Inside takeaway and rolling the hands - Flushing it!

[YouDaHamHider]

Hey all, 

 

I've recently been absolutely flushing it with distance and accuracy but it's all happened in conjunction with my takeaway getting very inside and my hands rolling like mad. Both of these things are supposed to be a big No No, so i'm curious why it seems to be working for me (like is it matching up with some other swing flaw that I have?) and/or is this pattern going to suddenly turn me into an even worse hacker than I was when I had a more neutral takeaway and less rolled hands? If so, why?

 

 

[Valtiel]

Good questions, because yeah...you are doing a lot of things that would be considered "bad" in a vacuum, however....



This is a pretty good impact position. The right hip is kicked up and forward a little bit, but not enough to be full blown EE territory IMO. Importantly your hands have returned to an almost identical position as they were at address and you're creating good lower body forces as we'll see later:



That is definitely as you said a complete rolling to the inside and fanning open of the clubface that would be a death move for most. You're also locking out your right leg a lot, and early.



Up from there you actually completely stop opening the clubface (which is good, you'd be dead if you didn't), but since your lower body got maxed out really early you're drifting back towards the ball a bit.



This very late across the line wrist hinging would *also* be a death move for most as you'd very commonly see a very steep transition from here....



...but you actually do a good job of both avoiding that *and* shallowing an ok amount. The club head works left (away from the ball) and your hands are pulling in. Your also rotating well in terms of getting into your front side even though we can see a bit of that gap between your butt and the red line from that drift towards the ball earlier in the backswing. Importantly though you're not coming any closer to the ball throughout the downswing, another thing that would kill you if you did. 



Down into impact we see obviously FAR more conventional positions here than when you took the club back. The club is pretty square as it should be and you're creating good forces with your feet as evidenced by your left side opening and your right side sliding slightly towards 10 o'clock, a good sign for proper torque and ground force usage.

This is a tough one because there is a lot wrong on paper, but "wrong" only matters if it prevent you from getting to a consistent and fundamentally sound impact position. I'd be concerned that the number of moving parts would make this swing a "good on the range, nightmare on the course" situation in the long run. You can sync up a lot of disparate moving parts on the range when you're pounding balls but that may not translate consistently to the course, so that would be the first thing I would judge any of this by. As for the how, IMO:

1) Despite completely fanning the clubface open and inside, you stop both of those moves in the remainder of the backswing. There is some Raymond Floyd DNA in here, albeit way deeper as he went flat/inside but then STRAIGHT up after then.
2) Despite the late wrist hinging and club getting very off plane at the top, you've maintained good wrist angles (extension in the right hand, a little flexion in the left) which sets you up to compensate well in the downswing.
3) All of this is being supported by a pretty decent lower body sequence that sees you opening your left side well in the downswing to get/keep you on plane and limit the "damage" of having to compensate for other elements.

Good lower body fundamentals and wrist conditions can set you up to cover a LOT of sins in the golf swing, the question becomes which of these sins are necessary and which can be removed or improved upon. The course will tell you for sure, and the misses you may end up suffering out there can hopefully inform what to tweak next.

[MK7Golf21]

if you are hitting it good that is all that matters. If you were playing on the pga tour and won the masters with an inside takeaway like that, on Monday you would see people on the range whipping the club inside to hit it better. 

 

Post up your before swing, without the inside takeaway. 

[Valtiel]

19 minutes ago, MK7Golf21 said:

if you are hitting it good that is all that matters. If you were playing on the pga tour and won the masters with an inside takeaway like that, on Monday you would see people on the range whipping the club inside to hit it better. 

 

Post up your before swing, without the inside takeaway. 

Check previous threads he has created, there are a number of swings posted there. 

[YouDaHamHider]

20 minutes ago, Valtiel said:

Good questions, because yeah...you are doing a lot of things that would be considered "bad" in a vacuum, however....



This is a pretty good impact position. The right hip is kicked up and forward a little bit, but not enough to be full blown EE territory IMO. Importantly your hands have returned to an almost identical position as they were at address and you're creating good lower body forces as we'll see later:



That is definitely as you said a complete rolling to the inside and fanning open of the clubface that would be a death move for most. You're also locking out your right leg a lot, and early.



Up from there you actually completely stop opening the clubface (which is good, you'd be dead if you didn't), but since your lower body got maxed out really early you're drifting back towards the ball a bit.



This very late across the line wrist hinging would *also* be a death move for most as you'd very commonly see a very steep transition from here....



...but you actually do a good job of both avoiding that *and* shallowing an ok amount. The club head works left (away from the ball) and your hands are pulling in. Your also rotating well in terms of getting into your front side even though we can see a bit of that gap between your butt and the red line from that drift towards the ball earlier in the backswing. Importantly though you're not coming any closer to the ball throughout the downswing, another thing that would kill you if you did. 



Down into impact we see obviously FAR more conventional positions here than when you took the club back. The club is pretty square as it should be and you're creating good forces with your feet as evidenced by your left side opening and your right side sliding slightly towards 10 o'clock, a good sign for proper torque and ground force usage.

This is a tough one because there is a lot wrong on paper, but "wrong" only matters if it prevent you from getting to a consistent and fundamentally sound impact position. I'd be concerned that the number of moving parts would make this swing a "good on the range, nightmare on the course" situation in the long run. You can sync up a lot of disparate moving parts on the range when you're pounding balls but that may not translate consistently to the course, so that would be the first thing I would judge any of this by. As for the how, IMO:

1) Despite completely fanning the clubface open and inside, you stop both of those moves in the remainder of the backswing. There is some Raymond Floyd DNA in here, albeit way deeper as he went flat/inside but then STRAIGHT up after then.
2) Despite the late wrist hinging and club getting very off plane at the top, you've maintained good wrist angles (extension in the right hand, a little flexion in the left) which sets you up to compensate well in the downswing.
3) All of this is being supported by a pretty decent lower body sequence that sees you opening your left side well in the downswing to get/keep you on plane and limit the "damage" of having to compensate for other elements.

Good lower body fundamentals and wrist conditions can set you up to cover a LOT of sins in the golf swing, the question becomes which of these sins are necessary and which can be removed or improved upon. The course will tell you for sure, and the misses you may end up suffering out there can hopefully inform what to tweak next.

@Valtiel You never cease to amaze me with your in-depth analysis of people's swings. I mean seriously it's so awesome that I kind of don't know what to say other than thank you so much. I really enjoyed reading your analysis and the GIFs are superb. 

 

The only downer was this paragraph: 'I'd be concerned that the number of moving parts would make this swing a "good on the range, nightmare on the course" situation in the long run.'

 

As it happens the course has been closed either for frost or floods for the best part of 2 months so when I say I've never been flushing it so good I am almost exclusively refering to at the range, bugger!

 

Reading between your polite lines I feel as though what you're saying is that my swing is so full of potentially disastrous quirks that I'm dangling on a very thin rope above a raveen of complete hackery as soon as I get back on the turf! Hopefully I can get back out in the course sooner rather later and find out where I'm really at. Thanks again for the analysis, it's really appreciated!

 

[YouDaHamHider]

27 minutes ago, MK7Golf21 said:

if you are hitting it good that is all that matters. If you were playing on the pga tour and won the masters with an inside takeaway like that, on Monday you would see people on the range whipping the club inside to hit it better. 

 

Post up your before swing, without the inside takeaway. 

This is one of me with a less inside and rolled takeaway. Although my swing has been through many changes and I never quite know which one is going to rear it's ugly head!

[Valtiel]

1 minute ago, YouDaHamHider said:

@Valtiel You never cease to amaze me with your in-depth analysis of people's swings. I mean seriously it's so awesome that I kind of don't know what to say other than thank you so much. I really enjoyed reading your analysis and the GIFs are superb. 

 

The only downer was this paragraph: 'I'd be concerned that the number of moving parts would make this swing a "good on the range, nightmare on the course" situation in the long run.'

 

As it happens the course has been closed either for frost or floods for the best part of 2 months so when I say I've never been flushing it so good I am almost exclusively refering to at the range, bugger!

 

Reading between your polite lines I feel as though what you're saying is that my swing is so full of potentially disastrous quirks that I'm dangling on a very thin rope above a raveen of complete hackery as soon as I get back on the turf! Hopefully I can get back out in the course sooner rather later and find out where I'm really at. Thanks again for the analysis, it's really appreciated!

 

I'm glad it's helpful!

And yes, that's what i'm saying overall but with the caveat that I could easily be wrong to one degree or another. It's been clear since the beginning of golf that there are tons of ways to swing the club and that what works for one person is poison for another. The trick is teasing apart the underlying good stuff from the extra or unnecessary bad stuff, identifying how much of both you actually have, and figuring out how it all fits together, the goal being to build something that has all the best bits that hopefully bridges the gaps between "solid core fundamental" and "weird quirk that works for me". 

To use a more extreme example look at Jon Rahm. He has a physical limitation in his right foot/ankle due to being born with a clubbed foot, hyper mobility in his left hand/wrist, and fast hips. All of that lines up with building a shorter, quicker swing, but if you had someone like Shane Lowry swing like that he'd probably be off the tour, and vice versa! 

Looking at your swings as a general cross section you've between a LOT of different patterns, but there has been a general course of improvement from 2020 until now. You'd often struggled with hand path and getting some damaging "loops" in there causing your club path to get extreme (all the "inside" stuff you previously struggled with) and ended up getting extremely steep for awhile there. You've flipped to another extreme now and are hitting the ball well as you said, but eventually you'll have to settle somewhere mechanically because the ability to swing the club 100 different ways is a double-edge sword. Yes you can make changes, but how well can you stick to them ultimately is the question. What you might have learned here for example is that deeper hands + the sensation of having them work more around you out towards the ball is a pattern that resonates with you, think more one-plane Matt Kuchar downswing kind of thing. If that is the case then isolating those positions (deeper hands at the top, hands working out in the downswing, more rotation driven than vertical) and cleaning up what gets you to and from those positions might be the way to go. IMO it's about identifying a core pattern that works and building around it + cleaning up what doesn't need to be there. 

[MK7Golf21]

18 minutes ago, YouDaHamHider said:

This is one of me with a less inside and rolled takeaway. Although my swing has been through many changes and I never quite know which one is going to rear it's ugly head!

 

 

 

Don't think it's really the inside clubhead helping you, it's more so that your left arm is more in at left arm parallel vs the previous swing where your left arm is out almost straight back past your toes if that makes sense. You had to try looping it in the before swing to get the left arm deeper and more shallow coming down.

 

 

 

 

[naj959]

Perhaps a candidate for s&t arm movements in the backswing? Keep the left arm depth but eliminate the arm rolling/supination. Instead just c0ck the wrist once the hands have gone inside. Think you'd play really well with that movement and it would complement the other peices.

[CSagan]

Best ugly swing I've seen in a while! You have a gift below the waist....wait that didn't sound right...the swing hip high to hip high is good haha. Keep at it man.

[YouDaHamHider]

On 12/8/2023 at 10:15 PM, Valtiel said:

Good questions, because yeah...you are doing a lot of things that would be considered "bad" in a vacuum, however....



This is a pretty good impact position. The right hip is kicked up and forward a little bit, but not enough to be full blown EE territory IMO. Importantly your hands have returned to an almost identical position as they were at address and you're creating good lower body forces as we'll see later:



That is definitely as you said a complete rolling to the inside and fanning open of the clubface that would be a death move for most. You're also locking out your right leg a lot, and early.



Up from there you actually completely stop opening the clubface (which is good, you'd be dead if you didn't), but since your lower body got maxed out really early you're drifting back towards the ball a bit.



This very late across the line wrist hinging would *also* be a death move for most as you'd very commonly see a very steep transition from here....



...but you actually do a good job of both avoiding that *and* shallowing an ok amount. The club head works left (away from the ball) and your hands are pulling in. Your also rotating well in terms of getting into your front side even though we can see a bit of that gap between your butt and the red line from that drift towards the ball earlier in the backswing. Importantly though you're not coming any closer to the ball throughout the downswing, another thing that would kill you if you did. 



Down into impact we see obviously FAR more conventional positions here than when you took the club back. The club is pretty square as it should be and you're creating good forces with your feet as evidenced by your left side opening and your right side sliding slightly towards 10 o'clock, a good sign for proper torque and ground force usage.

This is a tough one because there is a lot wrong on paper, but "wrong" only matters if it prevent you from getting to a consistent and fundamentally sound impact position. I'd be concerned that the number of moving parts would make this swing a "good on the range, nightmare on the course" situation in the long run. You can sync up a lot of disparate moving parts on the range when you're pounding balls but that may not translate consistently to the course, so that would be the first thing I would judge any of this by. As for the how, IMO:

1) Despite completely fanning the clubface open and inside, you stop both of those moves in the remainder of the backswing. There is some Raymond Floyd DNA in here, albeit way deeper as he went flat/inside but then STRAIGHT up after then.
2) Despite the late wrist hinging and club getting very off plane at the top, you've maintained good wrist angles (extension in the right hand, a little flexion in the left) which sets you up to compensate well in the downswing.
3) All of this is being supported by a pretty decent lower body sequence that sees you opening your left side well in the downswing to get/keep you on plane and limit the "damage" of having to compensate for other elements.

Good lower body fundamentals and wrist conditions can set you up to cover a LOT of sins in the golf swing, the question becomes which of these sins are necessary and which can be removed or improved upon. The course will tell you for sure, and the misses you may end up suffering out there can hopefully inform what to tweak next.

As you correctly predicted...had a complete disaster once the course became playable again and even got a good bout of the shanks! 🤦‍♂️ So I've been back to the drawing board and working on getting my takeaway in particular back on plane. For me I've found that a little c0ck of the wrist before the takeaway helped me stop the excessive roll. Would be very interested in your thoughts if you have the time. Thanks!

[YouDaHamHider]

Swing update: I hope it's not frowned upon but I've been working hard on my swing since

 

 

my original post so I'm positing my swing as of today as a record of progress. Any thoughts positive or negative are always gratefully received. 

[TheDeanAbides]

You're still locking out that right leg a little too much, but there are loads of good things going on here, and it's night and day better than the first swing. How are you playing? That's all that really matters. 

[YouDaHamHider]

1 hour ago, TheDeanAbides said:

You're still locking out that right leg a little too much, but there are loads of good things going on here, and it's night and day better than the first swing. How are you playing? That's all that really matters. 

Still a bit of a range swing sadly as the courses in South Wales have been absolutely sodden for the last few months. On the odd occasion I've managed to get out it's been a struggle to score but that's less because of ball striking and more a result of me not knowing how to chip from mud or get out of hard pan bunkers! That right leg straightening is the bane of my existence. What am am I losing out on by locking it out too much?

[TheDeanAbides]

9 hours ago, YouDaHamHider said:

Still a bit of a range swing sadly as the courses in South Wales have been absolutely sodden for the last few months. On the odd occasion I've managed to get out it's been a struggle to score but that's less because of ball striking and more a result of me not knowing how to chip from mud or get out of hard pan bunkers! That right leg straightening is the bane of my existence. What am am I losing out on by locking it out too much?

It would be really helpful to see a face on to see if it's causing you any real problems.

I hear you re chipping from mud. The way to deal with that is to practice it a lot because if you can control your low point decently well it's all about confidence. I tend to choose a PW more often than not (as long as I can get away with it) and get it rolling.

 

Hard pan bunkers are easier. You want Monte's UTB 2.0 technique.