Any glaring problems with my swing? Help appreciated

[ahelix]

I'm a 14 HCP and had been struggling with a hook until I switched from standard (CP2 wrap) to midsize grips (MCC +4 align). Now ball is going a little too far right (working to get a draw back). Been better at hitting draws with my driver than with irons. 

 

Coach suggested:

1. Move the ball a little more forward in my stance (more off my left ear)
2. Let my upper body rotate through better
3. Try not letting my head get stuck back over the ball so much

 

These are probably just hold habits from having hit so many severe hooks when I was squeezing the club too hard and shutting the face a ton with my standard size grips.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 9, 2022 by ahelix
fixed videos

[dlow206]

Interested to hear from the experts, im not qualified whatsoever. 

 

@Valtiel and others: thoughts on his grip match-up? i'm asking because when i have a similar grip match-up at least what i can see from the video, where the trail hand is stronger relative to my lead hand, all sorts of bad things happen. clubface gets closed at the top of the backswing and either low hook left or try to hold on and not let the clubface close and hit it way right. 

[dvq9654]

Consider this but take it with a grain of salt given I’m just a normal guy pretending to understand the golf swing: 

 

- on the backswing, I think you are moving your left hip / knee to the ball too much and not getting your right hip back and up enough. This is why it seems like your dipping down and to the ball as you take your backswing 

- you are very steep in transition. You need to get the club head working behind you rather than pulling down on the club. I can’t fully tell, but I think this is also exacerbated by too much rotation too early. You are wide open at impact, which I know is often a goal, but keeping your back to target longer and allowing your hands to work down will allow the club to shallow more 

I am sure you can clean up other things, as we all can, but these are what stood out to me

[Righty to Lefty]

Even though you are pulling the club from the top of your backswing you actually do a good job of recovering it at impact which is what matters most and you are levering the ball pretty well and are just barely maintaining your lag tension where the trail arm happens to still be bent at impact.  Looking at your set up alignments I was saying please do not hit this ball at that target with the white line on it at the back of your net because that wouldn't be good and a properly struck shot should travel right of it given your setup, and it did which is good: 

 

Now then you are right on the borderline as your trail arm is pretty much straight prior to or right at impact and so you could lever the ball a bit better by moving the ball back about one or two balls back along your swing arc and changing nothing else.  This will send your ball a little bit more to the right but you will be in a slightly better location in relation to the ball and you will lever it better and then you can recalibrate your aim to bring it onto your intended target line.  

 

Looking at your trail arm you should be striking the ball at this point in your swing arc that I froze in the still frame below so you can see just how close you are to being optimal. If your trail arm fully extends prior to impact you will lose control of the club face but it is not being held in that position it happens to still be bent without getting too technical: 

 

The final piece will be to be more patient from the top of your backswing because you are pulling on the club and that can be seen because the club immediately changes direction right at the start of the downswing even though you do a good job of saving it. You need to wait and be patient until at least shaft parallel to the ground on the downswing before you begin to pressure the back of the shaft and this will eliminate that redirect of the club that you have at the top of your back swing and you will create more leverage on your shots because your trail arm will have more stored energy at impact instead of most of it having been lost because you pulled on the club from he top of your backswing.  To use an analogy of a boxer throwing a punch it will strike the person before the arm fully extends and if it were you throwing the punch your arm would be almost fully extended and so less power from your punch is being transferred into your "victim" the golf ball!  Hope this helps you out. R to L

[dvq9654]

9 hours ago, Righty to Lefty said:

The final piece will be to be more patient from the top of your backswing because you are pulling on the club and that can be seen because the club immediately changes direction right at the start of the downswing even though you do a good job of saving it. You need to wait and be patient until at least shaft parallel to the ground on the downswing before you begin to pressure the back of the shaft and this will eliminate that redirect of the club that you have at the top of your back swing and you will create more leverage on your shots because your trail arm will have more stored energy at impact instead of most of it having been lost because you pulled on the club from he top of your backswing.  To use an analogy of a boxer throwing a punch it will strike the person before the arm fully extends and if it were you throwing the punch your arm would be almost fully extended and so less power from your punch is being transferred into your "victim" the golf ball!  Hope this helps you out. R to L

 

Not to start a debate, but be careful how you enact or interpret the "wait and be patient" part of this comment. The best players hands move early in the downswing, so I would argue you absolutely do not want to slow down your arms. Rather, you want to have better wrist conditions and intentions from the top vs. actually slowing down your arms. 

 

I say this because you have a strong turn and if you leave your arms up top with this turn, your hands are going to trail your pivot and you are going to be stuck. 

 

Interpret all this how you will, but just a word of caution from a player whose hands are always just a bit slow. 

[ahelix]

I ended up doing an online lesson and got some good feedback. Turns out @dvq9654 and @Righty to Lefty are both right. I keep my spine angle on the backswing, but then I lose it on the downswing with my right shoulder coming up instead of setting me up with right side-bend to help get my hands forward and not yank the club down so hard right off the bat.

 

 

[RoyalTroon]

Any professional not first telling you to come back when you're wearing better traction footwear is wasting your time and padding their bank account. 

[ahelix]

33 minutes ago, RonJon said:

Any professional not first telling you to come back when you're wearing better traction footwear is wasting your time and padding their bank account. 

 

Um... do you even Gucci, Scooby?

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/ChbPIiFrxRK/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=3133a2f7-5fd4-4ff4-a9ba-9ecbfe34a97e

[CBearse]

16 hours ago, ahelix said:

I ended up doing an online lesson and got some good feedback. Turns out @dvq9654 and @Righty to Lefty are both right. I keep my spine angle on the backswing, but then I lose it on the downswing with my right shoulder coming up instead of setting me up with right side-bend to help get my hands forward and not yank the club down so hard right off the bat.

 

 

Who did you do the online lesson through?

[Valtiel]

On 11/10/2022 at 1:35 PM, dvq9654 said:

- you are very steep in transition.

This is the main issue via being too flat and deep in the backswing, and there are a host of other common problems happening here.



First in your takeaway you're getting the club too flat and deep (basically too much around you like a baseball bat) and you're ducking in towards the ball with your upper body. Both of these moves require specific compensations to undo, ones that you aren't doing which means we can treat these things as problems. Based on what happens next, you need to feel the club working way more "up" in the backswing and less "around", because this "around" is causing you to get stuck at the top of your backswing. The head coming towards the ball is often a reaction to you swinging your left hip out too much to create rotation, something that again we see causing problems next. If your head is going to move anywhere in the backswing it should be slightly away from the ball as a reaction to your right hip pushing back, not towards it from your left hip coming out. 



This is where you get into trouble. The club has worked back into a position where it's a bit too far behind you (too deep) as a product of the takeaway issues and the club goes from too flat to too steep at the top, aligning with your right forearm. As before there is a very specific set of movements you *have* to do at this point to get the club down on plane, and as before you don't do any of those which we'll see next. You also make a big shift up on to your toes, once again coming towards the ball and away from the red line. Both the club and your body are in bad positions here.



Your main move in the downswing is to kick your right leg out and pull the shaft straight down very steeply. This is all bad as it will require lots of hand eye coordination and compensations to get to the ball now. Crocs on a hard rubber mat aren't helping anything here either, you likely have very little traction on the ground which personally I would never try to practice on.

Hopefully the online lessons will address some of these issues, but the main thing to understand is that a lot of things need to be flipped around:

1) Swinging your left hip out and coming towards the ball needs to swap to pushing your right side back and pulling *away* from it.
2) Swinging the club around your torso needs to swap to swinging more up over your right shoulder with a correct wrist set to keep you from getting the club too deep and steep.
3) Kicking your right side out in the downswing needs to be swapped with your left side driving back.

That is a lot to address all at once so check out those links to get the concepts in your head first and address them one at a time.

[Righty to Lefty]

On 11/11/2022 at 9:22 PM, dvq9654 said:

 

Not to start a debate, but be careful how you enact or interpret the "wait and be patient" part of this comment. The best players hands move early in the downswing, so I would argue you absolutely do not want to slow down your arms. Rather, you want to have better wrist conditions and intentions from the top vs. actually slowing down your arms. 

 

I say this because you have a strong turn and if you leave your arms up top with this turn, your hands are going to trail your pivot and you are going to be stuck. 

 

Interpret all this how you will, but just a word of caution from a player whose hands are always just a bit slow. 

I am glad that you took a deeper dive into my post and took the time to respond giving me the opportunity to clarify your statements as I believe that it will provide a deeper understanding for the group.  Bear with me as I have to get mathematical for a second as it will fully explain my post with the most clarity.  

 

The diagram below is of a planet revolving around the Sun but if you put on a tilted plane it will represent a golf swing with the swing center being the sternum. The only part of this diagram you should be concerned with is the left half. The arrows are force vectors that show the direction that force is being applied and you can see that force is wasted if it is applied to the club prior to shaft parallel on the downswing which is the upper left quadrant of the diagram. You can see that if you try to apply leverage to the club anywhere in the top left quadrant of the swing arc that the force will be sent away from the target line and wasted. 

 

A golfer must be patient once the athlete sets the club in motion until at least shaft parallel on the downswing because the club is not under enough force yet and can be manipulated precisely as @ahelix does at the top of his swing motion where the club is not under much force and is moving slowly, thus the when he pulls on the handle at the top of his backswing, he easily reroutes the club and is forced to save it which he actually does a pretty good job of.  Now then if he is patient until the club reaches at least shaft parallel in the downswing, which is the first instance where the leverage can be effectively applied, he will not be able to reroute the club at this point because he will have given enough time for the club head to create enough force to make it much more difficult to reroute. Much like pushing a kid on a swing you don't yank them from the top of their arc, you patiently wait until the optimal time during their arc to assist their building momentum.  Depending on how fast twitch the athlete is leverage must be applied at some point between shaft parallel and just prior to the low point of the swing arc somewhere within the lower left quadrant of the diagram.  Also notice how all the force is being sent out to the right of the target line and that the only time force is being sent straight ahead is at low point of the swing arc, and no shot should be struck at low point of the swing arc, so that means force is always applied to the right of the intended start line of the ball and never sent directly to the actual intended target so that is the "actual target" because that is where the force of the swing should be directed.

 

The hands are very passive in the golf swing, but under rotation the hands track an arc and don't stand a chance at being active with the amount of force that is being created if you are patient enough to wait until the club is in the "go zone" which is the lower left section of the diagram as was noted. The hands and arms are providing support for the club until enough force is created but they are not active in any way until the bottom hand begins to pressure the shaft and the top hand begins to oppose it, but those opposing forces should result in a net of zero meaning that the club will not be flipped or handle dragged which happens when the the hands aren't working in opposition to each other, and the result will be a stable club through impact. The hands are not working together in the golf swing, they are actually working in opposition to each other where the top hand is trying to stop the handle end of the club and the bottom hand is trying to accelerate it, but the net result is a stable club face through impact, much like a hockey slap shot but in a golf shot the hands are right next to each other.  If you try to accelerate or decelerate both hands though impact your transfer of energy to the club will be inefficient and you will be slower. 

 

The other effect of trying to stop the handle end of the club is that it forces rotation of the upper body. The club can only get stuck behind you if you are trying to accelerate the hips when you should actually be allowing them to decelerate which will activate the legs to create stability to properly transfer the force onward.  So yes you should be absolutely being trying to "decelerate the club head into impact"  but being that your only connection to the club is 3 to almost 4 feet away from the club head you have to decelerate the butt end of the club to effectively transfer the force from the body onward to the club head just like cracking a whip where the rapid deceleration of the handle end is what fires the tip of the whip forward and a golf club is no different.  

 

Here is a less technical video  that shows the exact same force vector concept explained that may help you better grasp the concept (In the thumbnail the alignment stick with the ball on it is showing the first useful force vector at shaft parallel shown in the diagram and the direction of that force):

 

Also here are a couple videos that I made for a buddy a few years ago about stopping the handle end of the club and why it is so important: 

 

 Hope this clears things up but if you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask. @ahelixI encourage you to video yourself asap simply being aware of stopping the handle end of the club later in your swing arc and you will be amazed I assure you as the club will not immediately steepen in the downswing. R to L

Edited November 15, 2022 by Righty to Lefty

[Righty to Lefty]

@ahelixwere you able to get some swings in to work on these concepts?