One quick pic from down the line. You can see below how my foot has definitely stayed down longer into the follow through. This really gives me a great sense of more control and stability at impact and I’m really looking forward to getting this change down.
After looking at my swing on video yesterday and seeing how much my right heel was shooting off the ground, I knew I had to make some changes in a hurry. Today I went out and begun the process. While this is a pretty simple change on the surface, it will not be easy to overcome as it is simply one of the dynamics of my swing. It happens without me having any conscious control over it and at a phase in the swing where everything is running on automatic, making it very challenging to make the change and still hit the ball well. Unfortunately, I’ve agreed to play in a mini-tour event tomorrow, so this has the potential for a small disaster!
Right now I feel ok, I’m hitting the ball pretty solid while working on these changes, but at the cost of about 10 yards per club because I have to slow everything down to get the sequencing under control. Enough with the discussion, let’s look at some pics!
In this pic, you can see my swing from yesterday on the left and my swing from today on the right in the “Barney” colored purple shirt – that’s what my wife calls it, anyway, I like it. Whether you like my shirt or not, my impact position on the right demonstrates my efforts to get my lower body more stable, although my hips are still running out ahead just a touch. But, you can see that my right heel has stayed more on the ground at impact rather than starting to turn out like on the left.
Into the follow through, you can see this a little more clearly:
Notice how my right knee hasn’t collapsed in as much in today’s swing compared to yesterday. However, it’s still starting to roll outward rather than inward. It’s progress, but it’s not right yet.
So what the heck causes this and why am I trying to change this in my swing? Well, it wouldn’t be any fun if I just gave you all the answers right up front! Just kidding. Although, I will be doing a video for this very soon in my online golf instruction section, the Member’s Vault. But for now, take a look at the picture below of me and Tiger Woods and you should be able to figure out pretty quickly the dysfunction in my golf swing.
While I normally don’t slide like this, it is something that started happening today as I tried to keep my heel down more to get a feeling for it. I didn’t slide at all yesterday, but that was because I just let my hips spin out and get out in front of me. Like I said, it’s progress but there’s plenty of work to do ahead. Stay tuned as I keep working on building the perfect golf swing!
I’ve always been a high ball, high spin player. For a while now, I’ve been looking for shafts to help bring my ball flight down and reduce spin. After hitting a set of Adrian Wadey’s Bridgestone J33′s with Project X’s that felt like telephone poles, I was sold. The ball flight was so much more consistent and flat than my Titleist 681′s with S300 shafts. The only problem was that Adrian had no idea what flex his shafts were and there was no frequency machine around to test them. I ordered some 6.5′s and decided to give them a try.
After getting back home from the Utah Open qualifier, I put in an old set of irons, some TourStage Z101′s with Tour Concept X100 shafts. These were DRAMATICALLY better than the S300′s, so I kept them in and tested them against a 7 iron 681 with the Project X shaft I installed in it as a test. The test club came to a D3 swing weight and frequencied at 7.5 on the Rifle scale, or a soft X-flex. I took both seven irons out and after a warm up, was hitting my Z101 about 172 yards to a practice green at our course. I then pulled out the Project X and was pretty bummed with what happened next.
I hit the first shot very solid and it actually ballooned on me, starting on a nice lower trajectory and then climbing high and falling out of the sky 10 yards short of where I was just hitting the TC shaft. I just considered it a fluke and hit some more. Each shot flew higher and shorter with MORE spin than the Tour Concept X100. The TC shaft frequencied slightly stiffer at about 8.2, or just over half a flex stiffer, and that likely had some influence, but overall, I was dissappointed with this first go around. I’ll have to keep digging to see if I can the specs on Adrian’s clubs. Note, the loft angle of each club was identical at 31*.
I spent the last 6 months or so learning more about Hank Haney’s golf swing theory that he has taught Tiger Woods. I had guidance from Hank’s director of instruction in Texas and made great progress in learning this hybrid two plane swing. I did this for the purpose of educating myself more in depth to better help my students in the future. After 6 months, I’m DONE! I’m in the process of going back to my swing, the Rotary Swing that I teach and you can track this progress here. It’s always interesting to make changes and then try and go back to where you started. It can be like learning to walk again, but I enjoy the process because it helps me relate to my students who are making changes. I get to experience the same challenges and frustrations and now you get to share it with me on my blog!
The first thing I am targeting is the movement of right heel during the downswing. Right now, it is lifting off the ground and moving straight up rather than in toward my left. This is causing my right hip to kick in and creating instability in my lower body. My lower body is getting too far out in front and out of sync with my upper body and this is causing some inconsistency in my ball flight. You can see what I’m talking about in the picture.
You can see how my right heel is lifting straight up and my right knee moves in too much. This week I’ll be working on getting it to move more toward my left foot to keep my lower body from getting too far out in front and creating the jammed up look and feel I have at impact.
