Help me Fix this full swing once and for all
I’ve been laid off golf for a long while playing 4 times per year or less. My best round is an 88 on a crap course and on a difficult course. Normally I shoot in the 105-110 range.
In the past I swung very hard and could hit drives 350 in Denver and 7i 175 carry but I have always fought a few severe swing flaws like OTT, casting, and a reverse pivot I think but I’m not a swing coach. I’ll leave my ****ty short game out of this thread.
My misses (frequent) are dead pull, banana sliced and recently some terrible fat chunks
For a while I tried to find accuracy by swinging lighter and shortening backswing but the modifications to this just jacked with my tempo and towards the end had me so twisted up I was not even making a shoulder turn.
After a few months off I’m trying to return to the basics and feel like I had a bit of an epiphany as follows.
The swing is fundamentally only two movements: a shoulder turn back and then separately a hip turn forwards. You can isolate these from each other and if you do them both the hands and arms tend to fall into place. I’ve been practicing this three times and I feel like this is better contact through the whole bag than ever before.
I’d like to post some swings in this thread and I welcome feedback. Here is the first sample 7i from today. Future videos will follow swing film guidance posted in the forum.
TIA
Hey peeps, been just over a year since the last video I uploaded.
I've been down the rabbit hole and back. Got way too into youtube tips and trying too many feels and swing thoughts. My swing got really twitchy, really inconsistent, and just not fun. Yes I built a sim. Some kind of investment for a golfer like me..
In an effort to simplify things, i've developed what is somewhat of a novel strategy for me.
In essence, i'm picturing the swing plane as a circle around my body. Once I take my setup, it's almost as simple as making the circle, and then pushing against the direction of the force of the circle with my lead leg as I get through the ball. The plane is steeper with wedges, and flatter with driver. It's really a feeling of almost pulling my body against the momentum of the club, to "crack the whip" so to speak.
There's really only two swing thoughts here - one is to keep my hands low during the takeaway to widen the circle. The other is to feel the pressure of my lead knee coming in towards the center, over my lead foot toe more or less. Then unwind from there.
This seems to remove any need for thoughts of wrist flexion, timing for initiation of downswing, shallowing, actively moving my hips in a certain way, etc. The club almost seems to square itself. Suddenly I can hit a fairway wood.
This is a developing story. I've only had one chance to test this out on the course with some great success. Shot 49-42 on a 6700 yards course, including 3 GIRs from over 200 yards with 3i and 5i (unusual for me!).
Broken YouTube LinkI think you're just going to be limited in how far you can hit it and how clean your strikes are by the lack of body involvement in the swing.
Even if you look at someone with a similarly looking short swing (think Rahm), he is extending his torso and turning his upper body way more in the backswing. Your backswing looks like it's all arms instead of the body turning and that being the generator to get the arms and club back.
I feel like if you've had a thread up about fixing your swing you've learned the hard truth by now which is: It's really hard to make swing changes and play good golf at the same time.
This current swing configuration for you can lead to consistency with strikes and playing decent golf if you practice how it feels enough, but I feel like your distance and compression of the ball is going to be greatly limited without getting the body more involved.
That swing gets me ballspeeds of 140-150 with driver off a clubhead speed of 95-100MPH and I hit my game improvement irons as far as I want. If I step on a 7i it's flying 180+ and rolling out to around 200 yards.
Distance isn't really the limiting factor for me, even if I could probably eke out a few more MPH of clubhead speed. Prior to my wrist injury last year I was reaching 110MPH with driver.
To be fair, the video I just uploaded was a little 3/4 P wedge 100 yard shot. I'll try to get a driver video up to show how much shoulder turn I'm making with that club.
the real story here is that you built yourself an awesome simulator for yourself. should make it easy to find time to practice more often. well done.
Here’s a full driver swing
Broken YouTube Linkmay i suggest bringing the hands closer to the body
let the arms relax and fall straight down from your setup posture as the start
may not be much different from the current situation but shouldn't hurt to try and see what happens
Let's just appreciate the improvement between your first and most recent video in this thread!
It's really hard to give swing advice on a forum. I don't know how you best learn or what language suits you best but imagine this:
If there was a rope attached to a barrel that weighed 100kg on the ground and you had to drag it as quickly as possible, what technique would you use? You wouldn't yank at the barrel, you would drop all of your weight to the ground, and then push off and away from the barrel as hard as possible.
This is the technique you need to imagine when hitting a golf ball, because currently you are standing really static and trying to hit the ball with your arms. Your arms are weak, your core and legs are extremely strong- so use those.
how would you move if you were hitting a tire not a ball, or swinging a long tree branch
plant the butt end of a 5i right at the bottom of your sternum and hold it there close with your golf grip...take the arms completely out of it
now let your body move as required to hit a golf ball.
plant the butt end of a 5i right at the bottom of your sternum and hold it there close with your golf grip...take the arms completely out of it
now let your body move as required to hit a golf ball.
yes, maroochy!
still in the lab, have seen some progress. Self-diagnosis here is that a lot of my early extension and arm dominance is due to being out of position at the top of my backswing - sucking the club inside, too flat and across the line at the top. Compensating by firing hands down at the ball, because otherwise I couldn't get there.
Working on some drills to get the takeaway sorted, hands and club more vertical at the top, and lead with hips. Hopefully they help. Also I ordered some high speed cameras from AliExpress this week for face-on and DTL footage from the sim, so hopefully that helps me figure out what I'm doing better.
I got out early this winter after a frost delay and ditched my foursome after 2 holes and finished the rest of the round in 0:45 which was tons of fun with a push cart. Almost enough for me to get my cardio up and try speed golf
After a few months off I’m trying to return to the basics and feel like I had a bit of an epiphany as follows.
The swing is fundamentally only two movements: a shoulder turn back and then separately a hip turn forwards. You can isolate these from each other and if you do them both the hands and arms tend to fall into place.
This is from my first post ITT 6 years ago. Funny, that knowing what I know now, it's still the same analysis, and I was right. I just had no effing idea how to execute this. Although to be fair, I think it is more accurate to describe the hip movement as a leg movement. The hips just turn because of leg action.
Have installed new high speed cameras at my home sim, and they're ripping the cover off my swing flaws in short order. I've also re-read through everyone's comments from the outset and y'all were so right about all of it. Inside takeaway, lack of lower body movement, flat backswing, accross the line at the top, power leaks, lack of arm structure through impact into follow through, the whole thing. There is a LOT of low hanging fruit, and I 'm seeing some immediate results just by fixing some positions in P2-P5.
I'm still struggling with upper/lower body separation, and I don't think I need to rip my hips all the way open at impact to have a functional swing for an am, but it's wild to see it in black and white.
It's going to be an interesting couple months because now I think I have the tools to rebuild something which is significantly more consistent. But it will take some reps.
I'll get some videos up soon.
Would be curious as to details of your camera setup if that's something you care to share.
I got two kayeton global shutter cameras (black & white, 120FPS) from Ali, had to run amplified USB due to the distance to the PC. Running Kinovea for now. Pretty easy to set up. Camera link
I got the variable focal length cameras (2.8-12mm) which is pretty tight based on my setup but I fit in the frame enough to see my whole body, along with the clubface at takeaway and at the top of a full backswing. So it's functional.
I had to set the cameras to -8exposure (the minimum) in order to reduce shutter speed to get a clear image of the clubface, so until I get some supplemental lighting the image is visible but somewhat dark as you'll see. Hope to get something posted this weekend but the kids are sucking up all of my time.
Thank you! Very informative.
Here's what we're working with today
9Iron
Driver
Pretty happy with both. Need to get more weight to the front foot in transition for driver in particular.
My untrained eye and I'm probably a little bit biased on this as I've been watching a few videos on it.
One thing that jumped out at me is the big shift towards the ball. Driver not so much but its hard to tell with the camera cut off but you do seem to stall a bit.
This video is long but its very very good.
Jack, would it be possible to get more light on your front on view? it's difficult to see how your hips are moving with everything so dark.
another question: how much you bench bro? more like JackedInTheCrack
I know it’s too dark, working on a solution for that. A normal exposure has a blurry clubhead.
Benching about 205-225 for reps right now. About 4 months into training again. Squats and DLs both topping out at 295 which is all the weight I have at the home gym, for now.
thank you for confirming your iron work lately has been more focused on weight and not distance
working on limberness and flexibilty might just go a whole lot further toward improving your game when compared to anything else you could focus on at the moment
and notice i did not specify golf
My untrained eye and I'm probably a little bit biased on this as I've been watching a few videos on it.
One thing that jumped out at me is the big shift towards the ball. Driver not so much but its hard to tell with the camera cut off but you do seem to stall a bit.
The movement towards the ball/early extension is high on my list of things to work on.
