Help with high handle at impact, steep but close to neutral swing path

[tallngoofy]

Hey guys,

 

Looking for thoughts on here as my local pro's haven't been much help tbh. I have a steep VSP, but still deliver relatively neutral IF i'm playing well. My action can get OTT quickly. 

 

I struggle with being patient at the top and keeping the hand path back.  I feel quite tight in my left lat quite quickly in the backswing with high tension in it from P3 onwards. I struggle getting the lower left side moving without pulling the hand path out. 

I am 6'3 with above average length legs and short arms for my height. I feel this a whole lot in my swing: a high centre of gravity, but a stout, powerful feeling in my upper body, which leads me to feel like i'm getting all my drive from my back and shoulders. My mental connection to my pelvis and legs for power/to drive the swing is hugely outweighed by my upper wanting to WHACK at the ball. 

 

I'm after any thoughts into how to reduce upper body takeover, and how to get the hand path more vertically straight down to start the downswing to shallow VSP and get more from the inside. 

 

Thanks

 

7 iron SWING CLIP: https://youtube.com/shorts/7eEB-hCo1Dk?feature=share

 

 

 

Edited July 27, 2022 by tallngoofy

[Valtiel]

@tallngoofy Not a lot wrong here to be honest, nice swing! Your hands aren't raising up a ton, this is a similar amount we see from someone like Tony Finau, maybe a little more. If you wanted to eliminate that though then i'd look at a few things:



Your hands are raising in direct proportion to the amount that your right side is coming out towards the ball at impact. This doesn't appear to be because of an early extension type of issue since you are neither extending nor losing depth and your weight is generally moving in the right direction. Your sequencing is good and you don't have any real extra moving parts mucking things up, so i'm going to speculate a little bit in the hopes that maybe this resonates. 

The first things that stood out to me where your distance from the ball at address, a fairly shut clubface throughout, and your overall lower body speed. For your height this feels like a normal distance to stand from the ball, maybe a little far away but not crazy, but for your shorter arms it feels like you are definitely too far from the ball, which may very well be the root of the issue which i'll come back to. Regarding lower body, I get the overall impression that its a little sluggish through impact. Again, nothing crazy, but I think its part of the fact you have a few fairly minor things adding up to the problem. Initially it looks like your hips are decently clear at impact, but I think part of that is an illusion based on your right hip coming out towards the ball as your left hip has only slightly cleared. Those two elements are not the best match up with this:



That is a VERY square bordering on shut clubface at P6. This is the sort of position that the "turn and burn" guys advocate e.g. DJ, David Duval, Andrew Landry etc. Shut faced players that rely very heavily the ability to clear the left side completely and aggressively coming in to impact to keep the clubface square:



This lines up with what you mentioned about not feeling like much of your "drive" is in your lower half and that you can get OTT easily (a common problem with having too much drive in your upper half). However, coming back to the address position, I feel like if you did clear more completely and get that left side working back quicker in the downswing that you might find yourself slapping the ball off the toe without an additional compensation. It's a bit of a chicken/egg problem that I think will require a bit of experimentation on your end. 

So to recap and give some suggestions:

- You're sequencing well but your lower body isn't clearing quite quickly enough through impact for having such a square/shut clubface. This sluggishness might be causing your right side to come out since you haven't quite gotten fully off of it, and thus causing a sympathetic raising of the handle at impact. 
- You're standing too far from the ball for having shorter arms, and thus the lower body actions *might* also be a compensation to kick the club out towards it to make solid contact since correctly clearing without your right side coming out as much might place you too far from the ball causing toe strikes/poor contact. This could all be a subconscious thing that your brain is doing in the downswing.

First suggestion is to work on shifting your focus away from all these upper body "whack the ball!" thoughts since those will exacerbate the OTT problems and what I assume is a prominent left miss and focus more on aggressively clearing your left side in the downswing instead of kicking your right side towards the ball. If done correctly and your strike immediately moves towards the toe then suggestion #2 is to simply move an inch or so closer to the ball at address. You could also reverse the order and start by moving closer with heel strikes/shanks confirming that you then need to focus on the lower body clearing stuff, but I like the first order better. I want to emphasize the left side clearing stuff primarily because of your comments about your upper/lower body relationship and the fact that you're dealing with a more shut clubface throughout than average. 

Give that a shot and let us know if you have any questions. 👍

[tallngoofy]

2 hours ago, Valtiel said:

@tallngoofy Not a lot wrong here to be honest, nice swing! Your hands aren't raising up a ton, this is a similar amount we see from someone like Tony Finau, maybe a little more. If you wanted to eliminate that though then i'd look at a few things:



Your hands are raising in direct proportion to the amount that your right side is coming out towards the ball at impact. This doesn't appear to be because of an early extension type of issue since you are neither extending nor losing depth and your weight is generally moving in the right direction. Your sequencing is good and you don't have any real extra moving parts mucking things up, so i'm going to speculate a little bit in the hopes that maybe this resonates. 

The first things that stood out to me where your distance from the ball at address, a fairly shut clubface throughout, and your overall lower body speed. For your height this feels like a normal distance to stand from the ball, maybe a little far away but not crazy, but for your shorter arms it feels like you are definitely too far from the ball, which may very well be the root of the issue which i'll come back to. Regarding lower body, I get the overall impression that its a little sluggish through impact. Again, nothing crazy, but I think its part of the fact you have a few fairly minor things adding up to the problem. Initially it looks like your hips are decently clear at impact, but I think part of that is an illusion based on your right hip coming out towards the ball as your left hip has only slightly cleared. Those two elements are not the best match up with this:



That is a VERY square bordering on shut clubface at P6. This is the sort of position that the "turn and burn" guys advocate e.g. DJ, David Duval, Andrew Landry etc. Shut faced players that rely very heavily the ability to clear the left side completely and aggressively coming in to impact to keep the clubface square:



This lines up with what you mentioned about not feeling like much of your "drive" is in your lower half and that you can get OTT easily (a common problem with having too much drive in your upper half). However, coming back to the address position, I feel like if you did clear more completely and get that left side working back quicker in the downswing that you might find yourself slapping the ball off the toe without an additional compensation. It's a bit of a chicken/egg problem that I think will require a bit of experimentation on your end. 

So to recap and give some suggestions:

- You're sequencing well but your lower body isn't clearing quite quickly enough through impact for having such a square/shut clubface. This sluggishness might be causing your right side to come out since you haven't quite gotten fully off of it, and thus causing a sympathetic raising of the handle at impact. 
- You're standing too far from the ball for having shorter arms, and thus the lower body actions *might* also be a compensation to kick the club out towards it to make solid contact since correctly clearing without your right side coming out as much might place you too far from the ball causing toe strikes/poor contact. This could all be a subconscious thing that your brain is doing in the downswing.

First suggestion is to work on shifting your focus away from all these upper body "whack the ball!" thoughts since those will exacerbate the OTT problems and what I assume is a prominent left miss and focus more on aggressively clearing your left side in the downswing instead of kicking your right side towards the ball. If done correctly and your strike immediately moves towards the toe then suggestion #2 is to simply move an inch or so closer to the ball at address. You could also reverse the order and start by moving closer with heel strikes/shanks confirming that you then need to focus on the lower body clearing stuff, but I like the first order better. I want to emphasize the left side clearing stuff primarily because of your comments about your upper/lower body relationship and the fact that you're dealing with a more shut clubface throughout than average. 

Give that a shot and let us know if you have any questions. 👍

This response is far more than I could have hoped for. Thank you very much for casting your eye over everything and providing your thoughts.

The shut clubface absolutely comes from my strong-ish left hand grip. I broke my left wrist several years ago, and for quite some time flexion and extension were very, very weak, but ulna deviation remained feeling ok. This has lead me to feel far more comfortable leading with ulna/pinky into the ball rather than presenting the back of the left wrist/hand. 

I will get to work on getting the left side cleared rather than right side out and see how we go. 

 

Thank you again.

[Valtiel]

50 minutes ago, tallngoofy said:

This response is far more than I could have hoped for. Thank you very much for casting your eye over everything and providing your thoughts.

The shut clubface absolutely comes from my strong-ish left hand grip. I broke my left wrist several years ago, and for quite some time flexion and extension were very, very weak, but ulna deviation remained feeling ok. This has lead me to feel far more comfortable leading with ulna/pinky into the ball rather than presenting the back of the left wrist/hand. 

I will get to work on getting the left side cleared rather than right side out and see how we go. 

 

Thank you again.

You're welcome, i'm glad that made sense! 

I gotcha regarding the grip and it's a sound reason to deliver the club that way. I wasn't thinking about it while typing before, but I realized I felt strongly about the suggestion because I remember how much of a difference it made for me since my hips used to work extremely similar to yours at a very similar speed, and I am also 6'3" with a more upright swing and OTT tendency at times. The matchup idea I mentioned before (shut face and aggressive clearing) also applies to swing length here as well. When you look at how matchups generally work with the pros you start to get blueprints for what sorts of elements should and shouldn't go together and it becomes quick to identify where someone's problems might be rooted. Slower hips and/or bigger turns for longer backswings (think Shane Lowry) and quicker, snappier hips for shorter, more laid off swings (thank Rahm/Schauffele). There are exceptions to this of course with certain players, but there are almost always issues when you start mixing them too aggressively, and right now you've got hips more like Lowry and a backswing more similar to Schauffele. The benefit of your type of backswing is that it is uncomplicated and on plane, so minimal manipulation is needed coming down and you can rip your hips open almost as hard as you want. The problem comes when the hips work too slow (OTT/Steep), and everything is flipped for the Lowry type of swing. The length of the backswing gives you plenty time to move your hips slower/smoother and the problems come when you try to rip them open too fast which gets your upper body stuck behind. 

I had a similar mismatch as you and my overall downswing plane, OTT tendency, low point control, and general strike quality all improved noticeably when I started drilling speeding up my left leg/hip in transition, which on video then just appeared to matchup with my overall swing with my old swing having the same exact *slightly* sluggish feel to it on the bottom half that yours does. It was an easy change to make with pelvic punch drills just to get the feel of how to use your left side to create speed and then drop that feel into your transition in the downswing on full swings. First with wedges and then with punchy short irons and so on. 

Edited July 27, 2022 by Valtiel