Impact Position Drill

I'm subscribed to several Youtube channels about golf and I've been following Kelvin Miyahira. This video is pretty cool talking about impact position drills.

Here's my version of this drill.

and in slow motion

and from down the line in slow motion

As you can see my impact position is pretty good. Hands infront, left wrist supinated, right elbow bent, left leg almost straight, head down. The follow through looks pretty good as well the chicken wing is gone!

So I would do a bunch of these to try and train my body to feel the impact position. It's way more bent and stretched out than if you just swing. I'm also trying to get my hips really open and turned toward the target. It's a great drill.

What this has done is allowed me to hit high draws which I've never really been able to do since my hips are cleared I can come more inside out. However, I'm topping a lot. But the balls are going straighter.

I'm having a hell of a time trying to groove this swing and get good contact so I am trying to do a hybrid where I have that feeling of keeping my left arm really straight on the backswing and go chin to chin with my shoulders which gives me good contact but the ball goes all over the place with my new impact position:  hips open, right elbow on hip, and lots of lateral bend. I'll have to work on this more.

Maintaining Spine Angle and Head Stationary

Well the swing keeps on getting better and better. While hitting the other day a friend who's about scratch was looking at my swing. He noticed that for him I was standing too close to the ball. Well for some reason I had an open mind that day because as soon as someone starts giving me unsolicited swing advice I usually get really defensive and start arguing with them. But I just went with it because I think I was confident with my swing and there's not much more obvious stuff to correct. It just looks pretty good. So I tried listening to him. In standing farther away from the ball I felt like I was over my toes and way too far from the ball but in looking at the tape I did look more athletic. And also I looked more over the ball rather than upright which looks way better. It did give me more room to come inside out so hitting a draw would feel more natural.

Well after that I went to work on other things like keeping my spine angle after impact and really getting my weight over my front foot. I really worked on it and all of a sudden my swing took on a new quality that just looks so much better. It's even more "out in front" and my head stays a lot more stable. I was also really working on the head thing for my neck.

and in slow motion...

The only problem now is that my ball is going all over the place. I knew that would be a problem when I decided to start flipping more but I'm hoping that with time I'll be able to get it under control. My strategy is that a swing that looks so correct has to eventually be consistent otherwise the pros wouldn't use it. This is a list of different swing keys in no particular order that I go through depending on what my swing is doing and what I'm trying to correct.

• Hit with right elbow attached to right hip to get my timing right and get my swing out in front of me
• At top of back swing fall onto front foot to keep me from getting stuck
• Hit with two forearms stuck together to get lag, whip, and power
• Flexion on left wrist to close club face and allow to have hands in front of clubhead at impact
• Keep left arm stiff and touch chin to shoulder to create more precision and feeling of covering the ball with my torso
• Cover the ball with my torso to get my weight moving forward
• Tilt head back at impact to push right shoulder through
• Push right shoulder through to get my swing out in front of me
• Dip head down after impact to maintain spine angle
• Slow down down swing to have smoother rhythm

Being out in Front and Head and Neck

I was looking at some of Tiger's 2000 swings and really like it much more than his later swings. The rhythm is just so smooth and not so violent. The other thing I noticed is that he's so far out in front of the ball towards the target. I call it having your swing out in front of you. Especially the follow through. I've been trying to work on this as I have a tendency to hang back and not push forward. I've noticed especially with the driver that at and post impact I'm really shifting my weight backwards instead of forward. I wish I had one of those weight analysis plates. So I concentrated on the top of the downswing of shifting my weight forward and feeling like I'm falling on my left leg. Here's the before.

And the after

It looks more powerful and correct to me. So I'm glad I found a solution for that. Just need to groove it. The swing keys that I had for this swing was:

• Impact with right elbow and hip stuck together as one unit.
• Get into this position:

See how it looks like Rory's whole body is in front of where the ball was and towards the target. I think visualizing this position helps me get my right shoulder through the ball faster and not stuck.
Here's my position

You can see my head position is very different from his. For one his body is facing the target a lot more than mine. And his head is looking back over his shoulder. So the next thing to work on is my head position. I'm hoping this will also help with my chronic neck pain that I have on the left side of my neck.

Impact position

My friend told me about Jeff Ritter. I started looking at his videos and I really like his swing especially the way his right elbow is bent at impact and the releases afterward. I've been trying to get that forever and have slowly increased it but it's a long process. Well I tried again today with a real concentration on impact position but this time with the swing thoughts of the previous post. Mainly keeping my left arm straight and really supinated at impact. I've also tried to revisit the baseball swing.

I've gotten a lot better at it and my swing is better than ever and I feel like I'm on the verge of something. I think the reason why we naturally swing a baseball bat with the right arm bent is because the baseball coming at us is heavy and I think we instinctively know that if we try to flip our wrists at impact well somehow break our wrists. It's the same as driving an axe into a tree. You wouldn't flip your wrists with the axe at impact that would hurt! So instead you turn with your body and keep the right arm bent to absorb the shock just like with a baseball.

But the problem is that golfballs are so small and light we instinctively want to swat it more like in badminton. If you look at slow motion smashes they are fully extended at impact. So I think the trick is to imagine you're hitting something larger and heavy. Like a softball filled with sand. If you tried flipping and scooping that would hurt. But if you hit with your right arm bent and turning with your body I don't think it would hurt as much. I'll have to do some experiments with this. Maybe there's a new training aid in here somewhere. And I'm wondering if that's how impact bags work. Except you cant swing all the way through and all out. Maybe a small impact bag with a rope attached to it?

So swing thoughts are once again really digging in my right elbow and trying to hit with my elbow and hip together at impact. Also I'm playing around with the crunching down during the downswing as pulling the chain but this time with a supinated left wrist and straight left arm. It's pretty interesting stuff!

Here's the before and after of what this did to the look of my swing. It got it looking way more like my swing is out in front of my toward the hole and not held back behind me. It just looks so much better! I think it's because I'm not chicken winging.

Before

After looks so much better

Lever

I found a new lever yesterday. Or I should say I allowed myself to find it again.

I have been playing around with wide-narrow-wide with loose arms for the last couple of weeks and working on timing. I've gone away from pulling the chain for now but every once in a while try to mix it in. I've made some progress and also working on the constant struggle of turning my shoulders through and not lifting up. I've also been going back to the idea of flipping my wrists which I had gotten away from for the last few years in trying to get a body swing. Well I went back and looked at Hogan and Sergio and they definitely flip their wrists, the only difference is that it's way after impact. But they also have their right elbow bent at impact. So I set about letting myself flipping my wrists and getting back to that forearm over forearm feeling. In order to do that I had to abandon the wide-narrow-wide for now because I have a hard time keeping my left arm straight which is for me a big part of the forearm over forearm flip. Here is the before video.

The big difference this time compared to last time was that I combined it with a supinated left wrist. This had the effect of creating a whipping lever but with a closed clubface. So it allowed me to not have to time it as much with the flip and just turn my body into it and then let the wrists flip afterwards. This also had the nice effect of having my left arm on follow through not chicken winging. So my swing looked so much nicer. Here is the after video.

One swing thought is really keeping the left arm straight but keeping the wrists loose. This is hard. Another thing that seems to increase my power is to really try to keep the elbows together like how Ben Hogan says to imagine your forearms bound together with rope.

Hips

I don't know why I do this but once I'm happy with my swing then I somehow then want to destroy it and go off on another tangent. Or I see another swing like this time I think it was Sam Sneads and I tell myself why doesn't my swing look like that and then I have another thought and want to try it out. I guess I'll accept the fact that I'll never have the perfect swing but will just trust that all these constantly new moves will culminate into a correct swing over time.

The latest move is the hips. I've tried a new hip turn which is just turning the hips and not the shoulders with it. I guess the swing key is thinking like Elvis just turning the hips and not the shoulders or head. This has got me back to a dig the right elbow in thought and completely away from the pull the chain. I've tried to combine the two for more power but I haven't been too successful. It also doesn't feel as natural as pulling the chain and I have to really learn the move. I've measured my speed and I've lost a few MPH but not too bad. Even though it feels weird I've gotten into positions I've never been before which are more correct. Especially my hip turn at impact. I'm not sure if it's the right way to get into them but it's interesting seeing how it affects my swing.

Head Dip During Finish

After a nice period of having a swing I was happy about and hitting the ball better than ever I inevitably started to drift again. I'm really curious what this phenomenon of learning, then assimilating, then regressing is about. And is there a way to affect permanent change immediately of is it just about reps and myelin. I was looking at Sam Snead's swing and Ben Hogan's swing (again). And just really noticed that they maintain their spine angle and I just really lose mine in the finish which gives me a Jordan Speith like look to the finish.

So I just decided in my yard to really think about it and change it. And I came up with one solution which seems to be working. The swing thought is to really try to dip down my head after impact a la Natalie Gulbis. Doing this changes the focus of where I emphasize my swing to after impact which changes my whole rhythm. This is a good thing. And once again it's not a completely different swing feeling but it is on the finish for sure. I'm also really trying to turn my hips more, this also will be a lifelong work to change this. My ball flight with irons changed to more penetrating then rising so I assume I'm getting more backspin but my attack angle is still too high. This shows on video and in my ball flight in general being too high. It used to be so much lower with my previous swing. Here's the before and after.

before

after

I'm now slowly working on shifting my weight on to my left side as I still have a tendency to stay back. I'm hoping this will get my AoA down and thus ball flight down.

I did have a really nice day at the range yesterday and will hopefully continue this week.

Pretty Good Swing

My swing has been pretty good for the last 2 weeks and I've been hitting quite a lot lately. For the first time the other day I got bored of hitting balls because they were all going good. I didn't see the point in just hitting more good balls going through all my clubs. I went chipping and the same thing happened I got bored since my chipping was good. So I went putting but they were sanding the greens so I just hit more balls and they were pretty much all striped and straight. This has never happened to me before!

Two things that helped me get to this place and the two swing thoughts that I go through every time. The first one comes from this video. It's Kelvin Miyahira analyzing Christo's swing. He talked about how on the backswing Ben Hogan rotated around the left leg. He started his backswing by moving his right hip back. What this does is take the club behind and then allows you to come from inside out. This has greatly affected my ball flight and my natural outside in path and subsequent fade has now been replaced by a basically straight ball flight. I also feel like my weight is more on my heels which sometimes leads to me falling over on the follow through. Hopefully this will work itself out over time.

The second move is from Bradley Hughes which I knew already but had to go through again. It has to do with the follow through and just turning through the ball. Getting my right shoulder toward the ground and past the ball and getting my hands and torso all in one piece turning together. It's turning around my body and getting the club to the left side. I've saw that Luke Donald is going through swing changes and he's doing the turn through now also here's a video. Holding off the release as they say in the video. Now that's Kuchar and Donald who are moving to a Hogan swing.

You can see the difference in the follow through. Here's the before of my follow through. Arms collapse and left shoulder is pulling up after impact. Just horrible looking and something I've been battling in my natural swing. Lots of golfers have this chicken wing like collapsing of the arms who hit the ball really good.

And the after where the arms are more extended after impact. There's some things to clean up like how my right foot is not moving until pretty late in the follow through so I think that's preventing or discouraging my hips to turn. But overall my impact position and wrists I like a lot. My right elbow is tucked in and that's thanks to the pulling on the chain power move. A completely different way of achieving a position but not at all in an intuitive way.

And from down the line.

I still have that little move where my hands are high at the top and then drop back. My club is not really laid off but it's a much better swing path than the choppy steep path from before.

Son's Wrist Breakdown Finally Solved

My 14 year old son has had for about the last 4 months a right wrist breakdown at impact.  He's left handed. We worked hard on this a few years ago on getting a correct supinated impact position. We tried everything for a couple of weeks and finally I figured it out. At the time the solution was weakening his grip.

Well this time the same thing was happening except his grip was already neutral so it had to be something else. We tried lots of different things like trying to get more or less whip, standing taller, lowering or raising his backswing, etc. Well the other day I tried out a few other ideas and finally found the solution. It came down to him rolling his wrist to square the club at impact instead of flipping it which is why his wrist was breaking down. He hasn't been golfing as much lately and has been growing a lot so his swing has drifted which is why it's so important to make sure the fundamentals don't change. This has been bothering us for a while now so it feels good to finally have figured this out.

Here's the before where the wrist is flipping and breaking down at impact.

And the after with nice supination.

His impact is still horrible but that will work itself out with reps. I still think he has another problem which is that his hips are stalling which is what's causing him to flip in the first place.

Pulling the Chain

I'm subscribed to myswingevolution and watched this video the other day. I tried it and got it pretty fast. And it felt powerful and fast. I verified that with swing speed radar without a ball that I picked up about 5-6 mph on all my swings so this translates to about a club. I tried it out on the range and for about half a session it felt like crack cocaine. At first I was chicken winging it but the ball was going great. Then to fix the chicken wing I finally found a nice way to remember how to do this here. What's so great is that it's all in Korean but it just makes so much sense. Plus her swing is amazing. Then I got a little more whip and I got a couple that were just blazing. On video it looks correct but still hanging back so I'll have to work on that. Sergio even has this same problem. It feels natural in that I've always felt that for me the most powerful move was just pulling across my body and basically OTT slicing. And of what I was trying and learning was to combat this. So my swing didn't feel powerful. Well this move allows me to do the powerful and now come inside out. I'm still playing around with it but I'm definitely in the "honeymoon" phase and I'm hoping that this one will stay in the bag and not fade like all the other ones.

Here's a before and after of swing speed.

Finish, Right Wrist Extension, Whip

I was sick of looking at my finish with the chicken wing so last night I just said OK why don't I try going back to flipping my right hand over like how I already discovered in this post. Back then I was able even to have beautiful rhythm like here. The reason I had gone away from that is after getting into all the Ben Hogan body release stuff and finishing low and left and not flipping. I think I took it too far as my club face was staying square during my follow through but I was just chicken winging, pulling up, and I lost a lot of whip. The latest work I've been doing with my supinated wrist which allowed my to come from inside without fear of pushing the ball which then allowed me to keep my right elbow more tucked in. I just decided to combine that with the "Rory" move and whip the club around. I eventually was able to come up with a feeling of really having right wrist extension at the top and rolling the club off my fingers this allows me to really dig in my right elbow. That combined with driving my hands on the downswing gives a real whip. I was also just swinging away with practice swings trying to get a lot of whip and trying to drive my right shoulder to groove the feeling then hitting the ball. Another thing I was doing is working on my finish. Keeping my left arm straight for as long as possible and then tuck in the left elbow and let my two arms bend up. Here's the video.

 Right elbow is almost below my left arm. If my shoulder was more flexible and I could keep my left are straight it would look pretty good. I'm finally able to get my right elbow in front of my right hip bone instead of on the side of my body. I feel the whip. Finish is getting better I want to get even more weight and extension on the left side of my body. Here's from DL.

So what I was afraid of with the whip move was that I would go back to an Ian Poulter like flip release. But I guess I've been doing so much low left finish work then it was OK. As long as the flip comes after impact then the club face stays relatively square through impact. I think I'm able to get the whip after impact because the supination allows me to come from inside. My takeaway is still too high and not around my body enough. That's just what feels natural to me. Will probably battle that forever.

In the end balls were flying pretty good, straight, sounding better, even off of grass. Even tried hitting driver and some balls were going pretty good. Swing looks a lot prettier. Will work on getting rhythm back and better contact.

Bowed Wrist

Yesterday while hitting with a friend he said he was working on bowing the wrist at top to help layoff the club. I had forgot about that and tried playing around with it to see what would happen. I had done this before and it did what usually had happened which was a low hook. This makes sense as the club face is more closed at impact. However, that day I had been working on really getting my path more inside out and I was struggling with it and somehow the combination of the two clicked. The feelings that I have were several:

• I'm backhanding the ball with my left hand
• I've got my back to the target at impact
• I can post up hard with my left leg
• I can come from really inside without fear of hitting to the right.

I think it's this last point that really does the most to change my overall swing. I've been trying to come more from the inside while keeping my right elbow bent at impact. I've been struggling with the downswing and just not feeling comfortable with it like I'm getting all bunched up and stuck and can't get any power into it. I just told myself that all changes feel uncomfortable in the beginning. However I've been thinking about how changing my ball position really changed my swing. I've also seen in the past how changing my grip changed my swing (my son's as well). So the body will naturally do what it needs to do to close the club face no matter how hard you try to override them. Just like blinking. And if you give it a different way then it will adjust all the other parts of the swing to accommodate. This is why practice swings are different from real swings.

Since my original flippy scoopy swing was corrected my wrist position has always been good (not broken down) but always slightly bladed meaning that the back of my wrist wasn't pointed toward the target but more slightly toward the right. With this new feeling of backhanding I'm really closing the club face by supination so my body now will allow my to really come from the inside because it's no longer afraid to have the club face open at impact. Even my perspective of the ball flying away from me has changed almost like I'm hitting behind my back.
I saw a video about different ways of closing the club face based on Nesbit's model. I'm going to think about this more. Here's a 3/4 swing version. Left wrist is perfect at impact.

Another thing that came about with this change is the feeling of posting up on the left leg for added power. I've read about that and studied it a little and of course know about Tiger's problems with his left leg but all it seemed to do for me was make me slice or chicken wing more. But now I started to feel that mechanism. When you pull up on the hands and the wrists are cocked the club head goes down. The difference before for me was that with a bladed wrist the club face would just open so I would have to compensate other ways and it didn't feel right. With supination the club face stays closed and I can post without feeling the club face open and it adds more power. I'll have to experiment with this more. I was hitting 8 iron and striping it. Tried other clubs and driver with much less successful results so going to have to experiment with this more.
I'm still having big problems with my follow through and chicken winging. I'm wondering if I'm fighting it and it's a technique problem or it's a flexibility problem as my right shoulder hurts on the follow through? Will work on that more but one more hopeful step in the right direction.

Ball Position

I was looking at my friend's swing from down the line the other day and there were some things I really like about it. In comparing his swing to my swing I notice that he stands much closer to the ball than I do. I compared to some pro swings and I realized that my ball position is too far away.

Before and after of ball position

Went to the range and tried it out. At first it seemed really weird and uncomfortable. Like I was on my heels and I was going to shank it every time. I also had some incredibly fat shots. I kept at it and was eventually able to hit some balls with it. It's amazing how your body will do whatever is necessary to hit the ball as straight as possible and adjust to the new setup. Well as you can see in the video it did several things.

It made my impact position more compact. I think this finally helped me to keep my body rotating instead of firing my right arm to reach out to the ball to impact it. In this new position if I fire out too early then I just hit it super fat. My hands are much closer to my thighs and I'm leaned nicely over the ball. My shaft is more upright at address and impact, I'll have to check the angles with Skypro. The balls were flying pretty good after a while. I still feel like I can't generate much power with this because I'm all scrunched up at impact. I was trying to get the feeling of squatting down and also keeping my backswing lower by swinging around my waist as I always have a tendency to have my hands too high. I also feel like I'm over my heels and I think that makes me stay too much on my right side. My follow through looks horrible. I'll try to experiment with this more, try to get more comfortable with this so I can add power and also need to transfer more weight to my front foot.

I would be more excited about this but I'm purposefully holding myself back because every time I have a breakthrough I usually find something else that's even more of a breakthrough which makes my prior excitement seem kinda dumb. But at least for now this is one step closer in having a correct swing!

Wide Narrow Wide

Saw a fascinating video the other day

For the first time it explained how laying off the club helps close the face. It's physics proved by simulation. I love golf research instead of golf instruction based on ideas or methodologies. So I started working again on laying off the club and wondering how to do that. Then I got back onto Bradley Hughes and how he talked about starting the club upright on the backswing helps to create a loop that then helps layoff the club at the top at the transition. Martin Ayers kinda gets into this too with his power move.

Anyway I've tried doing this "transition" move before and really struggled with it as it just felt like I was trying to whip the club and I had no control over the club. This time just thinking about it differently and introducing a wide-narrow-wide into the loop and it made more sense or felt more natural. Then while also hitting I saw this guy who really bombs it from the back and he has that wide-narrow-wide move as well and you can just see how it concentrates all the power into impact. He looked like a baseball hitter on his follow through.

I'm also wondering if this will affect my timing and help with my right elbow problem?

Well here's the proof of the change which you can see with Skypro really easily.

You can really see how it's just two very different swings.
It's also done several other things all at once:

• I'm getting that "crunching" and shifting forward on the transition that I noticed all the good players have and throughout the years I've tried to imitate by really shifting my weight to the left or sticking out my left hip. These techniques made the swing look a little better but still not quite right. Now it just looks right.
• I have a head drop on the downswing now which all the good players have. And I'm doing this without even thinking about it.

So I would consider wide-narrow-wide one of the simple fundamental things to include in a swing to make it correct. The hard part was finding a swing thought or image to make it feel natural. I showed it to my son who was already doing it a little bit but is now doing it more and he said it definitely changed his ball flight and gave him more power. So this is staying in the bag. Here's an after video.

Lag and Power

I brushed off the Skypro the other day since I saw that they had put up Natalie Gulbis' swing. I compared her swing to mine and one thing that really stood out to me as a difference was the wide-narrow-wide in her swing and how mine was basically getting to be narrow-narrow-narrow. I've also been using the swing speed radar to see if there are any changes to speed with the different swing changes that I'm making. Well I was at the range and had three different swings that each hit the ball ok but with different ball flights. One was my current swing, one was really concentrating on rotating through the ball and trying to keep my right elbow bent before impact, and one was going back to the Bradley Hughes swing which I somehow got away from. This last swing gave me the highest swing speed and is probably the most correct one but I didn't have my camera so I couldn't verify!! But after thinking about the swing and looking at pro swings I think it's correct. I don't know how I drifted away from this swing.

It goes back to trying to get more lag speed in my swing. I need to go wide-narrow-wide and find the slot. Then just groove this swing except this time incorporating the other moves that I've since learned such as swinging under plane. Also I'm thinking that before when I was learning this swing I tried to keep my right elbow off my hip like Jim Furyk but this time I'll try to get it more in my belly. I'm hoping this will also help with the right elbow being bent by changing the timing of my swing. Another thing to try differently this time is being flat with this swing like Ben Hogan, last time I was real upright.