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Hi Wayne,
Thanks a lot for the email and for doing a review of my swing. I love the website. As obsessed as I am with golf, it’s the only golf website I pay money to be on. It’s been really helpful in terms of learning about my own swing. So, thank you.
I’m 31 now and have been playing golf occasionally since I was a kid, but didn’t really commit to it until about 3 years ago, when I started taking regular lessons, did a visit to the Leadbetter Academy, and began going to the range 3 days a week. I live in NYC, so playing on the course is less regular than I would like, but I’m playing to about a 10 index right now, with my short game responsible for more strokes lost than my long game I believe. I can shape my irons both ways. And I typically hit a cut with my driver (I have trouble hitting a draw with my driver). I’m reasonably content with my distances. I hit my 7 iron 170 yards.
The biggest things I am working on right now are:
1) Not early extending and holding my angles better with both my irons and driver (this has been a focus for 2 years now) – trying to stay in the box.
2) On the driver I have a tendency to bring the clubhead slightly outside in, so I’m trying to fix that. As you’ll see in my driver rehearsals, I am trying to work on having the hips go left and the club go out to the right more, which also seems to keep me in the swing better.
3) Shortening the backswing on my irons. I just hit the ball better when I do this (although I have a harder time hitting a draw with a shorter backswing, which I can’t understand).
4) Finishing with my upper body more forward on the finish (rather than hanging back a bit). This is also helping my upper body rotate around a little better. I think I do a pretty good job of this in the videos, but it’s been a process.
5) I would love to have my hands a little lower at impact with both the driver and the irons. I’ve tried really hard to improve this, but haven’t been able to make much progress.
I had an issue with the club being too laid off at the top for a long time. If anything, I may have gone too far and may be across the line now. I’d be curious your view on that.
The miss I am fighting a lot lately is a hook and sometimes a pull. I think this is more clubface driven than path driven with the irons, but I’m not positive. One thing I worked on last weekend (not reflected in the video) was being a little less flippy with the wrists. But I’m not sure if that is the right fix or not.
Thanks again for all the insights. I’m really looking forward to your thoughts.
Best,
Dave
As you will see in the video I suggest to David that he be more concerned with keeping his head from moving forward of its starting position and less with finishing with his upper body more forward. He has a ton of lateral movement to go with nice rotation, but the overdrive of his upper trunk makes the whole thing too far forward, which is a major cause in releasing the club sooner than he might want (since being ahead of the ball heading into impact would make a late release leave the clubface too open). I also focus on David’s tendency to push the club and his upper body downward before he moves the club back. I see this a lot with player’s trying to do a good thing, which is compress or load into the ground, but it is not a good idea to early call this move and do it before the upper trunk begins to move the arms and hands backward. I would also like to see David clean up his follow through by keeping his right foot from flopping over and by squeezing his glutes together, which added with the idea of not allowing the left arm to wrap totally around the body in the finish would create a more defined look and hopefully give the swing a more consistent feel.
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