Lesson of the Week: Wayne D. Looks at his Own Swing (First Time in a While)

Here it is the middle of November and I haven’t played a competitive round since May due to ongoing back issues. I am scheduled for surgery December 9th to open up space for the nerves on the sides of the two discs above my fusion, but oddly enough it has been feeling a bit better lately so I have been playing some and hitting a few balls. I figured I might as well film it and check it out in order to have something to compare my post- surgery swing to, so I took a couple of 6 iron shots I filmed and drew the lines to see what was up.
 
The first thing I noticed is that my backswing has gotten better with regards to the steepness of the shoulder turn and the travel path of the club. I like the way it comes right up the shaft plane with no real tendency to fall under and to the inside. I am concentrating here on starting with my arms bent and firmer than they have been in the past so that when I initiate my backswing by moving my entire upper trunk (while delaying the hips slightly) my right arm has more space and the clubhead stays outside my hands longer. I am letting the clubface stay closed a bit longer to encourage this, so as I pass shaft parallel going back my clubface is not quite toe up. As the shaft gets to parallel to the ground I begin to rotate my hands to open the clubface and keep the shaft on plane, which feels like I am tossing the club back against my right index finger. My right leg is doing a decent job of deepening but as usual I punk out when the torque builds up in the second half of the backswing and I don’t really lower as I get the top the way I would like to. The shaft crosses slightly (but not as much as previously) and doesn’t quite flatten as much as I would like, and as you will see my right leg still tends to shoot out to the right as I come into and through impact. I am hopeful that if I can reduce the pain and stiffness in my back that I can achieve better pivot movement through the ball and actually stay “in the box”. There are a lot of things I like here, and I am optimistic that I can make it even better and get back to being a top player once again.
 

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