Swing help. Need to be closer to ball

[Dlinkster]

Curious on what would help my swing the most?

 

 

[Ballcoach35]

@Valtiel do you any thoughts for this guy? Swing looks okay to me.

[Valtiel]

On 9/4/2022 at 10:11 AM, Dlinkster said:

Curious on what would help my swing the most?

 

IMO what would help the most is two main things; a better understanding of how to rotate move your weight in the correct way and a neutralizing of some path/clubface issues:



First, yes you are standing quite far from the ball. Likely a compensation related to other elements so for now we'll just note that you'll want to work towards getting into a position where your arms hang more freely donwards than being in this Bryson-esque position.

Second, your takeaway is a bit flat and very shut. The flat takeaway is likely partially caused by standing too far from the ball and because you're folding your right elbow back very early. The shut clubface could be from any number of things which i'll touch on later. For now know that IMO a lot of these things are connected and i'll have a few questions later related them.

Third, your lower body is doing some problematic stuff. This early in the swing you've already completely locked out your right leg and started kicking your left leg out. We'll see the problems this creates next. 

Now look at Adam when comparing each of these elements. At address his arms are hanging down pretty naturally. In his initial takeaway up to P2 we see the club working up and in front of him, not sucking inside and going around him. We also see very little change in flexion with the trail knee, no locking out and no left leg shooting forward either.



I've switched to Laurie Canter for this comparison. Up to the top of the swing we see more pronounced issues. The main one is how your left side takes over and swings out in front of you, pulling you towards the ball. This could be because of how far you're standing from it and your brain is compensating, but it's also just a really common pelvic rotation fault. At no point in the backswing do we want our left side taking over rotational duties as it immediately sets us up for tons of downswing problems including depth loss, early extension, and it generally gets your weight moving in the wrong way (notice your head coming towards the ball. The club has also worked up into a pet peeve position of mine (@Ballcoach35 this is very similar to what we discussed with your swing). The combination of the club being very deep (far behind you) with a shut clubface and heading towards being across the line is a really bad match up and i've never seen a good player work from here. This is partially an extension of the overly inside takeaway and early folding of the right arm as everything has worked more "around" your torso like a baseball bat. Your right shoulder has externally rotated way too much and combined with the lower body stuff there isn't really a good path forward here.

Compare Canter's backswing here and notice how the arms work up, not around behind you, and how the left hip hasn't jumped out in front. There is actually a slightly sinking back away from the ball at this stage, a very common move amongst good players.



Your very most move in transition is another big problem that is probably something you can't avoid because of the previous issues. Because of the problematic position the club is in, you can't really hope to create any lag, shallow the shaft plane, or drop the hands down, so everything has to start getting thrown over the top. Your bump into your left side is also slightly towards the ball (split between the ball and down the target line) when your lower body actually needs to work *backwards* aggressively at this stage, away from the ball. This is part of why swinging your left hip out in the backswing is such a problem, because at no point in the entire golf swing should we be creating any force with the lower body that brings is towards the ball. The opposite in fact, our lower half needs to constantly *resist* the fact that our upper half is going to create a lot of cetrifugal force pulling us towards the ball in the downswing, and we resist that by driving the upper body in the opposite direction to create a kind of equilibrium that keeps us balanced (this is why pros always appear so stable in their swings). Note Tiger's sequence here and how he is increasing the distance of his pelvis from the ball, creating rotation by driving his left hip backwards. 



Everything after this is all compensations. You pull away from the line behind you, coming towards the ball, and you're forced to start manipulating the club into a shallower position very late in the downswing. Your arms are completely disconnected from your rotation coming down as a result of all this and it's all hand-eye coordination to get to impact at this point.

That may sound like a lot of negative stuff, but really it's just the byproduct of misunderstanding/not executing just a couple key fundamentals.

1) Address position. No matter what you do in your swing, a bad address position will always screw things up. Get closer to the ball and let your arms hang down freely. If you start hitting bad shots from here then the position is NOT the problem (unless you've overdone it) and you need to look at #2 and #3.
2) Lower body rotation and weight movement. The right hip creates rotation in the backswing and left hip creates it in the downswing. Under no circumstances should you start using one to fill in for the other. The product of doing this correctly that you're always creating forces that pull you *away* from the ball, never towards it. This will take a lot of time to learn and get comfortable with (see the AMG video below).
3) The club works up, not around. Because we're hitting something off the ground, wrapping the club around and getting it stuck behind us just creates the need to employ on the fly compensations to get the club working back towards the ground. Get in front of a mirror and practice what it feels like to get the club up over your right shoulder in the backswing instead of around behind it.

ALL of the above you can feel to exaggerate/overdo while learning. Intentionally standing too *close* to the ball can help you exaggerate the moves of #2 better. Not something to do on the course, but rather something to get used to the feeling of keeping yourself working away from the ball in the swing since working towards it in any capacity while standing too close while make it almost impossible to hit. Same with the club path, feel free to get VERY vertical so you know what it feels like. I bet right now if you made a backswing that you felt like was super exaggerated in that regard that you'd probably end up pretty close to that Canter gif above.

The questions I wanted to ask were related to what you've struggled with previously (and currently) that might have led to the adoption of these swing faults. I've been thinking about this off and on since @Ballcoach35 and I communicated previously as he was getting stuck in a very similar backswing position. There are a lot of things in your swing that read like homemade compensations for the common over the top slice problems that many people have at the beginning, so i'm curious if that was something you struggled with at any point.

 

 

Edited October 2, 2022 by Valtiel