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.