What can I work on?

[captwilks67]

2 swings for you guys. A 58 wedge and a driver. How can I improve? 

 

 

 

[chollier986]

Your lob wedge swing is identical to your driver swing… you may be giving up accuracy with that approach.

[captwilks67]

35 minutes ago, chollier986 said:

Your lob wedge swing is identical to your driver swing… you may be giving up accuracy with that approach.

How so? 

[Valtiel]

I was NOT prepared for how your legs move, good lord lol.

To say what you're doing is extreme doesn't fully do it justice. I mean this in the best possible way, there is a baffling combination of gifted physical flexibility and complete misuse of all of it going on here, hah. It would not surprise me at all if this was posted as a joke in a "lets see how insane of a golf swing I can physically make to see if people take it seriously" and again, I mean that with all due respect because this is wild. 😅



Right out of the gate your alignment is very far off. Your feet and shoulders are pointing in radically different directions when they should be pretty close if not actually aligned, and your legs are very straight with little to no knee flex. This USUALLY limits a lot of potential mobility in the backswing, but the way you're about to defy that is going to haunt me for at least the rest of the season.



First for reference, rotationally speaking this is basically a full hip turn here. The lack of knee flex at address however leads to you have to create this rotation by locking out and almost hyper extending your right leg. This is not a good position to be in because you'll now need to spend time regaining flex in that leg in transition, time you don't have without sacrificing something else.



This however (again with all due respect) is almost body horror. The amount of strain you're subjecting your right knee to (are you double jointed? Hypermobile?) is both impressive physically and terrible for a golf swing. Your arm path is wild as well with your hands traveling almost horizontal and the club ending up basically vertical at the top of the backswing and the amount you crouch down in the backswing is like you're doing a squat. All of this is extreme, and all of it is bad for a golf swing unfortunately.



You start getting back towards almost conventional looking positions in transition, especially your right leg here. Your lower half in the second frame isn't far off from a good "end of backswing" kind of position, but everything else was so out of bounds that you're just playing a game of "try to get back to somewhere on the ball" which is why you took a chunk out of the ground and popped this one up.

All of this coupled with the fact that you make virtually the same swing with a lob wedge....i've never seen anything like it to be honest.



Here is a collage of 5 tour pros and you. Matt Wolff is in red and would be considered an outlier among pros.

If you're serious about improving then it's good to understand how wildly unorthodox everything you're doing is first. Is there anything you can share about your approach or your swing thoughts first?

[captwilks67]

1 hour ago, Valtiel said:

I was NOT prepared for how your legs move, good lord lol.

To say what you're doing is extreme doesn't fully do it justice. I mean this in the best possible way, there is a baffling combination of gifted physical flexibility and complete misuse of all of it going on here, hah. It would not surprise me at all if this was posted as a joke in a "lets see how insane of a golf swing I can physically make to see if people take it seriously" and again, I mean that with all due respect because this is wild. 😅



Right out of the gate your alignment is very far off. Your feet and shoulders are pointing in radically different directions when they should be pretty close if not actually aligned, and your legs are very straight with little to no knee flex. This USUALLY limits a lot of potential mobility in the backswing, but the way you're about to defy that is going to haunt me for at least the rest of the season.



First for reference, rotationally speaking this is basically a full hip turn here. The lack of knee flex at address however leads to you have to create this rotation by locking out and almost hyper extending your right leg. This is not a good position to be in because you'll now need to spend time regaining flex in that leg in transition, time you don't have without sacrificing something else.



This however (again with all due respect) is almost body horror. The amount of strain you're subjecting your right knee to (are you double jointed? Hypermobile?) is both impressive physically and terrible for a golf swing. Your arm path is wild as well with your hands traveling almost horizontal and the club ending up basically vertical at the top of the backswing and the amount you crouch down in the backswing is like you're doing a squat. All of this is extreme, and all of it is bad for a golf swing unfortunately.



You start getting back towards almost conventional looking positions in transition, especially your right leg here. Your lower half in the second frame isn't far off from a good "end of backswing" kind of position, but everything else was so out of bounds that you're just playing a game of "try to get back to somewhere on the ball" which is why you took a chunk out of the ground and popped this one up.

All of this coupled with the fact that you make virtually the same swing with a lob wedge....i've never seen anything like it to be honest.



Here is a collage of 5 tour pros and you. Matt Wolff is in red and would be considered an outlier among pros.

If you're serious about improving then it's good to understand how wildly unorthodox everything you're doing is first. Is there anything you can share about your approach or your swing thoughts first?

My swing has gotten a lot worse in a few months. When I can drive the ball straight, I can get 330ish on my drive. 
 

my swing thoughts are, make sure my elbows are pointing at my hips. Face is closed. Focused on the ball. Start backswing. 
 

I do know that I hyper extent my front knee. I don’t always swing like this but yesterday I was swinging exceptionally bad. Thus you see it. I think I may be putting my pressure on my front swing? Habit from trying to avoid the chunk for awhile this season. Now I top the ball. I haven’t been getting under my driver like that, so I don’t know why it comes out of the blue every so often. 
 

I am so wildly inconsistent that it frustrates me. I want consistency and I want to break 90 by July. 
 

With my driver, I think about no wrist movement. Keeping the front wrist static. This helps me to square the face up at impact. 
 

with irons, I want to begin hinge at the back right leg. I want to be soft with my hands. I want to drive. The butt of the club down and around. Getting rotation and connection. 
 

And yes lol, I think you’ll be most blown away by my distances and number. I can hit it far. But no accuracy or consistency. So I would rather hit it 10 yards shorter and have more consistency. 

[captwilks67]

2 hours ago, Valtiel said:

I was NOT prepared for how your legs move, good lord lol.

To say what you're doing is extreme doesn't fully do it justice. I mean this in the best possible way, there is a baffling combination of gifted physical flexibility and complete misuse of all of it going on here, hah. It would not surprise me at all if this was posted as a joke in a "lets see how insane of a golf swing I can physically make to see if people take it seriously" and again, I mean that with all due respect because this is wild. 😅



Right out of the gate your alignment is very far off. Your feet and shoulders are pointing in radically different directions when they should be pretty close if not actually aligned, and your legs are very straight with little to no knee flex. This USUALLY limits a lot of potential mobility in the backswing, but the way you're about to defy that is going to haunt me for at least the rest of the season.



First for reference, rotationally speaking this is basically a full hip turn here. The lack of knee flex at address however leads to you have to create this rotation by locking out and almost hyper extending your right leg. This is not a good position to be in because you'll now need to spend time regaining flex in that leg in transition, time you don't have without sacrificing something else.



This however (again with all due respect) is almost body horror. The amount of strain you're subjecting your right knee to (are you double jointed? Hypermobile?) is both impressive physically and terrible for a golf swing. Your arm path is wild as well with your hands traveling almost horizontal and the club ending up basically vertical at the top of the backswing and the amount you crouch down in the backswing is like you're doing a squat. All of this is extreme, and all of it is bad for a golf swing unfortunately.



You start getting back towards almost conventional looking positions in transition, especially your right leg here. Your lower half in the second frame isn't far off from a good "end of backswing" kind of position, but everything else was so out of bounds that you're just playing a game of "try to get back to somewhere on the ball" which is why you took a chunk out of the ground and popped this one up.

All of this coupled with the fact that you make virtually the same swing with a lob wedge....i've never seen anything like it to be honest.



Here is a collage of 5 tour pros and you. Matt Wolff is in red and would be considered an outlier among pros.

If you're serious about improving then it's good to understand how wildly unorthodox everything you're doing is first. Is there anything you can share about your approach or your swing thoughts first?

I think I’m 100% lost and have no direction at the moment. First off, it’s tough for me to see a drive go 330 and then I slice a drive offline around the world. And that messes with my ability to slow down, as I’m always In this feeling of “I can get it there”. So I try to swing full power. 
 

the leg thing, I just don’t know. It feels as if it’s hard to rotate completely if I don’t bend. But I know that’s incorrect. I’m trying to figure out what is most effective and my hands seem to want to keep the face open at impact. So I’m trying everything I can to close it. My attention is on my hands when maybe I should be focusing on my hips and legs? 
 

there are days when that feels automatic with the stiff front wrist and others when I just can’t figure out how much to close the face at address. It’s like I don’t know what I’m going to do that do so I’m using the front nine to just try and figure that out, meanwhile I’m taking penalties. 
 

my goal is to eliminate penalties, while getting maybe 300-330 distance off the tee. I swing 116mph with the driver. But that doesn’t matter if I can’t get the face square at impact. So I’m trying to dive deep to figure that out. 
 

irons I need to balance my stance and just relax. Don’t get so crazy with the legs and take it back smooth, pause, engage core, neutralize stance by pushing weight on the front leg, and using that as a pivot point to drive my hips around while letting the butt of the club fall straight down and then around. 
 

I think that would be solid technique but I just don’t know and I need specifics to think about. 
 

 

[Valtiel]

7 hours ago, captwilks67 said:

I think I’m 100% lost and have no direction at the moment.
 

...but I just don’t know and I need specifics to think about. 

 

 

The main things I would focus on are as follows:

1) Abandon ANY and all thoughts about distance and expectations around it right now. It will literally drive you crazy because your distance and what you can control will be a product of having good fundamentals, and you are so far away from that right now that any focus on distance is going to prevent you from making the changes you need to make, which will initially involve a lot of slowing down and "less".

2) If you don't have a coach or someone that can work with you hands on then you're going to need to accept that your ability to self diagnose and apply changes has gotten you severely out of bounds with how your body is moving and you need to commit to doing *drastically* less:



This is a rough "range of motion" guideline for how much your hips should move at *most* anywhere prior to contact with the ball. Anything more than this is excessive and you'll need to learn to identify that. I recommend starting with a much shorter club however, and the reality is that your driver should be completely off limits until you can get comfortable with making changes to your movement. That should be your goal for July btw, not to simply break a score. You need to learn how to move differently.

3) I recommend something like a Planemate or some other upper body training aid that can force you into more neutral/conventional hand/arm path just to get used to what the feels like. That should be combined with proper alignment at address (getting your shoulders lined up with your feet to start).

If any of this feels restrictive and/or not fun, good, it shouldn't be. If you have any feelings of "I just want to swing my own swing" then you need to abandon those *for now*. That concept has been hugely destructive to a lot of people because it makes them believe they can simply swing the club however they want and with enough practice it will work. "Swing your own swing" needs a massive asterisk by it because it is only a valid if you have something deeply ingrained from childhood that makes sense to keep with how you naturally move (see John Daly for example). As adults we are unfortunately blessed with the physical strength and ability to completely f*** up a golf swing with our ideas about what it should be and what feels right/wrong, so reining that in becomes the priority.

[slytown]

No kidding. That is some excessive body twisting going on.

 

Small tweaks are out of the question. I, like Valtiel, would recommend unlearning the body swing. Work on arm swing drills.

 

The best drill you can do is feet together and arm swing drills. You need to learn how to create width and power with your arms, as well as finding the swing plane. Work on bringing the club to a decent spot with just your arms moving there and release the club on the downswing. DO NOT HOLD ANY WRIST ANGLES. When your swing is out of whack, this is the best drill you can do to get back to simplicity. Remember, a club is fundamentally swung with your hands and your arms. Dan is the man.

 

 

[tthomasgolfer605]

On 5/12/2023 at 7:07 AM, captwilks67 said:

I think I’m 100% lost and have no direction at the moment. First off, it’s tough for me to see a drive go 330 and then I slice a drive offline around the world. And that messes with my ability to slow down, as I’m always In this feeling of “I can get it there”. So I try to swing full power. 
 

the leg thing, I just don’t know. It feels as if it’s hard to rotate completely if I don’t bend. But I know that’s incorrect. I’m trying to figure out what is most effective and my hands seem to want to keep the face open at impact. So I’m trying everything I can to close it. My attention is on my hands when maybe I should be focusing on my hips and legs? 
 

there are days when that feels automatic with the stiff front wrist and others when I just can’t figure out how much to close the face at address. It’s like I don’t know what I’m going to do that do so I’m using the front nine to just try and figure that out, meanwhile I’m taking penalties. 
 

my goal is to eliminate penalties, while getting maybe 300-330 distance off the tee. I swing 116mph with the driver. But that doesn’t matter if I can’t get the face square at impact. So I’m trying to dive deep to figure that out. 
 

irons I need to balance my stance and just relax. Don’t get so crazy with the legs and take it back smooth, pause, engage core, neutralize stance by pushing weight on the front leg, and using that as a pivot point to drive my hips around while letting the butt of the club fall straight down and then around. 
 

I think that would be solid technique but I just don’t know and I need specifics to think about. 
 

 

There's no way you hit it 330. 

[captwilks67]

5 hours ago, tthomasgolfer605 said:

There's no way you hit it 330. 
 

 

 

It seems to shock so many people that someone can be fundamentally bad, but have a super powerful swing. 

[uitar9]

My wife and I played with a 35 year old and his spouse, yesterday. He told me he picked up the game during lock down. 

 

When he connected and hit the fairway, he hit it 250-270.

 

He didn't hit fairway often. Probably lost 6 or 7 balls.

 

Told me he just wanted to hit it as hard as he could. Didn't mind hitting second shots from other fairways or deep bush. Weird setup. Strange swing. 

 

He didn't score well but had a great day.