right back down in front of him. Again this is a more extreme example, but the underlying concept is what is important, that being the correct use of the body to counter/resist the forces created by the golf swing. In a nutshell, out brain doesn't want us doing athletic movements in this weird slightly bent over posture, and the force created by swinging a somewhat heavy stick at something in front of us pulls us in that direction. Both these things want to ruin the balance necessary to create a consistent golf swing, and the smooth, balanced ones we see on TV are such because these forces are being consistently balanced by counter forces, creating an equilibrium that confusingly looks like not much is actually happening. Invisibly though, a LOT is happening, and without that knowledge we'll tend to just swing the club in a way that feels intuitive and end up in a bad place. Browse the posts in this sub-forum and you'll find 100 folks getting into similar impact positions as you are due to not understanding how to counter these forces.

It's a ton of complicated learned movements though, so for now i'd just work on cleaning up the stuff mentioned above and see where that takes you before diving in further.

 

[BradL13]

13 hours ago, Valtiel said:

It's a ton of complicated learned movements though, so for now i'd just work on cleaning up the stuff mentioned above and see where that takes you before diving in further.

 

Definitely is a lot more to a swing than you realize.  Feels like you should be able to pick up a club and have a feel for the plane but it is not that way at all.  Definitely going to get to work immediately on those things this weekend and next week.  Have a lesson scheduled soon as well so should help.  Not being so squatted & bent over in my poster and hand path movement will be primary focus of practice this week!  Appreciate yalls help.  This whole time I have been having trouble getting my hands through impact and I've been thinking about it completely backwards, never thought to look at my set up.

 

Maybe this will finally get me a 79 carded 🙂 

Edited June 3, 2022 by BradL13

[Valtiel]

On 6/3/2022 at 5:05 AM, BradL13 said:

 

Definitely is a lot more to a swing than you realize.  Feels like you should be able to pick up a club and have a feel for the plane but it is not that way at all.  Definitely going to get to work immediately on those things this weekend and next week.  Have a lesson scheduled soon as well so should help.  Not being so squatted & bent over in my poster and hand path movement will be primary focus of practice this week!  Appreciate yalls help.  This whole time I have been having trouble getting my hands through impact and I've been thinking about it completely backwards, never thought to look at my set up.

 

Maybe this will finally get me a 79 carded 🙂 

Good luck and feel free to report back with more vids. An idea to keep in mind is that it WILL likely feel weird to some extent, and that isn't a bad thing. The biggest barrier to people changing/improving is thinking that what feels comfortable is right and what feels weird is wrong, when in reality the opposite is true much more of the time. Once you learn what to look for (in your case the main elements of setup and takeaway) then you can start to attach feels to what you see on video. It'll take reps and you'll hit some bad shots, but stick with it and check in if you feel like you lose your way at all. 👍

[BradL13]

On 6/4/2022 at 4:27 PM, Valtiel said:

Good luck and feel free to report back with more vids. An idea to keep in mind is that it WILL likely feel weird to some extent, and that isn't a bad thing. The biggest barrier to people changing/improving is thinking that what feels comfortable is right and what feels weird is wrong, when in reality the opposite is true much more of the time. Once you learn what to look for (in your case the main elements of setup and takeaway) then you can start to attach feels to what you see on video. It'll take reps and you'll hit some bad shots, but stick with it and check in if you feel like you lose your way at all. 👍

 

Had a two day tournament this weekend but will be getting some good range time in this week so will definitely be addressing it and will try to grab a new video at the end of the week to show the changes I worked out.  Posture issue has already been addressed and feels SO much better.  Just never realized how squatted/bent over I actually was.  Gonna grab a laser to work on my takeaway