Hitting low and thin toe hooks

[StorminNorman]

Constantly hitting it off the toe lately, 1.6 handicap and can’t play a par 3 to save my life. I can drive it and wedge it decently enough to get it around but the ball striking with my irons is a total loss right now.

 

any suggestions? I can try to get a face on view tomorrow. My hands feel way out in front of the ball but I can’t get much of anything to work these days.

[Valtiel]

You've got a bit of an over the top reroute move in transition that gets the club going down a bit steep which is something you compensate for REALLY late in the downswing which I believe is causing the toe strikes.



Right after P2 the club gets pretty flat (orange lines) and starts working its way a bit too deep, but you compensate be raising your hands more vertically at the top of the backswing, but that tips your momentum in the wrong directing and gets your hands looping over the top where you then start down much steeper. These lines are flipped, you want to see the more vertical (red lines) in the backswing and the shallower (orange) lines in the downswing. The first part is easy, just feel like the club gets working more vertical in the backswing, hands working more up and less around behind you:



The second part is tougher, but ideally getting your backswing less flat will nauturally help you come down a little shallower, but often times it can just lead to "steep to steep", we'd have to see what happens if you make that backswing adjustment.



This little reroute is the thing you want to get rid of. Notice the clubhead and how it moves from left to right in transition, steepening and moving across the line which is the opposite direction we generally wand the club moving at this point. Adam is VERY neutral, but the clubhead is never moving right in transition. Rasmus next to him has a more pronounced shallowing move as you can see by the little kick in of the right elbow and upper arm in transition from orange to red. This might be a type of move worth trying, if for no other reason than to get you doing something opposite of the current issue.



With your hands and the club coming down steep you have to compensate somewhere to keep from snapping the head off in the ground, and since you aren't doing the normal stand up/posture loss/early extension move you're forced to compensate late with the hands. You seem to be holding on to your lag for a really long time, like you're delaying your release as long as possible. This in addition to maintaining your posture, rotating pretty well, and trying to exit left sees you doing a lot of things right but with this club plane issue mucking things up downstream. 

Get that shallow -> reroute reversed via the backswing change (in front of a mirror is helpful) and consider trying that little tipping in move with the right shoulder/upper arm in transition to get you away from the reverse loop. 👍

[tthomasgolfer605]

I know all the rage is to shut the face early. You're doing it too much from the get go.  A grip/setup change is all you'll need I bet.

[cardoustie]

Funny

 

my cap is also 1.6

 

I have the same move as you … arm lift and steep … used to have bouts of toe misses

 

Valtiel … you are awesome … wow

 

things I did / work on

 

- staying taller

- right pitch elbow

- releasing lag immediately from the top

- better turn on backswing

 

id like to see a face on

 

fwiw, not sure how tall you are, but lengthening my short irons eliminated toe strikes for me

 

 

[StorminNorman]

Here’s some from this morning. I weakened my grip and it seems to be helping some, I’m still having trouble standing the club up better in my backswing, will take some work.

 

[StorminNorman]

[Z1ggy16]

54 minutes ago, StorminNorman said:

Here’s some from this morning. I weakened my grip and it seems to be helping some, I’m still having trouble standing the club up better in my backswing, will take some work.

 

IMG_0725.MOV

I had to work on getting more vertical on my back swing and just FYI it's took me about 5-6 months of roughly 20 minutes almost ever day of training to get it muscle memory. I believe the key to making true changes is frequent but short training sessions. 5 days a week of 20 minutes a day is better than 1 day a week of 100 minutes. 

 

My first 3 rounds taking it to the course I played extremely bad... Just stick with it. You will get much worse at first but as you adjust you'll see changes. If possible try to find a place you can have face, path etc checked periodically to make sure what eventually becomes normal feeling isn't extreme. I changed my swing a bit this year and my brain took the changes a little extreme, I ended up about 4-5* down with long irons as my goal was to get my low point a little more forward. I was hitting my 4i maybe 50 ft high which was no good and needed that check in so I could adjust.

[StorminNorman]

I appreciate you guys taking the time to look at this and offer your thoughts

[tthomasgolfer605]

The face on shows a lot. Unless you're David Duval in his prime or get that left shoulder off your chin in transition, you won't improve much. Have you experimented rotating your head behind the ball? Your head rotates toward the target and shoulder go with it which is the only cause of the slight steepening. You have a lot of raw talent though.

[tthomasgolfer605]

See what I mean? 

[DLiver]

Very interesting thread (to me) because I used to have the same move. Valtiel that is some impressive analysis there.   

[ALIF]

Valtiel, Who are you dude seriously? You know everything about club fitting  and you give a very, very good swing analysis. Quite impressive! Wow!

[Valtiel]

On 9/5/2022 at 9:52 PM, ALIF said:

Valtiel, Who are you dude seriously? You know everything about club fitting  and you give a very, very good swing analysis. Quite impressive! Wow!

[Valtiel]

On 9/4/2022 at 8:03 AM, StorminNorman said:

Here’s some from this morning. I weakened my grip and it seems to be helping some, I’m still having trouble standing the club up better in my backswing, will take some work.

 

Definitely better, although with some caveats:



I can see you tried to steepen your backswing plane by getting club more outside your hands up to P2, which is alright, but you still flatten quite a bit after that. You're steeper than you were before, but only a bit, and you're having to exaggerate something in your takeaway a bit much to do this, which is focusing too much on P1 to P2 when the problem is from P2 to P3. Get in front of a mirror and take the club back to P2 (club parallel to the ground) and feel what you need to do in terms of hands/wrist and arm path to get the club working more vertical/up. 



Even without that adjustment though you'd still be good to complete your swing here.



It's this extra element of going further and then moving towards a steeper plane that you need to get rid of. This is the same issue as before just less severe, so keep working on that.

[DLiver]

If a player has a really good position at the top of their backswing, does it really matter how they get there?

[Valtiel]

On 9/8/2022 at 9:37 AM, DLiver said:

If a player has a really good position at the top of their backswing, does it really matter how they get there?

It’s an interesting question, because IMO absolutely. There are lots of positions that can look good in 2D that don’t actually indicate much in context. Some folks with extremely inside backswings and big OTT moves at the top can look “neutral” in certain snapshots at the top, it’s the momentum you don’t see that is about to send them off the rails which makes that snapshot very incomplete. I’d argue then that if you get into a good position at the top AND make a really good transition down that it doesn’t matter how you got there, but you need that transition element. 

[TheDeanAbides]

14 hours ago, Valtiel said:

It’s an interesting question, because IMO absolutely. There are lots of positions that can look good in 2D that don’t actually indicate much in context. Some folks with extremely inside backswings and big OTT moves at the top can look “neutral” in certain snapshots at the top, it’s the momentum you don’t see that is about to send them off the rails which makes that snapshot very incomplete. I’d argue then that if you get into a good position at the top AND make a really good transition down that it doesn’t matter how you got there, but you need that transition element. 

You’re a year late, buddy. 

[DLiver]

4 hours ago, TheDeanAbides said:

You’re a year late, buddy. 

Well I appreciated his answer! 😄

[jholz]

I generally appreciate anything @Valtiel posts. 

[StorminNorman]

I reduced radial deviation at the top and it has helped immensely. I'll try to get a video this afternoon to show what I mean in case anyone is having similar issues. I'm now having a hard time squaring the face up if anything, from years of holding the release off.