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.
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Before: right forearm at an angle |
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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.
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Before: At impact both arms are dead straight |
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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.
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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
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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!
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