Flattening Shoulders at Impact

[delfam]

Off-season goal is to shorten my swing, work on my early extension, and get more shallow on the downswing. At impact I usually lose my tush line and my shoulders and shaft are very steep. Here I'm practicing with a ball between arms to shorten my swing and a bag on my tush.

 

My only focus really is a 9/3 swing (obviously it's not but much better), and trying to "drop the basket" on the downswing. The drop the basket between legs thought in theory should help flatten my swing. Here are my swings after one session, any thoughts on how I look and any other advice to help flatten my shoulders more at impact?

 

 

[Valtiel]

I think the main concern is lower body sequencing here. An easy thing to fall into with doing multiple drills like this is getting too rigid. Especially the bag behind you....bumping into various club with your butt might not be the right kind of feedback you need when actually hitting shots. The "anything behind your butt to bump into" drill I think is good for practice swings, but IMO not great for actually hitting balls.



There are some slightly awkward things going setup and on rotation wise. It looks like you're trying to stay centered and not sway off the ball at all with the lower hald, which is fine, but you're also extending your spine away from the target and dropping your head back, not so fine. It looks like the ball (or maybe your setup) is forcing your shoulders into a more closed position as well (right shoulder too far back) and overall you have no tilt away from the ball like you're really on top of it and favoring your front side. You'll want to neutralize those things as IMO your upper body extension away from the ball feels like it's in response to the lack of it at address.



This is the main problem here though, focus on the hips in relation to the red lines. You don't make any lower body move until the downswing starts. Even though you've stayed "in the box" with your hips, your upper body continue extending up and away from the target, so you're functionally stacked over your back leg all the way until the top of the backswing, whereas Adam on the right is doing what basically all pros do which is start bumping into his front side *before* the backswing is finished.

Getting stuck on your back leg in transition is a sure fire way to create club path issues (steepness) and early extension as your lower body has a really hard time staying ahead of your arms if you don't give it the head start it needs. The goal is to feel like you're moving off your back foot and getting to 50/50 by the time your backswing finishes. This is constant, fluid movement even if it doesn't look like it when the pros do it (hard to see from most camera angles anyway), its not a rigid "backswing -> stop -> downswing" sequence like you're doing, you need that little transitional "bump" like Adam does to kick things off in transition.

[delfam]

That is super helpful, but also a lot to digest. I already have a lot of thoughts going on so what is the main thing you'd recommend I'd try and feel/so based on your response?

 

[Valtiel]

13 hours ago, delfam said:

That is super helpful, but also a lot to digest. I already have a lot of thoughts going on so what is the main thing you'd recommend I'd try and feel/so based on your response?

 

Indeed, hah. I'd recommend focusing on the recentering, the feeling of getting off your trail side and into your front side as the backswing is finishing. Your left leg action looks pretty good in the downswing in terms of how you're using it for power, so ideally you'll just have more time and pressure on that leg to use it more/better by focusing on that recentering shift. 

[Scottbox]

I have a very similar habit-- that of dropping my head and turning flat in the backswing. When you practice, feel like your head goes straight up 5" to start your backswing. That will make you extend your upper body, turn steeper, keep you stacked, and assist you in naturally re-centering because you'll start to "teeter totter" your upper body towards the target as you get to the top of your backswing. You'll also be incentivized to go "down" in transition, which will help with the EE and get you to use the ground a bit more.

 

RN you're in flexion so long that, as @valtiel noted, you have a hard time getting back to your front foot in transition. You put your ball back because your low point is further back and you're compensating for that. You can certainly play that way, but you'll hit a lot of blocks and hooks.

 

Going "up" is a weird, scary move at first. But if you watch yourself on video, you'll find you haven't moved your head up much at all. You are really not that far off from having a great action, btw.

Edited November 2, 2022 by Scottbox

[Righty to Lefty]

5 hours ago, Scottbox said:

I have a very similar habit-- that of dropping my head and turning flat in the backswing. When you practice, feel like your head goes straight up 5" to start your backswing. That will make you extend your upper body, turn steeper, keep you stacked, and assist you in naturally re-centering because you'll start to "teeter totter" your upper body towards the target as you get to the top of your backswing. You'll also be incentivized to go "down" in transition, which will help with the EE and get you to use the ground a bit more.

 

RN you're in flexion so long that, as @valtiel noted, you have a hard time getting back to your front foot in transition. You put your ball back because your low point is further back and you're compensating for that. You can certainly play that way, but you'll hit a lot of blocks and hooks.

 

Going "up" is a weird, scary move at first. But if you watch yourself on video, you'll find you haven't moved your head up much at all. You are really not that far off from having a great action, btw.

The ball is still not back far enough on his swing arc because he is hitting it at or very close to low point of his swing arc as when I freeze his impact you can see the ball traveling along his shoulder line, which is should not be, and it should look like he is hitting a push on video using his plane/ shoulder line for the given shot: 

 

 

Model representation of the shot that he hit being struck to close to the low point of the swing arc (not good):

 

Tiger for Reference from roughly the same shoulder line that you have at impact:  

 

From this shoulder line the ball should be shooting out to the right because he is hitting an iron off the ground with a negative angle of attack and should look like this:

 

Model representation of the properly struck shot that Tiger hit. Notice how the mark on the trash can lid denoting the low point of the swing arc can now be seen and the pencil is representing the club face at impact I pointed out to the right: 

 

You are basically striking the ball at the wrong point along your swing arc and you need to move the ball to a different location to gain leverage and the proper strike. 

 

From this plane orientation you should be striking this shot when the face is roughly oriented at that gap in the tree line in the background: 

 

 

I am using the math of impact to figure this out and there is much more to it but first and foremost you need to move the ball to a different location along your swing arc to gain leverage and strike and then you can calibrate your aim.  I don't want to overwhelm you with this in the beginning so I will just go step by step to help you regain the proper strike which is the first step. 

 

Also note that this is only for shots being hit with a negative angle of attack as shots being hit with a positive angle of attack are stuck at a different location along your swing arc after low point and the model for those shots will look like this. These shots on video will look like a pull because you can see from your same setup you were using for your iron shot video that the pencil representing the club face will point left. Once you find strike you can then recalibrate your aim to bring these shots onto a given target: 

Edited November 2, 2022 by Righty to Lefty

[Scottbox]

Ok but the low point being back is a symptom, not the cause. You can tell a person what they "should" be doing but if that person's pivot (in this case) is slightly off, they will have to add in some time-consuming, artificial stuff that won't be reliable.

[Righty to Lefty]

12 hours ago, Scottbox said:

Ok but the low point being back is a symptom, not the cause. You can tell a person what they "should" be doing but if that person's pivot (in this case) is slightly off, they will have to add in some time-consuming, artificial stuff that won't be reliable.

You are ignoring the source of the issue which is that the athlete doesn't understand impact and what is supposed to happen so the athlete is putting the ball at the incorrect location along his swing arc and his body is trying to accommodate his request to hit a golf ball at a certain target.  It is amazing what the body will do to try to accomplish a task even when the golfer is out of position to the ball.  The "pivot being slightly off" that you are mentioning is not the root cause of the athlete's issue, not understanding where they are supposed to hit a given shot it is because the athlete does not understand impact because immediately upon seeing a video of himself, if he understood impact, he would immediately correct things when he realized that the ball didn't go where it was supposed to. 

 

Knowing where you are setting your low point on a given shot is orders of magnitude more important than any perceived "swing motion flaw" because setting your low point incorrectly is directly what leads to most swing motion "flaws" in the first place. We are all unique athletes physically and therefore there is no such thing as a standard ball position. It has to be where it has to be for each individual given there physical make up regardless of how it looks to you are anybody else and the quality of impact and the ball flight will tell you if you are in the correct location or not. The problem is that most golfers have never experienced a proper levered strike so they don't know, or when the did lever a ball, it missed the target, so they thought it was a bad shot when in reality it was a proper strike their aim should have been recalibrated to bring that strike onto target.

 

@delfam missed the target that he should have been hitting at by some 20 yards and I can figure that out because there is only one impact and it is the same for everyone, everyday, forever. It is amazing how the swing motion will smooth out over time on its own once the golfer is aware of what is supposed to happen on a given shot.  Fixing "swing motion flaws" in no way fixes being unaware that you are out of position to the ball and will lead to more frustration because after you have compromised your swing motion, and didn't get the result that you expected, now you are really lost when all you really needed was to understand where the ball was supposed to go on a given shot. I watched a guy do the exact same thing on the range after asking me for help. After watching him hit 10 balls to see if he would make an adjustment, when saw him look up at where he thought the ball should be going, I then told him where it should actually be going, which was 20 yards right of where he thought. He then levered a ball directly at the spot that I told him with a club that just minutes prior he told me he couldn't hit and the look on his face was priceless.  There is only one point along your swing arc that will match your intentions and the ball must be present at that location or you will pay the price.   

 

Matter of fact all of this information sits in plain sight and I am seeing a lot of golf instruction moving off of swing motion tips and getting into the math of things which is much more relevant and greatly steepens the learning and improvement curve. This video clearly shows just how powerful low point orientation truly is:  

 

@delfamI am trying to ease you into this subject as initially it can be pretty overwhelming but in time it becomes dead simple easy trust me.  Knowing impact was solely responsible for it taking me 6 months to break 90 after switching to playing lefty where it took me 6 years to do it right handed without that knowledge.  

[Tanner25]

@Righty to Lefty  I searched on Ali's video's to see if he had a low point forward video on the irons and found this one. I like his explanation, as he offers a how to do it. In this case, he says to turn the trail hip in the backswing (makes sense, a sway brings the low point back) and pressure the lead foot on the downswing to bring the low point forward.

 

 

Edited November 15, 2022 by Tanner25

[vernon]

Good stuff.

[golfarb1]

Let’s make this simple

PIVOT, PIVOT, PIVOT 

The 9-3 drill is all about pivoting 

 

 

1. At setup

flare your left foot 1/4 turn towards the target 

Thus will encourage pelvis rotation going down

2. let your right leg straighten somewhat going back , but not to the degree that it  becomes straight 

 

Practice rotation drills with your hands  on opposite shoulders . 

[Righty to Lefty]

21 hours ago, Tanner25 said:

@Righty to Lefty  I searched on Ali's video's to see if he had a low point forward video on the irons and found this one. I like his explanation, as he offers a how to do it. In this case, he says to turn the trail hip in the backswing (makes sense, a sway brings the low point back) and pressure the lead foot on the downswing to bring the low point forward.

 

 

Whatever it takes for you to digest the information is all good as eventually over time things will become more and more clear.  I just don't like instruction that are focusing on monitoring body parts or using internal cues because they are not reliable from day to day because the human body is in constant flux so those feels will constantly change.  Also the gap in this video is that the bottom of the arc should be the same amount in front of the ball with all the clubs being hit off the ground and the build of the club will shallow out the angle of attack for you.  Sure you should be monitoring every shot you hit and adjusting your low point accordingly but if your low point is 3.5 inches in front of the ball for a wedge it should be 3.5 for all of the clubs being hit off the ground or strike will suffer as he was demonstrating. Notice every time that his low point dropped below even 3 inches that he complained about the strike not being as quality.