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Here is a little run down on my golfing history, not sure this is how I’m supposed to send it, but here it is.
Wayne D: I’m 62 years old and started golfing when I was about 40 after my buddies that I played squash with started playing golf when their joints wore out. I’ve had a knee and a shoulder replaced and in general my joints are stiff and I have limited flexibility overall, although I’m in pretty good shape and have been a competitive athlete all my life. I’ve taken golf lessons from four different instructors over the years with minimal results and have recently resorted to watching every free instructional video on the internet, which is how I found you. I’ve watched your entire training video series several times and that has been at least as helpful as all the lessons I’ve taken.
Last year I ended up retired from my job and one of my goals early in retirement was to improve my golf game, so I’m not embarrassed when I go out and play with my old buddies who are much better players than I am. Other players kind of snicker (even the women) when I hit and after watching my swing on video I can see why. I spent the last year hitting balls 3-4 times a week or over a thousand balls a month, plus playing about once a week. Unfortunately it seems the more I practice, the stiffer my joints get and the worse my swing gets. I thought I was getting better over the winter, and was making better contact with the ball, until this spring when my golf buddy videotaped a few of my practice shots on his phone and reality hit me, I look like the guys at the practice range that I felt bad for because they had such ugly swings.
I bought a Go Pro camera a couple of months ago and tape my practice session about once a week, and even though I can see some of my problems, I haven’t been able to make much progress. How I see my swing in my mind’s eye is not how it looks in reality. I can see a couple of major issues, one of which is too much movement of my head, even though when I’m practicing it feels to me like my head’s not moving. I’ll work on not moving my head in a practice session but when I review the video, nothing’s changed. In the past few weeks, after these videos were taken, I’ve been working to brace my right knee to help keep my head from moving back and to keep my legs from sliding with the driver, which I’m hoping, will keep my head from moving forward to compensate for moving back. So far it seems to help with my driver but now I’m having trouble topping my irons, especially long irons, which I assume means I’m pulling my head forward, although I haven’t taped a session recently. I can’t seem to keep my head back and drive the legs. Another issue I see is my ugly finish, and although I tell myself to extend my finish, I end up with a truncated finish that looks like more of a swat than a swing, and I can’t figure out why or how to fix it. Although I don’t slice very often anymore with my irons, the ball pushes more than slices, It looks like I’m swinging over the top, but I feel like I’m swinging in to out and work constantly on bringing my right elbow in front of my ribs for the tossing motion. It seems like its working but I still have the ugly finish.
I hook or draw more than push, at least with the irons, and could use some advice on how to get the ball going straight more consistently. I work constantly on a “body release’ instead of a flip, but still flip my hands about 20% of the time, or I swing with a closed club face and end up with a major hook, and I push about 15-20% of the time and the rest of the time the ball goes fairly straight .
One of my tendencies when I’m playing is to swing with the shoulders from the top and make an absolutely embarrassing chunk although when I’m on the driving range and my joints are warmed up I don’t seem to have that problem. I hit the driver about 230-240. The 7-iron 150, sand wedge 90, 5-iron 175, and the other irons about 10-15 yards different. Of course I would like more distance but consistency is what I need, especially on the driver, I’m always in fear I’m going to chunk the drive off the 1st tee and often do.
That’s what I see, although I’m sure you will see more. I might as well also admit that I’m a lefty playing righty, although I’ve tried to swing lefty and it really seems foreign.
Let me know what suggestions you have.
Thanks for the help.
Steve
As you will see, Steve has plenty of things to work on, including the set-up and grip, but the main item for him to focus on is getting the lower body to initiate the downswing so that the weight can shift to the left without the head moving forward past the ball and the right arm to get more in front of the body in the downswing instead of falling behind the right side, which leads to a weak approach to impact.
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