For any golfer who wants to play great golf
Analysis
Spotlight Swing: Hunter Mahan
Jan 11th
Hunter Mahan has a wonderful swing that we can learn from.
Hunter’s swing is uncomplicated and allows him to be very consistent. Watch how he gets on plane, and stays on the same plane coming down. There is no wasted movement, no extra effort added. It is a swing that conserves as much energy as possible to be transferred into the ball instead of into compensations.
Doesn’t it just look like a simple, repeatable motion?
Spotlight Swing: Rickie Fowler
Dec 29th
Take a look at what Rickie Fowler does. His plane is astonishing. Click here to see Rickie Fowler’s swing video.
Rickie at address:
Halfway through backswing
Amazing driving range session – Swing Update
Dec 10th
Today I had an amazing driving range session. Let me set the stage. It’s 39 degrees here in CT and a bit windy. I wanted to see how my ball striking had become based on the practice I’ve been doing from my book, “8 Keys to Effortless Distance”.
I started out hitting it well, but right. I realized I wasn’t allowing the finish to happen, I was kind of tightening up through impact. So I did some half swings focusing only letting the finish happen. When I felt that I had it, I started hitting balls again.
Review: Dancin’ Dogg Optishot Simulator
Dec 10th
Winter practice in the northeast is difficult. The weather is cold, the range balls like ice cubes, the chipping and putting greens frozen solid and you’re wearing 12 layers of clothing.
There used to be a great indoor practice place near me called “The Golf Training Center” that had a great putting green, video bays, launch monitor bays, a chipping area and a sand trap. Membership for the winter was reasonable. Last winter I spent an ungodly amount of time there, usually went for 2 or 3 hours after work and on the weekends.
It closed down last May and with winter coming I knew I needed to do something to practice indoors.
Pro’s Slow Motion Swings
Nov 10th
Here are some of my favorite swings from the PGA Tour.
Anthony Kim
Vijay Singh
Zach Johnson
Today’s round with stats
Nov 9th
What a beautiful day today. It’s early November and I got to play a round with with a temperature in the mid 60s.
Still working on the stuff from my lesson and my ball striking was definitely off today. It is difficult not to be mechanical when trying to apply what I’ve been working on since the lesson last week.
I hit a few really good shots, and I had an ok score, but it was difficult trusting my swing. I’m sure that things will get better, and I have the whole winter to get my swing improved so having a mediocre round is not a big deal. It was nice to be out there though.
Stats for the round:
Lesson 11-5
Nov 5th
Lesson 11/5/2009
I’ve decided that over the winter I’m going to get some lessons and refine my swing. My goal is more consistency and accuracy. I think I’m already long enough that I don’t need to worry about distance as much as accuracy.
We worked on a few different things today:
Backswing
On the backswing I need to get my swing a little flatter. The swing thought is to get my hands over my right heel. This puts me on a better plane. At first it felt strange. It felt really flat, but what it did was it gave me a more compact backswing. Read the rest of this entry »
You don’t need to reshaft to lower your spin rate
Oct 26th
So an interesting thing happened the other day. I popped into my local club builder because I had been thinking of switching out a shaft in a driver and I needed to a pick up a three wood that was going to go into Adams for repair.
We started talking about why I wanted to change the shaft in the driver and before I knew it I was on the launch monitor hitting some balls.
He looks at my swing and starts making some suggestions about releasing the club. Lo and behold my spin rate drops from a high of 5000 (the average was closer to mid 3k), down to an all time low for me of 1758. Same club and same shaft. Wow!
On the launch monitor that equated to a baby draw (from a fade) and about 60 yards more distance.
Simulator up and running
Oct 19th
So I finally setup the simulator. This will be my practice “facility” for the winter. I will get actual rounds on course when the weather cooperates.
The nice thing about the simulator is that it tells me a few keys stats about my swing. It tells me the swing path (inside out, straight or outside in and by how many degrees). It also tells me whether the club face is square at impact or how many degrees closed or open it is, and it tells me my club head speed at impact.
In my practice session today I have confirmed through hard numbers that indeeed the over the top move is basically history. 9 out of 10 swings where either coming in straight or from the inside. 10 percent were coming in from the outside but only by 3 degrees, which is not too bad at all.
The one thing I did notice consistently which bugged me is that on 8 out of 10 swings my club face was open. Most of the time it was open less than 8 degrees (which is still too much), but every once in a while I’d get one open 12 degrees or more. Really annoyed me. On a 160 yard shot, 12 degrees open face will send the ball 12 yards right of target. This is something I will definitely work on. I want the club head coming in square, or maybe even a degree or two closed through impact, with an inside out swing.
Full Release
Oct 16th
With the over-the-top issue a thing of the past it is time to improve other parts of my swing.
Today I tried something while practicing that led to an eye opening experience. I decided to try to create a fuller release.
I recorded two swings with the first one being my normal swing and second being a full release swing. The full release swing looked much better. It encouraged me to get wider in back and in trying to create a fuller release it ended up creating effortless power. It didn’t take any more effort to create a fuller release, but when I played back the videos I was startled by how much more club head speed the full release swing seemed to be generating. I didn’t have a launch monitor handy so I took an old fashioned approach and counted up the frames for the downswing.
The regular down swing took 7 frames. The full release took 5. And yet I wasn’t trying to swing faster. All I was focusing on was making a full release and the speed generated was effortless. I need to see what this does on the range but I was definitely surprised.
