When I was actually practicing a lot I did this a few times a week.

Make 25 3 foot putts in a row starting over if you miss one
Make 25 5 foot putts in a row starting over if you miss.

19 of 20 putts inside 3 feet from 25 feet away, starting over if you **** up
17 of 20 putts inside 3 feet from 35 feet.

You can adjust these numbers to your skill level. It helps add pressure when you need 1 more putt to finish or go back. Some days it might take 35 minutes and others close to 2 hours

5/24: 2 buckets, all 7 irons

Today I decided to just hit a couple hundred 7 irons, starting out by just doing quarter swings, then bringing it back a little further. I'm not sure I really ever did a 'full' backswing, though my '90%' backswings were probably proper full swings for most. Wanted to just focus on turning into my right hip and then exploding forward to shift my weight onto my front foot at finish. Overall I guess it went okay, but I'm starting to get a little sore in my neck/traps, probably doing a bit much between this and lifting, probably take the weekend off.

At the request of a big fan of this thread I have added some SIDE VIEW videos.

Something I noticed today that I forgot to take a picture of is that my divots were like 15 degrees off being perpendicular to the range lines. They suggested an out to in path pretty consistently. Obviously I'm not hitting shots as consistently as most so I'm getting different types of divots (when I do get one), but when I did get one it was basically going the same way.

Nice weight transfer. To my untrained eye you look out of sequence on the down swing. Looks like you swing your arms before your chest/shoulders.

The bandaid fix is set up square to the target then drop the right foot back a bit. Your swing will still be out to in but it will be in to out compared to your target line.

I suffer this problem. My swing naturally is about 2-3* out to in and I aim to have a 1* closed face to target. I can not hit a draw with that swing unless I set up like that.

I tried to get pics where you are in about the same position to show you how you are casting the club. If you're not sure what I mean it is that you have released all the energy before impact. You start to straighten the angle between your arm and club shaft way to early. The pics will explain it best I hope but at Impact your hands should be around your left thigh ahead of the clubhead.








In the one below you can see how much more his hips have rotated to this point and the club shaft is still parallel to the ground and at the same position you have lost all that lag already. This is how you make ball go far.



This is basically to see where you are vs where you want to be.

doesn't every hacker - myself included - have the lack of lag coming down? i agree it's a big problem but as has been mentioned a few times before on this forum how to incorporate it is not so easy

bobby clampett's book is all about lag.......... and now that i've thought about it a stronger grip helps alot. lag with weak grip leaves the clubface open.

i like jim suttie's stuff and one thing i think he mentions that is so important is it's so easy to have a swing where your different preferences don't add up.

an example would be that alot of us have weakish grips i would think. but if you come over the with a strongish grip then you will pull hook like mad.

so swing changes, technique etc. are all inter-related.

another thing all us hackers i think DON'T DO is get our weight to the front - without swaying - enough at impact...... but i think that ties into lack of lag, over the top etc.

sorry i know that's confusing... to me, take one lesson - i agree 1 is enough -, find a driver you can hit and learn how to putt and chip which is pretty easy - pitching is not so easy.

btw, where do you live?.. approximate area is fine if you don't want to over-share on internet.

I had the hardest time trying to get more upright as I, like you had a tendency to try to get the club behind me by rolling my wrists early. I would try to get more vertical just from feel, and every time I'd look at the film it would be the same flat backswing, only I exacerbated the problem by steepening my "flat" backswing ala Raymond Floyd. It all but robbed me of my power and made me want to quit golf.

It wasn't until I worked with Dan Whitaker on some video lessons that I got set straight. IMO your backswing is a lot like mine was only not as bad, but what you're doing with your wrists is very similar. Rather than c0cking fully, you sort of roll your wrists and then try c0ck, only the wrists aren't in a position to do so properly. This tends to lead your arms getting well behind your body in the backswing, and with an improper wrist c0ck you have no choice but to cast the club in the downswing because there is no leverage on the clubhead.

I would give you the drills Dan gave me but tbh I didn't like them, and preferred the youtube stuff on proper wrist action in the golf swing. The easiest way for me to exaggerate the feeling was to use a mirror on my right side and address the ball as I normally would. From there I'd c0ck my wrists which brought the club straight up, then take a half-backswing with my wrists c0cked, and look at myself in the mirror.

Not sure if this makes sense, but it's what seemed to work for me.

What helps me not dump the angle is to let the club feel weightless at the top and as I start the downswing I actually add some lag before I dump it which helped me not have to change my timing on the release. If that makes any sense.

I spend a lot of time traveling but at the moment I'm in the Canadian rockies, some of the year in Toronto, Vegas a few times a year, etc.

thx....... tons of golf courses in seems in BC rockies and nearby areas. seems a little strange for how short the season is.............. played golden, bc course a couple of years ago. i really liked the layout/scenary/general course. greens weren't so great... hope to play banff/jasper soon.

fyi, i live in vancouver...

Getting my wrists through sooner seems kinda hard to me conceptually

Yea I am in Canmore

Seems like Adam Scott is the closest to me in size of the random boss golfers so I'm committing to watching swing videos of him

basically watch good players hips. they are so open at impact... might need to strength your grip some or incorporate a little hand action to square the club... but that is the modern way to hit the ball. basically rip through with your hip turn. make sure you aren't hanging back while doing it.

this is a good thread. it's turning into the swing thoughts thread. i don't think that thread would make it on its own. it needs a focus.

The reason I bring it up is because he mentioned a loss of distance when trying my original advice. When you are coming over the top it causes your subconscious brain to think you need to start dumping the lag early in order to make good contact and in this case to create an in to out swing path. The right way to swing the club is to let the club fall into the slot and swing with your legs and hips and shoulders. The arms just come along for the ride and the only real thing you need to do with them is hold that lag as long as you can and use your hands to guide the center of the face to the ball. If you do all this right the club will naturally square itself up at impact.

If you notice in the pic of you at impact your hands are behind the ball and the shaft is leaning backwards. This is a big leak and needs the most attention IMO. To fix it I think you have to look at what happens before you get there. The things I've mentioned particularly. I'm no pro or instructor, just a guy that has studied the golf swing way more than most. For all I know my advice could be completely wrong. But I am 100% sure that you need to correct that casting of the club to get what you're after. The fix is the hard part. Good luck and I look forward to watching your progress.

It sorta makes sense but introducing wrist getting in front of the rest of my swing is sorta confusing me and seems hard to implement. I'll see what I can do when I get out on the range in a few days.

Also if I do the fishing casting thing wouldn't that normally lead to a hook?

agreed 100%. with an OOP move - again i think most of us do it - alot of other problems with our golf swings are necessary adjustments so we don't pull the ball horribly

my instructor is a massive advocate of getting those hands ahead of the ball at impact and not having any sort of conscious hands release i.e. no flipping of the club - the flip is another thing i think many duffers are guilty of... i think he's absolutely correct. forces you 1) to get your weight forward 2) perhaps strengthen the grip as getting the hands forward will open the club face some.

i also think the slice and/or pull - close relatives i think - are often the result of not getting your weight forward and you have finished the forward element of your swing by the time you hit the ball.

basically.. we all need to move our contact points forward.. bobby clampett is huge advocate. can't endorse his book strongly enough

As others have mentioned, it depends on how your club face is positioned at impact, and in what path the club is swinging.

I know it's hard to imagine that lag...think of it like this: if you were to try and throw your club as far as you can, using the same swing motion, on the same path as you want to hit the ball, how would you do it?

You would naturally hinge your wrists and "fling" the club, right? Same thing if you were to try and crack a whip, or slap me in the face! There would have to be a "lag" in order to get the full force you want. It's the opposite of trying to cast a fishing line, where, your wrist hinges the other way!

Did you ever play baseball? Same swing, basically, just bent over some. There needs to be a lag between the hands and the club head to get the power and distance you want, whether it's golf or baseball.

It's more of a feeling I was trying to get, and was on the extreme side as well. If anything I think just trying to do it and hitting balls would lead to pushes or push-slices... but once again a feeling.

I found a video that's similar, but sets you up with better angles. Notice at about 20 seconds he kind of demonstrates what you do.



As others have said, you're hands are so far stuck behind your body at the top of the backswing that it's impossible to deliver the ball with leverage. Unfortunately it's only a symptom, as is the flat backswing. The disease, imo, is what your wrists are doing early in the backswing, and fixing that will fix the other two ailments. If you arms/hands are working right and free from tension you have almost no choice but to get the club in the right position at the top. Unfortunately what you're doing now has probably become so ingrained that the natural doesn't feel natural anymore, if that makes any sense.

That is a good video for you. I agree at 0:20 is exactly what you're doing. You let your left wrist break down in an attempt to square the club face because your subconscious knows it is wide open.


It would if you were in a correct position. Watch that video and try to get into the correct position at the top first. Then try to incorporate some of what I was saying about starting the downswing. And then you also need to turn the hips more and hold the lag and get the hands ahead of the clubhead.

If you can some how do all this you'll be on track to way better contact and better golf. Problem is that this is maybe one of the most difficult things to do because it won't work at first. You'll hit everything way right at first and think it is worse than before. You just gotta fight through that and figure it out. Don't be afraid to get worse before you get better. 95% give up on the fix because of this reason.

I highly recommend this video as a model for how to make a compact rotational swing. It is based on the teachings of a guy named Geoff Jones (known as Slicefixer and who has a pretty big fan base on the Golfwrx instructional forums).

It doesn't really matter if you subscribe to all of his methods or teachings - the video is still an excellent visual model of what your swing should be aspiring to. Some people learn better visually and for me, I like to watch this guy hit those little half-swings, it gets the visual model I am looking for ingrained into my mind.

Thought I posted this already but I guess not...

You lost distance likely because you slowed down at the top and you cast the club before impact. I didn't mention that before because, one thing at a time.

The difference is that in one swing both the path and face angle are the same resulting in a shot that starts right and stays right but without any curve.

The 2nd one the face is 5* to the right but the path is 8* to the right so the face is closed in relation to the path. This makes the ball start to the right because the face is pointed that way and then it curves back to the left because the path is more to the right than the face is.