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Golf improvement thread
- Thread starter Nosevi
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Frustrating. Even my game goes up and down though and I'm spending hours and hours practicing every week. Just happens. Is it long game, short game or both?
Regarding my game, with my full swing I've been working at getting my swing more on plane and I'm about where I want to be. For a stock draw you'll normally see the club a tad steep of the plane on the way back then drop onto the plane on the way down. Here's my swing now and you can probably tell it's a lot more on plane than it used to be. Also a big difference in the strike I get now which you can hear with the volume turned up a bit. This is my stock swing with a 7 iron:
This shows a bit of the swing sequence of that shot:
Halfway back:
Halfway down:
If you look at this shot of a few frames further down you can see I have a bit of lag going on - my hands have dropped but the club isn't being thrown out at all, in fact it's the last thing to go. Doing that gives a lot more power to the swing:
markst
New member
where do I start.............since last sept I've been working , so its been a bucket of balls on a Sat and 9 holes on a sunday...........if I do it the otherway round I've got no swing at all !!!!
anyway, hit 100 balls on the range today rather than play just to find my std swing..............found it in the end so hit a few decent ones.........
I went back to basics...........made sure I was not chopping down on the ball etc......
so long game.........shocking......
short game slightly better
putting woeful
I just cannot wait until I can stop work in 2 weeks time and concentrate on my golf !
anyway, hit 100 balls on the range today rather than play just to find my std swing..............found it in the end so hit a few decent ones.........
I went back to basics...........made sure I was not chopping down on the ball etc......
so long game.........shocking......
short game slightly better
putting woeful
I just cannot wait until I can stop work in 2 weeks time and concentrate on my golf !
Just thought I'd add something about a subject I mentioned earlier in the thread. I said I've got a guy in the states who's a bit of a stats guru looking at every aspect of my game so we can prioritise my 'training' / practice. The guy is actually a seriously clever bloke - ex nuclear engineer who now specialises in computer programming with a particular interest in statistical analysis. Anyway, we got chatting about ways to analyse my performance on the course and so be able to compare how different areas of my game are improving and what we need to focus on next. I've spoken to him and with a few areas blanked out as they display proprietary data (think that's the right term?) he said it was ok to post it up.
What we are basically using is a concept called 'strokes gained'. What it does is look at the situation that faces you on the course and works out, statistically, what a PGA Tour pro (our base line) would score from that shot. It uses literally hundreds of thousands of data points to compare what they would 'probably' achieve from that situation. When you mess it up it then corrects for that, looks at the new situaltion and sees what statistically a PGA Pro would score from that new situation. From all this it works out, statistcally, how far behind a tour pro you are. We did some test rounds on it and it fired out the fact that a tour pro would be playing to about a plus 5 - plus 6 handicap which is about right. Spookily it scored me about the same regardless of my score - it's looking at my skill level over the round not my score on that particular round.
We track my rounds by GPS so we can input exactly what shot I'm hitting and what the result is. The down side is every round involves converting it to a code that the spreadsheet recognises and can use in its analysis. Didn't think I'd have paperwork during the evening during this 'gig'.
To give you an idea here's the return from a couple of rounds shot not so long ago - this is a whole level of 'geeky' that I'll bet is way beyond what most people would envisage anyone would go to but tbh it gives you a great insight into where you are and where you need to improve.
This is the main page, unfortunately with all the data in the middle blanked out. Normally in there it's show what you're scoring compared to a tour pro in every category down to the nearest 1/100th of a stroke. On the right it shows my strokes lost to a tour pro over the whole round. The colour coding on the left shows my priorities:
What falls out of the data is a bunch of analysis and here's some:
And my personal favourite - what this is doing is showing how big my dispersion is from the pin with a shot a given distance from the flag by the size of the circle but also how many shots it takes to get the ball in the hole from there. So taking my game from 100 yards out and my dispersion is pretty close to a tour pro's but I take a fraction more of a shot to get the ball down - my putting isn't as good. In fact my putting isn't as good across the board but from 140 yards out my proximity to the hole is pretty good. My chips from just off the green are good (to be fair this is a strength of mine) but my pitches from a few yards further out need work.
So by tracking my every shot on the course and statistically analysing thousands of shots played by PGA Tour pros (hundreds of thousands I think in reality as it's using the shot tracker system that tracks every shot on the PGA tour and has done for some years) you can get a fairly good idea where you need to focus your efforts to close the gap to them.
Geeky - yes but extremely useful.
What we are basically using is a concept called 'strokes gained'. What it does is look at the situation that faces you on the course and works out, statistically, what a PGA Tour pro (our base line) would score from that shot. It uses literally hundreds of thousands of data points to compare what they would 'probably' achieve from that situation. When you mess it up it then corrects for that, looks at the new situaltion and sees what statistically a PGA Pro would score from that new situation. From all this it works out, statistcally, how far behind a tour pro you are. We did some test rounds on it and it fired out the fact that a tour pro would be playing to about a plus 5 - plus 6 handicap which is about right. Spookily it scored me about the same regardless of my score - it's looking at my skill level over the round not my score on that particular round.
We track my rounds by GPS so we can input exactly what shot I'm hitting and what the result is. The down side is every round involves converting it to a code that the spreadsheet recognises and can use in its analysis. Didn't think I'd have paperwork during the evening during this 'gig'.
To give you an idea here's the return from a couple of rounds shot not so long ago - this is a whole level of 'geeky' that I'll bet is way beyond what most people would envisage anyone would go to but tbh it gives you a great insight into where you are and where you need to improve.
This is the main page, unfortunately with all the data in the middle blanked out. Normally in there it's show what you're scoring compared to a tour pro in every category down to the nearest 1/100th of a stroke. On the right it shows my strokes lost to a tour pro over the whole round. The colour coding on the left shows my priorities:
What falls out of the data is a bunch of analysis and here's some:
And my personal favourite - what this is doing is showing how big my dispersion is from the pin with a shot a given distance from the flag by the size of the circle but also how many shots it takes to get the ball in the hole from there. So taking my game from 100 yards out and my dispersion is pretty close to a tour pro's but I take a fraction more of a shot to get the ball down - my putting isn't as good. In fact my putting isn't as good across the board but from 140 yards out my proximity to the hole is pretty good. My chips from just off the green are good (to be fair this is a strength of mine) but my pitches from a few yards further out need work.
So by tracking my every shot on the course and statistically analysing thousands of shots played by PGA Tour pros (hundreds of thousands I think in reality as it's using the shot tracker system that tracks every shot on the PGA tour and has done for some years) you can get a fairly good idea where you need to focus your efforts to close the gap to them.
Geeky - yes but extremely useful.
"It's all about technique to increase clubhead speed not about how hard you try to hit the ball." - that's what I told my old man yesterday. He came over and was using my launch monitor. He was hitting a 5 wood and really giving it some 'wellie'; he's actually considered to be one of the bigger hitters amongst his peers, it's a strength of his game. Anyway having watched him thrash a few 5 woods down the 'range' I said I'd show him what I meant. I was just in socks, not wearing a glove and hadn't warmed up so choked down on the 5 wood a little and didn't go after it. I carried the 3 shots I hit 30 yards over his longest, normally this would have been about 50 yards if I had at least been wearing shoes.
The thing is to look at us swinging a golf club he swings it far harder than I do, really does go after it where I bearly give it any effort now. But there's only so fast you can get a golf club to go through effort alone, club head speed is really far more to do with sequencing your swing correctly than about physical effort.
Essentially you need to swing from the ground up. It's something that's said a lot but not many people actually do it. I did a pretty simple drill for a while and it had a big effect on my club head speed, will see if I can describe it.
To sequence your swing correctly you need to start at the ground. What I mean is that while if you look at most higher handicappers on video, from the top of their backswing the first thing to move is their hands and the club. Look at a player who gets more club head speed and the first thing to move is a bit of weight (and we're talking a fraction) goes onto their left foot (for a right hander). If you can start your downswing at the ground ie by getting a bit of weight onto you left side, you'll find your swing speed can increase hugely.
The correct 'sequence' is for a bit of weight to go onto your left foot, then your hips start to unwind, then your torso follows it and finally your arms come down and the club whips through. It's called the 'kinetic chain' and as each part of your body moves before the bit above the tention between the two adds power to the swing. By the time the club starts to really move all the energy created by moving one part of your body before the other is stored up and unleashed through the club. The result is what appears to be effortless power.
It all sounds kind of complicated but in reality it's not that hard to do, you just need to start at the bottom. The drill I did was pretty simple and just involved standing in socks with a coin under the ball of my left foot. I did backswings then from the top of the backswing pressed down on the coin a bit. The coin just gives you something to push on that you can feel but you don't have to use one. If you keep doing this - backswing then press down, backswing then press down (you don't need to swing the club) your body gets used to starting the downswing with that tiny press. If you start the downswing down at the ground you'll find you'll naturally sequence it correctly through your hips, body then arms and your club head speed will increase.
Here's a guy that uses the kinetic chain pretty well given his size:
The thing is to look at us swinging a golf club he swings it far harder than I do, really does go after it where I bearly give it any effort now. But there's only so fast you can get a golf club to go through effort alone, club head speed is really far more to do with sequencing your swing correctly than about physical effort.
Essentially you need to swing from the ground up. It's something that's said a lot but not many people actually do it. I did a pretty simple drill for a while and it had a big effect on my club head speed, will see if I can describe it.
To sequence your swing correctly you need to start at the ground. What I mean is that while if you look at most higher handicappers on video, from the top of their backswing the first thing to move is their hands and the club. Look at a player who gets more club head speed and the first thing to move is a bit of weight (and we're talking a fraction) goes onto their left foot (for a right hander). If you can start your downswing at the ground ie by getting a bit of weight onto you left side, you'll find your swing speed can increase hugely.
The correct 'sequence' is for a bit of weight to go onto your left foot, then your hips start to unwind, then your torso follows it and finally your arms come down and the club whips through. It's called the 'kinetic chain' and as each part of your body moves before the bit above the tention between the two adds power to the swing. By the time the club starts to really move all the energy created by moving one part of your body before the other is stored up and unleashed through the club. The result is what appears to be effortless power.
It all sounds kind of complicated but in reality it's not that hard to do, you just need to start at the bottom. The drill I did was pretty simple and just involved standing in socks with a coin under the ball of my left foot. I did backswings then from the top of the backswing pressed down on the coin a bit. The coin just gives you something to push on that you can feel but you don't have to use one. If you keep doing this - backswing then press down, backswing then press down (you don't need to swing the club) your body gets used to starting the downswing with that tiny press. If you start the downswing down at the ground you'll find you'll naturally sequence it correctly through your hips, body then arms and your club head speed will increase.
Here's a guy that uses the kinetic chain pretty well given his size:
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markst
New member
week 2 since my retirement...............and I am delighted to say some shots are coming back !
long is better, and my 30 -50 yrd pitching is much improved.............chipping needs to be worked on though !
sadly feet still hurt and now deciding whether to buy a golf cart
I should. I think you're old enough to get away with it......... :grin:
markst
New member
I will qualify for the Seniors later this year :thumbsdow
I wonder if I can get a blue badge......save all the hassle of trying to find a parking spot in the 430 :hmmm:
Looking at post #282 if I'm honest I was chuffed at how far my swing had come. What had been all over the place was now a swing that was pretty much on plane allowing me to hit the ball fairly straight most of the time. Sadly my swing coach is a bit of a perfectionist and "pretty much on plane" and "fairly straight" didn't really cut it. I also went to the head pro at my club and asked him if he thought a draw was better or should I go for a fade as a stock shot. He looked me in the eye and said "Pete, what you really want to do is hit it with a tiny bit of straight."
So I kept working.
Anyway, many hours later and a lot of videos looking at how I move the club around my body and this is now my swing:
Still loads of things to workk on but at the end of the day it's on plane (perfectly in fact - my coach said he's literally never seen a swing more on plane) and the ball goes straight as long as I don't mess up the club face angle. Essentially the swing is 'right' as long as the club face points at the target, that's where the ball is going.
These are a few swing sequence shots showing the club plane (you want the butt of the club pointing at the ball half way back and on the downswing):
Backswing:
Half way down:
Bit further down showing the club staying on plane:
If I'm honest getting it spot on plane is not easy and has taken a lot of effort. What it does allow though is you to stay in total balance throughout. Obviously two different swings but hopefully this shows that:
Swing wise I think it's fair to say I'm now into 'tweaking' rather than rebuilding. Time to work on the short game
So I kept working.
Anyway, many hours later and a lot of videos looking at how I move the club around my body and this is now my swing:
Still loads of things to workk on but at the end of the day it's on plane (perfectly in fact - my coach said he's literally never seen a swing more on plane) and the ball goes straight as long as I don't mess up the club face angle. Essentially the swing is 'right' as long as the club face points at the target, that's where the ball is going.
These are a few swing sequence shots showing the club plane (you want the butt of the club pointing at the ball half way back and on the downswing):
Backswing:
Half way down:
Bit further down showing the club staying on plane:
If I'm honest getting it spot on plane is not easy and has taken a lot of effort. What it does allow though is you to stay in total balance throughout. Obviously two different swings but hopefully this shows that:
Swing wise I think it's fair to say I'm now into 'tweaking' rather than rebuilding. Time to work on the short game
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Robgvx
New member
Nice videos.
That is what I found useful about the Skypro device that we talked out previously. I appreciate that the Skypro is limited, and gets it's alignment data from the clubface position at address (which obviously can be open or closed compared to the player's real alignment) but irrespective of that I found it great at showing whether I was on the same plane going back and down. It doesn't matter where the SkyPro thinks you're aligned it still shows the club going up and down relative to a fixed alignment.
What I found in trying to achieve that same plane up and down is that for me, it felt like I was going WAAAY outside the line on the way up. It *felt* ridiculous and Jim Furyk steep. But the Sky Pro said otherwise.
The second point I will mention is that the pro golfers whose swings were recorded as reference swings on the SkyPro software were nowhere near the same plane up and down.
I mentioned this to my pro who said that in his opinion it matters not one bit what plane you go back on because the only thing that is important is what the club is doing into impact.
Take Ryan Moore for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBYZcHS7Ki0
His butt never points anywhere near the ball until he starts his downswing. In fact it's pointing behind him at halfway back!
Rob
That is what I found useful about the Skypro device that we talked out previously. I appreciate that the Skypro is limited, and gets it's alignment data from the clubface position at address (which obviously can be open or closed compared to the player's real alignment) but irrespective of that I found it great at showing whether I was on the same plane going back and down. It doesn't matter where the SkyPro thinks you're aligned it still shows the club going up and down relative to a fixed alignment.
What I found in trying to achieve that same plane up and down is that for me, it felt like I was going WAAAY outside the line on the way up. It *felt* ridiculous and Jim Furyk steep. But the Sky Pro said otherwise.
The second point I will mention is that the pro golfers whose swings were recorded as reference swings on the SkyPro software were nowhere near the same plane up and down.
I mentioned this to my pro who said that in his opinion it matters not one bit what plane you go back on because the only thing that is important is what the club is doing into impact.
Take Ryan Moore for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBYZcHS7Ki0
His butt never points anywhere near the ball until he starts his downswing. In fact it's pointing behind him at halfway back!
Rob
Agree with this Rob, it's on the downswing where you need the club butt to be pointing at the ball in order to make it go straight.
Most are pointing a tad inside it on the backswing with some like Ryan Moore and Jim Furyk pointing massively inside it. With Furyk and Moore the club is actually leaning towards the ball half way back (ie the head is further right than it would be if it were vertical) meaning they have to put in a huge 'compensation' in order to re-route the club at the top to get it on plane for the downswing. Both are very good at it. Most aren't as extreme as Furyk or Moore and so only have to re-route the club a small amount to get it on the correct plane for the downswing. If you're on plane on the way back you don't have to re-route it at all. Less need to re-route the club means less potential to do that particullar move slightly differently each time.
This is a young Tour Pro who has used my kit a few times, was an international player but has now made the step up to Pro. Very good ball striker (as they all are) and his backswing is bang on plane:
I'm not saying it's the only way but it does work and takes out the potential for that re-routing of the club at the top to be slightly different every time.
So I agree with your pro in that perfectly on plane on the downswing is the important bit, but ask him which makes that easier to consistantly achieve - on plane on the way back or having to re-route the club at the top in order to get it back on plane. Be interested to hear his thoughts. :thumbsup:
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Just as an aside, this is the guy. I've hit balls on the 'sim' with him and we've practiced short game together (think I mentioned short game 'tournaments' with a pro earlier in the thread? That was with Brian). Anyway, he's just a bit good. Will be playing the odd round with him and his girlfriend (also a tour pro) in the near future when they're both back this way between tournaments. Serious eye opener practicing or playing with someone of that level :thumbsup:
http://www.punditarena.com/uncategorized/ecas/brian-casey-chasing-birdies/
http://www.punditarena.com/uncategorized/ecas/brian-casey-chasing-birdies/
markst
New member
ok....so something must have got a bit better the other day as got a couple of birdies on the pars 3s..but yesterday was **** so back to the range thing morning concentrating on weight transfer and coming from the inside..........ah ha
miles better on the course, always nice when you string a few really good holes together and par the stroke index 1 hole.....so looking up
the bad news is that I have agreed to go back to work for 2 weeks
miles better on the course, always nice when you string a few really good holes together and par the stroke index 1 hole.....so looking up
the bad news is that I have agreed to go back to work for 2 weeks
That was careless
Well I had a minor breakthrough - I finally won a full competition against one of the tour pros I practice with! We had an hour long pitching contest, hitting targets from 40 to 120 yards out. Coming down the stretch I was just ahead and on the last target needed to get it within 3 yards of the target from 110 yards out to force a tie. Got it to within a yard to take the win. The pro I was competing against was gutted (particularly as I mentioned it a few times during the next hour or so when we were practising putting and chipping. Within an hour of getting home I had a text - apparently our rematch is on Monday
Definitely need to at least see eye to eye with an instructor. Tbh I was surprised when you listed the things the chap you were seeing had you working on after your lesson. I'm not bad at this lark now and my coach will only ever give me 2 things to work on, and only one on the swing and one on setup. We nail those then move on. Trying to work on loads of things at once rarely has good results.
Regarding the rematch with one of the pros I practice with, had it today and it was on putting. I won. If they were slightly irritated before, now they're REALLY annoyed. Does show that some areas of my game are coming together though, the hours practicing are starting to pay off.
markst
New member
to be fair, I know exactly what I do wrong..........its just hard doing the right thing !
good news though is that I now wear an ankle support to stop me turning it over on the follow through - and so far my foot feels a bit better on the course
slightly better today but very windy !
good news though is that I now wear an ankle support to stop me turning it over on the follow through - and so far my foot feels a bit better on the course
slightly better today but very windy !