Swing 4.0 beta

I'm calling this a beta release of a major version of my swing.  It merits it because it is different and the swing feels different.  So continued to work extensively with the HS camera and tried lots of stuff.  I fixed a few major things.

Pre-shot routine:

• Get in impact position and feel left side stretch and get head back and down.
• Swing back and forth like this to feel position

Then swing thoughts:

• Inside to inside.  Keep right elbow tucked into my body on backswing then keep left elbow tucked in on follow through.
• Head drop.  Head drops down and stays back during downswing.
• Clear hips.  I need to really turn hips while dropping head to allow myself to retain my spine angle and keep my head from lifting up at impact.

I'm not hitting a ball but just got through hitting 2 buckets at the range so just wanted to confirm what swing looked like.  The range confirmed that ball was being hit well through all the clubs including driver.  Don't even have to think about releasing the hands.

At address standing up more and trying to keep back straight.  Upper back!

On downswing head dips

Head still down spine angle kinda preserved, hands close to  body.  Right elbow still bent. 

From side proper impact position.  Head back, right elbow still bent.

Head still down like on a pillow, spine angle preserved

From side chicken wing gone and head back.  Club going up instead of out but that's for  the next step.

Swing 3.2 video

Back from Hawaii where I bought the Casio Elixim EX-FS10.  Does 210, 420, and 1000 FPS.  Had a lot of fun this summer filming stuff with the kids.  Well now getting down to really frame by frame analysis.  Looking at Rory's swing.  Differences that I've noticed that I've been working on:

• Standing up taller at address
• Bringing head and torso down on downswing
• Supination
• Keep hands close to legs
• Turning hips more at impact
• Release after impact

The swing looks good on camera but when I hit the ball at the range I go back to chicken wings.  I sub-consciously try to correct to pull the ball to left so that's why I chicken wing.  The swing almost feels like I'm pushing it with my right hip.  Irons seem good but 3 wood and driver are still not happening.

Swing 3.2

I'll for sure not say I've found the magic move anymore.  After working on swing 3.0 I've got the right arm down.  Now chicken wings still keep coming back.  So started working intensely with video and with my son as a coach and started doing a really small backswing with really large extension.  Then had him swing with me simultaneously to get the timing down which helped.
I learned some things from that:

• was sliding my hips to the left way too much.  Just need to turn hips
• head comes up on backswing so need to keep it down
• head lunges forward on swing so need to keep head back.

This I got from video.  But still had extension problems. Then stumbled upon a Golf Channel quick fix where the talked about covering with the right shoulder.  I hadn't been doing that at all so I tried it on the net and doing it helped with lag since my shoulders where slowing down which allowed my hands to catch up and cast. Video confirmed this and tested it out on the range and power and contact were real good.

So added more chunks of knowledge and tools in the toolbox on the never ending path.

Swing 3.1 Left Arm Straight Right Arm Push

Another thought has been to keep the left arm straight and then push hard with the right hand.  It's just like slamming a door by shoving it by the handle or shoving it close to the hinge.  Shoving it close to the hinge will make it close faster.  Well your left wrist is the hinge, the club is the door, and your right hand just shoves the door closed as hard as you can.  I have a friend that swings like this where he barely has a back swing and then generates tons of speed really fast just with his wrists.  His swing is amazing.  I thought he's just young and I'll never have that kind of power in my wrists.  And then you have to rely on timing too much.

Well I found out his secret I think!  He uses the right triceps, pectoral, and front deltoid (big muscles) to push on the club to generate club head speed.  His wrists don't have to do anything except guide the face angle of the club.  I don't even think the wrists hold the lag it's the latisimus dorsi holding the right elbow close to the body.

Now combine the hinge push with the left are moving as well and you can generate a lot of speed!  Something I think I'm going to explore.


**Update March 21:
This idea I think now is not a good idea at all.  First off it would encourage flipping the wrists and not pronation/suppination which is correct.  Also the wrists should remain loose and relaxed and you shouldn't be pushing hard with any hands during the swing!

Swing 3.0 Right Arm

I'm not going to say that I "finally" figured it out because I've already said that about a zillion times on this blog so this time I'll just say I've added another major chunk to my knowledge of the swing.  It all starts with video of course and I've been doing that a lot since for me I can go a lot faster in trying things and seeing if they work than working with a pro who I'll see once in a while and tell me stuff that I might or might not understand or don't see the reason why to do it.  And the teacher will say something about not everyone can have a swing like Tiger blah blah blah. Yes everyone has their own swing but all the pros have a lot of things in common my feeling is if your swing looks like a pro then the performance should eventually be there.  Otherwise you would see more variety on the tour, it's just empirical.

So I asked my son to film me at the range just to make sure things were OK and once again I was horrified by the chicken wings that came back.  I wasn't too panicked because I'd figured out how to get rid of them before but I forgot how.  It's funny how swing thoughts keep evolving.  I guess I'm just too used to experimenting.  Well because my son's swing was all off because of the supination work his back elbow was in a weird position.  So I started looking at the pros and all noticed how their right elbows are much more tucked into their sides and their forearm is vertical.

Before:  right forearm at an angle

After:  right forearm vertical this also brought my swing plane down

This got me experimenting/thinking about the right elbow.  Well I started tucking it into my side to try and also increase the lag.  I wasn't worried about pushing it with the club face too open because I could always close it with supination.  This led to a breakthrough in creating lag and how the swing feels.  I concentrated on keeping my right elbow glued to my right side as long as possible.  Ben Hogan wrote about this but I guess it didn't stick when I read the book.  Then I started looking at swing vision and saw that at the moment of impact the pros all had their right elbow slightly bent.  This is one of those unintuitive things about golf!  You would think both arms would be fully extended at impact with the largest arc of the circle and the wrists released at impact.  The pros also said have the whoosh right after impact.  That's also so unintuitive.  But I ignored the intuitive and I tried keeping my elbow glued to my side and my right arm bent as long as possible.

Before:  At impact both arms are dead straight

After:  even right after impact right arm is still a little bent

This felt so weird because for years it was thinking about the wrists releasing right at impact.  This showed in the scooping motion right after impact.  Even with supination at impact I could still never get the correct looking follow through like the pros.  My son kept telling me to throw my arms like the clubhead is super heavy.  I was almost resigned to thinking that physically I couldn't do it because I wasn't strong or flexible enough.  But in the back of my mind I knew that it was just a matter of having the right technique to get in the correct positions.  So something in my positions and timing were off.  Well I found this piece of the puzzle finally.

Before sequence:  Even though at impact left wrist is straight, right wrist scoops after impact.

No chicken wings but see how right wrist is scooping.

After sequence:  Way more lag, right elbow tucked in at impact and release of wrists after impact

Have never been able to be in this position before!  Finally arm and club are in  a completely straight line.  Just like the pros

Oh happy days.  Only after many repeated self videos, trying different things, reading on the internet lots of stuff has this happened.  But I'm pretty convinced that this would not have happened as quickly with just lessons from our local pros.

The next piece of the puzzle is how to keep my spine angle during impact and after.  I'm too upright and this makes my finish positions weird and why I think I have a real tendency for chicken wings like my left arm being straight is in the way of my torso turning so something has to give and that's bending my left arm resulting in chicken wings or hunched shoulders.  Will have to work on this extensively till I can crack the mystery.  But first will have to groove the new swing 3.0!

Right hand says stop

Kelvin talked about putting the right hand like you're saying stop on the downswing.  Well I get that now and have managed to incorporate it into my swing.  It helps me get lag and then I try to then just turn the right wrist to point down the line.  Oh have also tried turning the inside of the left elbow out like how Ben Hogan explains.  All while keeping a strong grip. I hit some balls in the net and once again it feels powerful and I can really feel the release.  Here are the pictures.  I know there is no ball but it sure looks pretty.  I can't wait to try it out on the range tommorow.

This where the right hand says stop!

Lag is looking good

Some left wrist supination finally!

Beautiful finish with right wrist turned over and club pointing toward target

Relapse

Well after my great magical move discovery I was hitting balls on the range and had to check to see that all was good. Was hitting the driver pretty good. But then look what the film showed.

downswing looks OK

Impact arms are bent and both heels off the ground but not too bad right?

Oh boy here come the chicken wings...damn...

Is this even a golf swing? Ridiculous...

I was pretty depressed going home. I thought I had the magic move and my swing was now beautiful once and for all. But a major regression and bad habits are back.

So I had to go home and work on it on the net. The fix was to keep the arms straight. Here are the after pics.

Much  better!

Swing 2.0

So now that spring is here and golf season has rolled around got out the camera and started to work on the swing. To my shock and horror this is what I saw.

It didn't feel like that but that's what the video says. Damn all those swing thoughts and feelings were wrong!

Of course I was trying to get my swing to look like my son's. How does he do that?

I'm just sick of the chicken wings. My son said just keep your arms straight in the follow through. So I tried that and it worked! At least for a while and I thought I had things figured out. Once again I was so exited to try out the new swing and this time I was sure it was it! About the 10 time I've told my wife that.

So this past weekend I busted out the old golf net and harassed everyone in my family to film me. They all dreaded this. I finally ended up setting up a table so that I could place the camera on it and film myself. But further video analysis with the net had me in good positions but I wasn't able to close the club face and everything was going way right. I was also trying to develop more lag and I was just fighting everything to get a swing to look good. My son says he doesn't think about it he just swings. arghh. So the straight arm thing wasn't working.

Then I stumbled upon this site when trying to figure out how to stop casting.

http://www.aroundhawaii.com/lifestyle/health_and_fitness/2007-11_tigers_impact_position_how_to_achieve_it.html

It talked about closing the clubface at the top of the backswing, supination, and rotating the left wrist up right after impact like how Tiger does. Well I tried it and it worked! And I had actually tried it two years ago as the first post of this blog but I didn't know enoughabout golf swings back then and thought it was wrong because it felt weird. Well it was right. And that's what Kelvin says in the article. It feels weird creating supination and he even has a training device to help with that. I was just a huge flipper before. My golf pro with swing analysis didn't even catch that.

I've tried the new swing Monday 18 holes and today 18 holes on two different golf courses and it definitely works. I'm not embarrassed with my swing anymore and can actually hit driver pretty good now. I was even teeing off the far tees today and easily keeping up with the big boys. Here's the before and after.

Impact position

Follow through

The best part about it is that I don't have to think about swinging anymore. I just have to get my wrists in the right position and then the lag, closing of the clubface, power, extension, and divot after the ball all takes care of itself. And best of all I'm straighter no fade/slice and I easily added a club to my distance. And it even helped my chipping.

So I took a huge leap and I think I'm for sure at the next level and this will help me to break into the 80's consistently. These last two rounds have been high and low 80's. Will now work on more athleticism and power.

Better

After watching a friend hit it inspired me and reminded me to shorten backswing, lag, and accelerate through. Finally in correct impact position and extension!

Chicken wings

About a month ago was hitting the 3 wood pretty good until I saw the swing. Oh man the chicken wings!

At least son's swing is beautiful. How does he do that?