Am I swinging too much from the inside?

[reactive]

I was told to learn to get my ball flight to start right and draw, (probably to help me stop an OTT) which I have been able to do, but my draw is turning into an unplayable hook on mishits especially and I feel like I am swinging too much from the inside now..

Also I feel like I may be "hitting off my trail side" from watching the face on...

Thoughts or advice? I feel like I should be hitting the ball more consistently than I am

DTL and face on videos attached, sorry for the angles being slightly off
 

 

Edited June 23, 2023 by reactive
clarity

[MonteScheinblum]

Yes.  Pretty good swing, just need to clean it up.  Arms loop a bit too much, hip turn gets too rotated too early, right knee locks out and right hip and knee fire a little too hard and early.  All very fixable with someone who will guide you.

[reactive]

2 hours ago, MonteScheinblum said:

Yes.  Pretty good swing, just need to clean it up.  Arms loop a bit too much, hip turn gets too rotated too early, right knee locks out and right hip and knee fire a little too hard and early.  All very fixable with someone who will guide you.

Thanks for the reply Monte!!

Any recommendation on which of your video series would apply/help me most right now?  I think I have them all but I need a rewatch haha

[Scottbox]

11 hours ago, MonteScheinblum said:

Yes.  Pretty good swing, just need to clean it up.  Arms loop a bit too much, hip turn gets too rotated too early, right knee locks out and right hip and knee fire a little too hard and early.  All very fixable with someone who will guide you.

Uh... this hits a little close to home for me, Monte.

Edited June 23, 2023 by Scottbox

[Valtiel]

On 6/22/2023 at 7:34 PM, reactive said:

I was told to learn to get my ball flight to start right and draw, (probably to help me stop an OTT) which I have been able to do, but my draw is turning into an unplayable hook on mishits especially and I feel like I am swinging too much from the inside now.
 

You definitely are, yes:



This move is poison here, it's a destructive way of manufacturing an overly inside path by dropping your hands WAY behind you and getting stuck. Your hand path towards the ball is something that generally matches up with your P4 top of the backswing position, here are some comparison visuals:



JT has very high hands with less depth and Rory has flatter hands with more depth. For JT, he can drop straight down more, whereas Rory has to work flatter and more around. They both follow generally the same path, just slightly different angles. What they don't do, and what virtually no one does, is move their hands backwards further behind them in transition, especially if said hands are already deeper (further behind you) like yours are.

Also as a side note, I don't think keeping your right thumb and forefinger floating off the grip like that is a good idea generally. It's such an important point of connection on the club that I fear not having it could cause some bad habits/compensations to form.

Edited June 24, 2023 by Valtiel

[iacas]

33 minutes ago, Valtiel said:

 

Camera angles aren't the same. Be careful - it's not as "inside" as it looks.

[Valtiel]

14 minutes ago, iacas said:

 

Camera angles aren't the same. Be careful - it's not as "inside" as it looks.

True, I still stand by the hand path comment though and the problems with dropping behind like this and if anything this camera angle undersells the severity of that particular move.  His club starts entering the grass almost a full foot behind the ball, which while somewhat expected in what basically qualifies as rough here it is still a little out of bounds IMO.

[iacas]

7 minutes ago, Valtiel said:

if anything this camera angle undersells the severity of that particular move.

 

My point was only that it does the opposite: it makes it look worse than it is.

 

 

The clubhead isn't as far inside as it looks.

 

@reactive, you'll get better analyses with better camera angles.

 

I pretty much agree here:

 

On 6/22/2023 at 11:19 PM, MonteScheinblum said:

Yes.  Pretty good swing, just need to clean it up.  Arms loop a bit too much, hip turn gets too rotated too early, right knee locks out and right hip and knee fire a little too hard and early.  All very fixable with someone who will guide you.

Edited June 25, 2023 by iacas
added quote

[reactive]

@Valtiel Thanks for that, especially those comparision gifs.  I do see how the camera is off slightly but I think I can "feel" this move, I think it stems from the idea of the Athletic Motion Golf Shallowing video where they say lower arms/ bring arms down to right pocket then pivot.  I'm clearly doing it wrong, do you think the feeling of hands going directly towards the ball would help? 

I've tried variations of that and feel like I struggle with unwinding to quickly or too aggressively when I do it though, something I can work on for sure I suppose?

Let me ask you guys this, as long as my clubhead never gets above my hands on video is it possible to unwind too quickly or be too "over the top"?

I get the feeling when I get really inside to out that I 'flip" the clubhead at the last moment and the hit feels super wipey (sp?) like I wipe across it and hit it on the toe.

Also I rarely take much for divots and even when I try its hard, but if I focus on taking a divot and do it right the contact is really good and the ball flight is much straighter.

So could I just focus on that and "hands toward ball"?

[MPStrat]

8 hours ago, reactive said:

I think it stems from the idea of the Athletic Motion Golf Shallowing video where they say lower arms/ bring arms down to right pocket then pivot. 

This was my first thought when I saw your swing. 

[GungHoGolf]

28 minutes ago, MPStrat said:

This was my first thought when I saw your swing. 

Same. 

 

To paraphrase Monte, if one aspirin is good, some guys take the whole bottle. 

[RoyalTroon]

13 minutes ago, GungHoGolf said:

To paraphrase Monte, if one aspirin is good, some guys take the whole bottle. 

 

Sounds like a Penick quip.

[Zitlow]

1 hour ago, MPStrat said:

This was my first thought when I saw your swing. 

I thought it was the "Drop the Arms While Keeping the Back to the Target" thing that the teachers ripped off from Justin Rose. 

 

Edited June 25, 2023 by Zitlow

[Zitlow]

1 hour ago, BALLYBUNION said:

 

Sounds like a Penick quip.

Teachers not only rip off ideas from each other they also rip off clichés. 

[johnrobison]

Thanks as always for your valuable and constructive contributions to the discussion 🙄

[Valtiel]

18 hours ago, reactive said:

@Valtiel Thanks for that, especially those comparision gifs.  I do see how the camera is off slightly but I think I can "feel" this move, I think it stems from the idea of the Athletic Motion Golf Shallowing video where they say lower arms/ bring arms down to right pocket then pivot.  I'm clearly doing it wrong, do you think the feeling of hands going directly towards the ball would help? 

I've tried variations of that and feel like I struggle with unwinding to quickly or too aggressively when I do it though, something I can work on for sure I suppose?

Cheers!

The combination of you being able to "feel" the move with you mentioning that you've tried different variations and struggled would lead me to believe that you might be too focused on trying to actively put your arms in different places as opposed to getting them to work in conjunction with proper rotation. What I mean by that is the idea that arms generally just work up/down and it's the rotation of the body that supplies the "around", like a  carnival swing ride...



...and without the proper balance of both you'll get out of whack. YouTube golf instruction culture has exacerbated this with various fixations on "quick fix" shallowing moves that get people super focused on just what they're doing with their hands/arms without any of the supporting pivot/rotational fundamentals that make up the other half of the equation. I'll use myself as an example:



I have a pretty typical shallowing type of move where I get the club plane pointed directly at the ball at/around left arm parallel in the downswing. The *only* active thought I ever have about hands and arms is getting them to arrive at a good position at the top as I have a tendency to get too "up" and lacking in depth which can get me a little too steep in transition. Everything else is a product of focusing on rotation/sequencing and letting the arms "drop" so they can be flung like the swing ride above. That isn't to say they are totally passive of course, nothing in the golf swing is, but it's a bit of a "body/rotation first" focus that will tend to take care of the arms, or at least reveal what your arms "naturally" want to do. For me I learned that I am NOT a "get the arms up and let them fall straight down" kind of guy like a Justin Thomas or the most extreme current example of that in someone like Adrian Meronk, nor am I a super flat/deep Rory kind of pattern. Like most of us i'm somewhere in the middle in the meat of the bell curve, but with a slight shift towards the flatter/rotation side, something that is informed by how my body wants to rotate and the amount of vertical force vs. rotational torque I feel comfortable creating. 

Edited June 25, 2023 by Valtiel

[Lobby]

The soundtrack on the videos was cool

 

i half expected Eddie can Halen shredding “How Can This Be Love,” as the ball push / slices OB right

 

🙂

[Zitlow]

Disconnecting the left arm isn't an efficient way to move in the swing. 

 

 

Edited June 26, 2023 by Zitlow

[iacas]

Can you define "disconnecting the left arm" and how you'd measure that?

[doctor220]

On 6/24/2023 at 8:06 PM, Valtiel said:

True, I still stand by the hand path comment though and the problems with dropping behind like this and if anything this camera angle undersells the severity of that particular move.  His club starts entering the grass almost a full foot behind the ball, which while somewhat expected in what basically qualifies as rough here it is still a little out of bounds IMO.

They won’t drop as much behind though with a normal angle. Because of the angle, down looks more behind. 
 

rose zhang gets hands deeper at start of DS  but agree it’s not a super common move 

[reactive]

Thanks for all the helpful insight, here are some updated videos taken today, I tried to get the angles better and added an alignment stick to help

 

 

[reactive]

This may provide some additional insight, here is a vid of me doing a rehearsal of what my "intention" is with just my arms in the swing.  

Not sure if this is accurate/helping or hurting?  Thanks
 

 

[iacas]

Your right elbow and hands pull too far behind you here:

 

 

 

Left arm gets and stays too deep. Look at the right shoulder, right upper arm movement there. It's going down behind your butt, nearly, not down in front of your thigh.

 

[Valtiel]

5 hours ago, reactive said:

This may provide some additional insight, here is a vid of me doing a rehearsal of what my "intention" is with just my arms in the swing.  

Not sure if this is accurate/helping or hurting?  Thanks
 

 

We've seen this type of rehearsal posted here before, it's almost always bad. You're achieving your intent here and that is actually bad. As @iacas said there is so much stuck behind you. Your hands are already deep at the top and dropping them behind you like that is a bad match up. Looking at the actual DTL shot video, your divot is pointing around 8-10* to the right of your alignment stick and foot alignment. This is two way miss city when your timing is off and is inconsistent and unsustainable. 

Minor rant about these exaggerated rehearsals; they are almost always meant to be feels applied on top of already deeply ingrained fundamentals, they aren't for "civilian" use in most cases and they need to approached carefully. We've seen lots of people here turn an exaggerated drill into an actual swing, somethings the pros who employ them never do, and get all out of whack as a result. Whether it's Rose's drill there, Tiger's exaggerated Foley-era fade drill, Noren's crazy lag drill, or whatever the hell Andrew Loupe was up to, you need to be able to identify when you're going out of bounds with a drill like this. All the forensics are there for you, namely the divot direction which should have immediately raised alarms.

[nitram]

Preach on Val!!!

[Zitlow]

He's hitting off the right side which is something Rory, Rickie and tour pros do which I don't see much in swings posted here.

 

He's got talent, take out some of the unnecessary motion that's wasting energy and look out. 

 

 

@reactive Are you consciously trying keep your back to the target?

 

 

 

 

 

[reactive]

@Zitlow Thanks for the reply. I’m not consciously thinking about keeping my back to the target, what I have been thinking about is not unwinding too quickly which is probably producing that…but maybe I need to fire upper body sooner to balance things out?

 

I guess I’m just looking for suggestions on how to fix this without regressing in other areas. 
 

is there any part of my swing that I should def not mess with?

Edited June 27, 2023 by reactive
Typos

[tthomasgolfer605]

42 minutes ago, reactive said:

@Zitlow Thanks for the reply. I’m not consciously thinking about keeping my back to the target, what I have been thinking about is not unwinding too quickly which is probably producing that…but maybe I need to fire upper body sooner to balance things out?

 

I guess I’m just looking for suggestions on how to fix this without regressing in other areas. 
 

is there any part of my swing that I should def not mess with?

You're going to have to exaggerate the complete opposite for a while. You reverse loop it, so you're going to have to feel more inside on backswing and out and over until the path neutralizes. 

[Zitlow]

You can create more force swinging the club in a circle around you vs a line in front of you. You take the club outside the line getting too steep. 

 

 

Dunaway gets the club started back inside the line and gets the club on the same plane as his left hand and arm by P2.

 

 

Once you get the club swinging on a better path so you don't have to reroute it you'll swing it much faster. 

 

 

 

Edited June 27, 2023 by Zitlow

[Zitlow]

You don't need to fire the upper body sooner and you don't need the lower body way ahead while artificially holding off your upper body. 

 

If you face the target line and make an underhand throwing motion with your right hand you'll get the idea of the lower body leading the upper body.