Shut Club Face

[bt1717]

I always seem to have a very closed club face at takeaway and at the top of my backswing, leading to compensations and me attempting to leave the face open through the swing. I have a strongish-neutral grip. I have experimented with weak grips in the past and my club face still gets closed. 
 

My question is: what else could cause the face to become closed like this besides grip? 
 

 

[GoGoErky]

The issue is you don’t vertical hinge the club. Then it gets behind you in the backswing 

 

Then in transition you don’t get the left hip going and don’t shallow the club and end up using right side bend to shallow.

 

work on setting the wrist vertically at shaft parallel 

[bt1717]

1 hour ago, GoGoErky said:

The issue is you don’t vertical hinge the club. Then it gets behind you in the backswing 

 

Then in transition you don’t get the left hip going and don’t shallow the club and end up using right side bend to shallow.

 

work on setting the wrist vertically at shaft parallel 

Okay! I appreciate it

[slytown]

Agree with Gerky. Its all a result of the very inside takeaway. You have an impressive recovery though. If you are flushing it, just stick with it. If you are having trouble, I would work on a one piece takeaway with the hands low and clubhead coming back more up on the target line. You could do the Korda drill with 2 balls or simply run the club back along an alignment stick. See if something simple like that one piece takeaway fixes the closed face.

Edited May 29, 2023 by slytown

[bt1717]

4 hours ago, slytown said:

Agree with Gerky. It’s all a result of the very inside takeaway. You have an impressive recovery though. If you are flushing it, just stick with it. If you are having trouble, I would work on a one piece takeaway with the hands low and clubhead coming back more up on the target line. You could do the Korda drill with 2 balls or simply run the club back along an alignment stick. See if something simple like that one piece takeaway fixes the closed face.

I typically strike the ball pretty well, but I struggle with that face being shut which can lead to some nasty pulls/hooks. Would fixing the inside takeaway lead to the club face being more square at the top? 

[Valtiel]

2 hours ago, bt1717 said:

I typically strike the ball pretty well, but I struggle with that face being shut which can lead to some nasty pulls/hooks. Would fixing the inside takeaway lead to the club face being more square at the top? 

That is more a function of wrist hinging and forearm rolling, both of which you aren't doing at all. I agree that the lack of hinging is part of the problem, the other is hand path because your hands immediately go inside and behind you in takeaway:



If this type of move feels natural to you then an actually neutral "correct" takeaway will probably feel like the club is more disconnected and away from your body, something that I would caution re: @slytown's recommendation of feeling a more "one piece" takeaway as that can often result in exactly what you're doing here.

You're setup fairly neutral but then make an arm swing as though you're aimed 50y to the right. Where the club is pointing at P2 (orange line) is one of the marking posts here as it should be pointed either where you're aiming or where your intended target is, and here we can see it is very different from where you're aiming. To your credit as mentioned you do a good job of both sticking with it throughout the swing (no weird looping compensations) and your solid lower body action helps stabilize this, but you're still coming very far from the inside (something that likely gets worse with longer clubs) and basically means you're either hitting strong draws all the time, or alternating between snap hooks and high blocks when you're off. The path your arm swing is creating is the problem here, and if you've always swung similar to this then the shut clubface is a necessary compensation to make it work.

Feeling your arms working more "up" and much less "around" is the first place to start, then supplementing that with that bit of upward right wrist hinging to set the club in front of you (radial deviation). If you do this correctly you'll likely hit some wicked low hooks to start with so be patient with it. Checking yourself on video and using drills like this one can help.

 

Edited May 30, 2023 by Valtiel