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.