Bent knees

Well the lesson got my swing going in the right direction but my spine angle was still a problem at impact, I was standing up and pulling my hips in.  So then I started to push my butt out at impact which looked more correct but felt weird.  And then I thought that I should try bending my knees more or just squatting down like how most of the pros do it.  I tried it and it helped a lot because with my knees bent at impact it allows my hips to get out of the way more and I can better maintain my spine angle.  But I’m so used to thrusting up with my hips at impact.  This is wrong now that I look at it and I’ve been trying to retrain my body to keep my left hip down and my left leg bent at impact.  I need to work more on the spine angle but this has really helped.  Ball flight is also really nice.  More like Mathias’ ball flight nice high slight draws that go far.  Swing feels very different.  I’m slowly working on each piece and learning how they all fit together.  It’s funny how you have to at some point look at each part of the body and see if it’s doing the right thing.  Then you start all over again.  But swing looking much more powerful and finally on the way to being correct….I hope!

Swing 5.0 alpha: Lesson

Turns out that my 4.0 swing was a completely false.  Basically I found out through extensive video analysis that swinging with and without a ball changes your swing completely.  My no ball swing looked pretty good but I couldn't hit a ball that way.  The clubface was way too open at impact.  So the swing was fundamentally wrong.  So I was out of ideas and took a lesson with Julien to look for new ideas.

Lesson
He told me that I was keeping my weight on the right side much at impact which is why my ball pushed to the right.  I needed to shift my weight more to my left side.  Well I was originally doing this to get in the right impact position, head back.  He had me hit leaning downhill and just turn my shoulders.  He had me look at Tom Watson’s DVD.  This didn’t make too much sense to me at first but then eventually I saw my swing change for the better.  I’m not sure how this worked but my impact position was better.  The other big change he made was on my back swing and de activating my wrists.  They were way too active.  So my back swing is much shorter and larger.  I almost feel like I’m not even breaking my wrists on the back swing but when I look at video I am even more than 90 degrees.  Video just doesn’t lie.  What this also did was force me to accelerate through my swing and get me my arms straight with the club during follow through.  Chicken wing is disappearing!  He also had my backswing more around my body instead of straight up.  So swing changed for the better.  A lesson really helped me with the breakthrough even though right after the lesson it didn’t seem like it.

Before                                                                         After

wrists way too active and too close in to body

wrists less active and farther away from body

Not too much difference here

Impact

Also almost identical

A little chicken  wing

Little less chicken wing

And even more chicken wing and weight on the right side

Less chicken wing and more on the left side

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!