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

First thing i immediately see is it looks like you don't turn your body that much. It's an all arms swing. You almost look stiff legged. Guessing with that swing you don't hit the ball too far.

I'm sure people who are better than this at me will chime in as well.

Thanks,

I thought this was a lot of body turn! Not sure how I could do more, without some more spine mobility or maybe some pro coaching.

With this swing I hit 7i 165 , driver carry probably about 250? I hit a couple drives 300 in Denver (pull fade and dead straight) this week with this move fwiw

I'd like to see a driver swing, more so from the angle of the first part of the vid. Far enough back to where I can see your feet and where you can see the club at the top of the swing.

You are a couple lessons and a bunch of practice from having a really nice swing and some solid scores. Get a few lessons for real.

My uneducated opinion: You’re taking the club a little too far inside on the backswing & coming over the top on the downswing - these are related. You’re flipping your club head at impact to try and square things up instead of turning your body and staying square through impact. In the end, it looks like you’re turning their...but really you are flipping at impact...then completing your turn. Your swing requires perfect timing to to hit straight - when you do, I bet it goes far. When you don’t, you’re going to pull or hit a high banana slice. There are some really solid golfers that swing like you...but again, you need perfect timing to be consistent... and you probably don’t play anywhere near enough to get that perfect timing down. It would be much easier for you to improve if you just fix the fundamental issues. Hitting it fat is probably related to a bad weight shift - again due to flipping thru impact which makes you keep your weight back to try and time everything perfectly.

Watch this video of DJ (9 mins in) for something you can practice to help with turning thru impact instead of flipping thru impact. He literally takes his eye off the ball to help turn his body. I can’t do that and make consistent contact...however I’ll practice this exact type of swing very deliberately for 20 balls or so at least once every few weeks. It has helped me.

https://youtu.be/Oq49h3a-G0g

Good stuff thanks, I’ll work on that DJ move. Any suggestions to help me get my body turned earlier in the downswing?

Honestly (sorry in advance for sounding like a broken record) my best advice would be lessons.

One thing I do that helps me during a round when I’m getting lazy w my body is using a swing thought of ‘point my right elbow high and at the target at the end of the swing.’ I don’t remember who told me this but it has a side effect (for me) of helping me turn thru impact.

Something to keep in mind if you fix your body turn issue without fixing your swing path, you’ll probably need to rely on cutting the ball. That can be a really consistent swing and ball flight (much more so than your current swing). Don’t fight your hard fade if that’s what you decide to do...instead of getting lessons that is .

I’ve hit a fade for 20 years I’m not having any illusions of dropping that, would like to have a one way miss though that would be useful

just a few thoughts watching your swing...... alot of the points are related.

1) as mentioned, you are really taking the club the inside right away on the back swing.

2) standing very close to the ball. not necessarily a bad thing but something i notice right away.

3) your posture is very upright and i'd say unathletic (but my advice might be semi-contradictory).....

BASICALLY, the most obvious thing i see is the big inside move with the hands right away.

OOPS, i lost some text........ basically your stance is very vertical. look at matt kuchar and where his butt/glutes are and how non-vertical his back is. i took lessons from a very recent web.com player and he was all over posture as being the most important thing (really push your butt back)..... as mentioned, you stand very close to the ball. i think furyk, ryan moore stand close to the ball.

another golf pro said to have your belt buckle go back with your hands at the initiation of the backswing. i think that might help. although i don't use that swing thought these days. (but it did work)

Thanks for the comments guys I played today and it was mixed hit some very good shots and a lot of putts on punched greens for 47-50 with a birdie.

I will take another look at five lessons regarding posture and I am also trying to book five or six pro lessons.

Jack,

i should have mentioned even though your posture at set-up looks "unathletic", your swing and you yourself both look quite athletic.

also, i'm not saying to emulate matt kuchar's posture necessarily. just contrast it with your own. basically the posture with a less vertical back means you can stand further from the ball without reaching. not sure what else

Your shaft is basically vertical at impact because you’re flipping your wrists trying to help the ball into the air. You need to find a way to hold the angle longer and make every effort to get your hands at or past your left thigh before the clubhead ever gets to the ball. Focus on getting those hands left of your left thigh and don’t use your hands or wrists to bring the club to impact. Let gravity do that. This will also require you to turn your hips more and harder thru impact to get them out of the way, which is good because your hips are not open enough at impact. Turn them sooner and more. This will help you get your hands ahead as well.

fyi, my 2 favorite books of all-time....

1) not sure what it's called. but golf book by george knudson. a canadian golf pro of the early 1970s who played mind-bogglingly amazing golf for a short period. like a poor-man's johnny miller... his book is so simple. some set up stuff and turn back and turn through, shifting your weight....

2) bobby clampett's impact zone.......... fave golf book ever with a caveat... basically get your hands ahead of ball at impact.......... i think the book needs alot more explanation for the driver. his advice causes clubface to be really open (stronger grip?? but he doesn't mention that)....... anyway, simply amazing book for wedges/irons/consistency..........

knudson and clampett did have something in common. they both were amazing players but because obsessed with golf swing and it killed their games. too much thinking. but their books are right-on

i think the 2 keys from these books 1) hand action/position is key. i think this is the pro's secret to greatness/consistency, 2) getting weight forward without swaying. amateurs i think stay on back foot or sway.

just my 2 cents

There is a lot of info on the internet (i am guilty of falling down youtube golf rabbit holes for sure), but I would say find one good instructor and stick with them and watch everything they say. For me its Monte Scheinblum (I've been to his clinic), his website is rebelliongolf.com - he just put out a new detailed instructional video for $40 that I would highly recommend.

What Monte would say in this thread is that almost all the advice people are giving is a *result* and not a *swing issue*. The only real place to start is with the set up advice you received already, and working on fixing your takeaway. You are basically doomed to hit a big slice after your hands move 6 inches and everything after that is just compensations to hit the ball period.

fwiw I don't think your setup is too bad, but yeah would look to clean that up. The takeaway problem appears to be that your wrists don't hinge and rotate correctly.

I appreciate all the feedback and links. I’m starting a series at GolfTec this month.

Here’s a swing my son recorded today, it’s bad but I want to be honest here.



This kid has been playing for his whole life, his swing is so much better than mine. Over the top runs in the family though

I took a 30 minute lesson today (rained out), not at golftec, and the pro describes the following flaws in my swing

1. Club face far too open on downswing, leading to the necessity to close the face with the wrists at impact

2. Left hand grip too weak with thumb at 12:00. Moved thumb to 11:00.

3. Striking ball too close to hosel. I had a few embarrassing shanks. Surely he’s seen worse.

His suggestion for 1. was to figure out how to flex my left wrist inwards somewhere whether at takeaway or transition to the downswing. Along with the grip fix this will help me keep the face square and avoid the need for flip.

His suggestion for 3. was some drills to work on hitting on the toe, whether by setting a target inside of the ball as a drill or by standing a half inch further back.

Thanks for all the tips above. You guys caught a lot of these issues and these skills will help me maintain the club face angle and lag. This is a more of an effect of the club face control rather than a goal unto itself. As he described it all the shaft lag in the world won’t help at all if you leave the club face open.

He had me on the trackman. I had a 8% inside to outside club path, swing speed 100 with driver. I don’t have a copy today but I will post one up after my next lesson. I’ll also get some new swing vids up this weekend.

$700 for 5 lessons seems like a decent deal.

Still need a lot of work to unlearn this wrist flip move. Good strikes yesterday but everything was well left.

Shorten your backswing and spend more time just taking practice swings.

Nice calves.

not saying this will solve your wrist flip, but you look like you're swaying a bit (watch your hips) and you definitely have your weight on your toes and are struggling to keep your balance while finishing. just for grins why don't you try playing the ball a little bit closer, not reaching so much with your hands at address, and finishing on your left heel and not your left toes.

Thanks John I got a chance to hit 100 chips with that drill it works.

RedEye thanks for the suggestion, I may have been a little drunk on June 8 so maybe that contributed to the sway, but I’ll try that

A good drill for you would be to put the ball maybe 6-12 inches in front of your lead foot. Like way WAY forward. Hit shots with the ball there with a 6 iron. You won't be able to flip your wrists and make good contact. Hit about 50 shots like that and see what happens. Don't worry about where the ball goes, just worry about making good contact with the club face.

hey, good stuff so far.

you stand pretty upright and probably will to some degree no matter how much instruction you get.

someone who had an amazing swing with upright posture was greg norman. you may want to check him out on youtube. he's like tiger woods without the majors. alot of people still consider him the greatest driver of the ball ever.

i saw a top the other day about greg norman. basically make it so that your club goes straight back for a long period of time from initiation of back swing. i think this would be a drill to figure things out.

one tip i got from a golf pro that alot of people i've mentioned it to have liked is just hitting balls at range with feet together (toes can be pointed diagnolly sp?). gives you a real feel for your swing action.