First of all, Tom I'd like to say thank you for all the videos and tutorials you make for all of us, they have been more than helpful, especially for me!
I sent in a video a couple weeks back for your review/analysis, and there were numerous things you pointed out. A few things I had noticed myself when I watched my swing myself (slightly steeper downswing, head moving during backswing), and some others that I had not noticed (takeaway too far inside, shoulder coming off the wall). I took your suggestions/drills and practiced them at home using a Live View Pro camera setup, and I believe I've been able to correct a number of items (Can keep shoulder on the wall, Lead arm is at or slightly below shoulder line at the top of backswing, head is quite a bit more stable during backswing).
However, I haven't been able to correct the slightly steeper downswing (over the top), out-to-in swing path, and chicken wing. To make matters worse, I still can't seem to stop chunking/hitting behind the ball. There are some swings where I make crispy contact and it feels amazing, but the majority of swings I'm still chunking. Plus, I don't have any grass driving ranges in my area, so even those shots where I do feel like I made good contact, I could still potentially be hitting slightly behind the ball (since it's hard to tell without an actual divot to look at). I have been practicing the 90% drill as well as drill 2.8 at home as much as I can (can't hit any balls at home since I don't have any space, so just use the Live View Pro camera setup to look at my swing/movements). I can usually only make it to a driving range once a week, and when I do, I practice the 90% drill, and I start to make better contact, but as soon as I go back to a full/normal swing, I still chunk/hit behind the ball and swing over the top (out to in).
I know making swing changes takes time, and it's a matter of figuring out what "feels" work for you as an individual, but I'm honestly not sure how to proceed further. I would have liked to see some (even slight) improvement in my over the top move, and out-to-in swing path. I do plan on continuing to practice the 90% drill as well as drill 2.8. Do you (or anyone else in the forum) have any other drill suggestions to improve these aspects (over the top/out-to-in/chicken wing)? I do plan on submitting another video analysis to you in a few weeks, but I'd like to try and work on some more drills before doing so.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!
Played with a guy yesterday who generally had a decent swing. But his primary fault was his lead knee moved towards his right knee on the backswing. I mean it moved 6-8 inches. Then as he started his downswing his lead knee had to move about 8-10 inches towards the target to avoid hitting off his right side. He asked me why he was hitting weird shots. I pointed out his knee movement is not helping. He said "what knee movement?". I told him and he was in disbelief..."no way!". Then I shot a video and he was shocked. He thought his knee was moving out over his lead foot.
But I think I know where some of this excessive lead knee movement comes from, at least in my opinion. It comes from folks watching, or trying to emulate the long drive contest guys. If you watch a long drive hitters, their lead knee moves FAR inward, or to their trail side on the backswing. However, they also move their lead knee at what seems like 100mph leftward to start the downswing. Most non-long drive guys cannot make that move, thus they push off their lead leg and create a reverse pivot. Check out the pic below. This is darn near exactly how he looked at the top, minus the excessively long backswing.
@GolfLivesMatter - I hope you're collecting all of these fabulously detailed posts for the great book you're going to publish...😎
Last night at a get together I had a 23 hcp guy swing a 9 iron with his left hand only. I had him start with getting the club moving back and forth, like a pendulum, and continuing back and forth, free movement, no tension. Back-swing-back-swing. Believe it or not, this was very hard for him to do. He looked like Herman Munster at the start. However, as he continued, he became more comfortable, fluid with the "free swinging" back and forth, continuous movement.
Then each time as the club reached the top I asked him to shift his hips in any direction to start the downswing. His initial shifts were spin out movements. More interesting, he could see how the spin out pushed the path outward. He stopped, looked shocked, and said "is that why I hook the ball?". LOL. I said "maybe" but that wasn't the point of the drill. Everyone wants to fix something vs. learning the friggin' golf swing! LOL. I'm sure Tom runs into this all the time!
Plus, he was having a tough time keeping his head positioned over the ball at first, even while doing very slow continuous swings, but we fixed that too, at least for the drill. As a note, it's very interesting to see how so few golfers can control the club head during a very slow continuous swing movement with the left hand only, at least at first, because they're accustomed to tension induced swings and right hand "throwing the club" at the ball, at least in my opinion.
So he went back to the free swing pendulum continuous back and forth movement and I asked him to pre-position his tailbone slightly forward during the movement. The club head path suddenly changed to a slight in-to-out movement. The best part was he could actually see AND feel the difference. Then I asked him to pre-position his tailbone more toward his trail side and keep swinging. He could easily see the swing arc move to his trail side. Then I had him pre-place his lead hip about four inches forward, while he kept swinging back and forth, and suddenly the arc moved to his lead side.
Then an equally important part of the drill unfolded. As the club was moving back and forth, from hip forward to center to trail side (to see the different paths), I asked him to push off his lead foot just slightly, and when he thought he should push off in relation to the club hitting the ball, then the ground. It was crazy to see that he started pushing off his lead foot very early, sending the club into the ground far behind the target point or even swinging an inch above the ground. Thus, he didn't have any sense of where the club head was in relation to the timing of the lead knee extension. He was all over the map. However, after about 10 minutes his brain started to acclimate to the combined hip/post-up movement (because it was a continuous movement) and he started getting closer and closer to hitting the ground at the correct point. Still a long way to go but the best part was it all made sense to him, and amazingly enough, no one ever showed him the cause and effect of the movements.
The other thing he started to learn was how the lead knee post-up movement accelerated the club head downward in the opposite direction. He was amazed at the end of the session and said he never dreamed he could learn all of this by swinging a 9 iron with his left hand only. I told him his next step is to go to the range and hit left hand only 9 iron shots no more than 5 yards. If anyone out there has tried this, it is disgustingly hard to do, and it takes a LOT of patience, and looking like an idiot on the range to learn club head control....LOL.
Also, one move that kills my swing is not turning the left shoulder DOWN IMMEDIATELY on the backswing. If I don't, and I don't think I'm the only one, my weight moves to, or OVER my right foot. The result is Shanksville or at best, a lousy shot.
for you:
1) 80% weight on lead foot through the whole swing, not just the backswing. you will feel like your leaning towards the target.
2) turn your left shoulder down at the ball. Your shoulder turn takes your club back, not your arms.
3) keep your left(lead) arm straight. Not only in the backswing, but the most importantly, the downswing. do left arm only swings to get this feeling. you will notice that on the downswing, you will ground the club early. This is because your coiling down and you need to rise back up by straightening your left leg/side as you turn towards the target.
- practice with 1/2 swings.
- learn to compress the ball.
- keep arms relaxed throughout the whole swing. this will allow you to release the club into the ball with little effort. tight arms are shorter arms. let your left arm be STRAIGHT and relaxed.
This is going to be a pretty long post, so apologies in advance. I know it's been quite a long time since I posted here, but thought I'd give an update, thankfully it's a positive one. I've tried to continue practicing and developing my swing. Over the last half of 2021, it's been pretty inconsistent range sessions (some days solid ball striking, other days pretty average). But I decided to stick with it and continued to practice and tinker with different setup feels so that I could figure out what works. Towards the end of 2021, was able to get a couple rounds of golf in, and by in large played quite a bit better than I was prior to taking up Tom's teaching methods.
Then winter started to set in, and wasn't able to really get out to the range all of January. Then last month, on a relatively pleasant day, decided to hit the range, and initially I was falling back towards my old way, chunking the golf ball etc. I then recalled one of Tom's lessons about how it might feel like you need to put 90% of your weight on your lead side, so I decided to try that out and get more weight on my lead side then I usually do, and I started to make solid contact again, out of the middle of the face. Although, now I was consistently hooking the ball (which for me, prior to changing to this swing method, would never happen).
After the range, I decided to log into the online school and check out the ball flight fixes section that Tom has created. While working through the "Hooks" sections, it really dawned on me that I was bending my trail knee significantly in the downswing, when I should have been doing the opposite and keeping it straight (as Tom explains in the ball flight section). So last week I had another chance to hit the range, so I decided to try this fix out and see if it would alleviate the hooks. Lo and behold, keeping my trail leg straight in the downswing alleviated my hooks, and I was hitting baby draws and making consistent center face contact! I was even hitting pure 4-iron shots, which previously was the worst club in my bag.
I'm super excited to hit the range again soon and keep working on my swing. Next goal is to make sure that the swing can translate over to the actual course as well!
For me, the left shoulder wants to jut outwards at address, and also wants to be "shrugged up" for some reason. So at address I pull my shoulders back and down. At that point my left shoulder has plenty of room to "go down" vs around on the backswing. When that happens any bad shot can occur.
I tried to read most of this post but, a couple of things come to mind. You were saying how your shoulder was blocking your vision to the ball. This makes me think that you do not have enough tilt. Are you pointing your left shoulder at the ball ? If your shoulders are level, then they will block your sight. Now you choked up on the ball for better contact and this makes me think its making you tilt more.
I'll give you my advice.
Get that shoulder down at the ball. What your going to find out is that you will hit fat shots. What you have to do is straighten your left leg and pull your left shoulder upward while keeping your left arm straight on the downswing.
The way I feel this is to do, left arm only swings. Do all the things I mentioned but, with your left arm only. As far as fitting goes. Buy a "lie board" and valuate your contact. IMO, I wouldn't worry too much about getting fitted until you really have the swing down. Right now, your swing is constantly changing. Coking down on the club actually gives you a lot of advantages . Lie angle would be the only thing to change later.
Thought I'd post a few pictures of how much I was choking down. The first pic is before, and the second is after choking down.
@Raheel Chaudhary - Your compression and the resulting smiles is some great and very welcome news!!
I tend to think that a proper fitting may be on the near horizon. @Nocona Colt Abernathy, @desmondmoss, & @johnpfistnerjr - any thoughts in this regard based on Raheel crisping it by gripping down on the club? Thanks!
I think this one is a bit above my pay grade. However, what comes to mind is, maybe you're giving a prime example of how important a club fitting might be. If a 1/4-inch adjustment made that big a difference. I'm 6'-0" and they added 1/2-inch to the length for me.
Without actually seeing your swing I can't really say anything more
It's been a little while since I posted, ended up going on vacation last week as well, so had my first chance in a while to get to the range today. I noticed something quite interesting, that helped quite a bit and wanted to get some feedback from you all. So when I was on the range earlier, after warming up, I was pretty much having the same issues as mentioned prior (hitting behind the ball, weak contact etc).
For whatever reason (I couldn't tell you why I decided to try it), I decided to choke up on the golf clubs. When I say choke up, I mean very slightly, maybe a quarter of inch max down the grip (away from the butt of the club) from where I usually grip my irons. Immediately I started striping shots and making center contact on the face of the clubs (my irons are black, so I can see where the ball hits on the face), and stopped hitting behind the ball. Now, that being said, not every shot was perfect, some shots leaked out the right cuz of an open face etc and some were mishits because I was trying to overpower some shots, but by in large I was making center contact on the face for the majority of the shots I hit, I could feel the compression on the face of the club, and I pretty much couldn't stop smiling the entire time :-)
Now, I was hoping to get feedback from all of you about what's going on. Is this just me masking some other error in my golf swing by gripping down on the club, or could it be possible that I was gripping my clubs too close to the butt end all along, which was causing me to hit the ground/mat before making contact with the ball? I'm average height (5'10") and have standard length clubs. I'll also try and post a couple pictures up of how much I started gripping down on my clubs, but would love some feedback/opinions of what may be going on.
@Tom Saguto @danny @Buford T Ogletree @Cody McDowell
I was going to write a post about this today but saw this and decided it’s probably better here. After understanding the swing and 2.8 and putting in numerous range sessions I saw some really good results! I hit the best drives of my life and my consistency improved. My playing partner has commented on the changes as our matches are much more even. Now this is by no means the finished swing and there are obvious learning curves and relearning curves along the way. That brings me to the past week and a half. My iron play has stayed pretty good but my driver play has fallen off. I videotaped my swing and I was shifting my circle way to far forward. Swing thoughts started to creep in. @danny and @Buford T Ogletree can attest to what happens when you have to many swing thoughts I’m sure. I used the watermelon drill. That drill really helped me keep it all together and right the ship! The school is great and all of these guys are great and the method just works! Trust it. Don’t be afraid to ask for help and most importantly don’t rush it. All the 3 steps forward 2 steps back covers a ton of distance! Stay the course
@Raheel Chaudhary - Thanks for your kind responses!
With regard to your over-the-top move, please check out this post that @Buford T Ogletree just put out there as it may be helpful!
@danny One more question I just thought of. Could you please clarify/explain in more detail, when you say "Give up controlling the club to the ball"
@Tom Saguto Thank you for the words of encouragement, I am definitely planning on sticking with this program as I feel it has the most chance of success for my game (I've tried numerous other methods/plans with minimal succes). I will definitely continue on with the 90% percent drill, as well as work on the Downswing Problems section. Thanks!
@danny Thank you for your input! As you mentioned, my over the top move is also very slight, but it's there, and it seems to exaggerate itself by the time I get down towards the ball with a very noticeable out-to-in swing path. One thing you mentioned, and I probably should have metioned in my original post, is getting my hips to start the downswing. That is something I defintely struggle with. I just can't seem to get the proper movement. My downswing is definitely more upper body triggered. I can't seem to figure out the correct sequence to start the downswing. When I slow down my swing and practice the correct movement/sequence, I'm able to start my downswing with my hips (at least I think am lol). But when I go back to my normal swing speed, I get back into the habit of starting it with my upper body. I will definitely take your suggestions and try and implement them into my practice at home and at the range.
For context, I generally play in the mid to high 90's (from the white tees). My driver/wood/hybrid striking is generally serviceable, as is my short game/chipping. The best part of my game is probably my putting. I know if I can just get my iron play more consistent I would easily be shaving 10+ strokes off my scores. Just need to keep grinding and working on the proper movements/sequence. I guess it also couldn't hurt to lose a couple pounds lol.
@Buford T Ogletree Thank you for your input! Your description of your game/practice sounds like me as well, I definitely like to work on more than one thing at once, hence maybe why I am getting frustrated at certain aspects of my swing. I also agree, out of all the different swing methodologies out there, I also believe this one will work and has the most chance of success for me, which is why I'm also not quitting (and why I decided to post on the forum). As I mentioned in this post already, I know I have an issue with starting my downswing with my hips. I guess I just need to keep on grinding the proper sequence/movement and not quit until I get it right :-)
The journey I’ve been on this past year; over the top, flipping and chicken winging has been my most persistent nemesis. Those habits (especially over the top/flipping) was SO ingrained in me and they’re not going down without a fight. Early on with the program I made up my mind whatever I do I’m not quitting this system because I KNOW it will work. There’s been a few tense moments when I had some doubts but recording my swing really helped me to see it was me and not the system. The improvements came in small increments but after a year it has become quite noticeable. It’s kind of a three steps forward and two steps back sort of thing. As far as the mechanics of it, the three things I focused on the most to eliminate the over the top move is: keeping my upper arms gorilla glued to my sides, shoulder down, and the downswing starting with the hips. I still have the tendency to flip but the difference from a year ago is astounding. It ended up being a chain reaction. The three things I mentioned (for me at least) would help one thing and facilitate one of the other swing movements and that would help another problem. (If that makes any sense). You may be like me and want to work on too many things at once, admittedly this may have slowed me down some but I realize that’s the way I am so knowing this helps to keep my frustration level down a bit.
And that, @Raheel Chaudhary, is exactly why I brought @danny into the conversation. As comments and helpfulness go, I'd say he just bombed it 320 with a slight draw to the center cut of the fairway!
(By the way, Danny - great playing!! That previously unimaginable goal is now plainly in sight!!)
Oh yes, I totally feel your pain. Tom pulled me off the ledge once or twice! Thank goodness! I played 7 over on 9 yesterday! I couldn't believe how well things were going! I actually lost some sleep last night reliving the round! LOL
I struggle with the same over the top move. Mine is slight but, I see it in the video, even when I think I'm not doing it! Here is what I've been workingon over the last 2 weeks.
I'm taking a lot of swings without a ball in an effort to engrain 2 things right now.
1. get the hips to start the downswing/rolling over the trail foot
2. Get the club to hit the ground in the same spot
Since I've started this latest drill, my ball striking has improved demonstrably!! Like, holy cow! who hit that??!! improvement!
I've moved from hitting the ball to making shots on a more regular basis. I recently wrote a post about my shot routine that has evolved from conversations with @Buford T Ogletree and @GolfLivesMatter and @johnpfistnerjr and others.
But briefly, get your swings thoughts out during rehearsal and bring only triggers to the shot. Like, make sure you're getting the hips to start things during rehearsal, takes as many quick swings as you need to feel this, be relaxed and just know once you feel it in rehearsal you can use that in the shot! Then set up, think Shoulder down, use your hips/roll the trail foot. It's been working for me.
The discussions here have been a HUGE help! Keep posting! No matter how silly you think you might be. I gave up on feeling embarrassed here, and on the course and it when things really started transforming!
Give up controlling the club to the ball and start trusting in the swing system!
Keep swinging that club and build those feels and record, record, record! Oh and when you start grooving a good swing feel, record, record, record!! review, review, review! No more than a handful of swings without looking at your swing!
Danny