Quote:
Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins
Day 1 of the 'Hamas' Jenkins Project
So, I finally decided to say "**** it" and completely retool my swing. I feel like I'm stagnating with the current swing that I have, which is very vertical, and very steep. I'm way too flippy with my hands, and I cannot consistently groove a swing that works for all clubs. It's either short irons, mid irons, or woods, and never more than 2/3 working at once.
In the past I used to push my arms almost straight back and then raise them as I completed my shoulder turn. This led to a huge and deep shoulder turn, but got me way too far outside of my right foot. This combined with the inconsitency in keeping the flex in my right knee made me a very inconsistent ball striker. My swing speed tops out at about 103, which given my flexibility (I can move my legs behind my head and touch my wrists rather than just my fingers to the ground when I touch my toes) and core rotation is just lack luster.
So, after reading the musings of what appears to be a very well respected pro on Golf WRX by the handle of slicefixer, I've decided to move to a modern rotary swing (Jim Hardy would call it a one plane swing). Today I went to the course and worked exclusively on his version of the 9-3 drill, which involves turning your core and hips until the club is waist high, allowing the wrists to set, and then turning through the shot while maintaining the angle of your right wrist (no scooping) and letting your body, rather than your arms, release the club.
I hit 72 straight shots like this with a sand wedge. Most of the early ones leaked way right, several were on the center of the face but fat, many were heeled, and four were out and out s****s. I did hit a few solid, and was surprised how different it feels to truly compress the ball against the turf. It's almost like the ball hits back at you a little bit. The biggest problem is that I wasn't turning away from the ball enough (too much arms) and my arms got caught behind me on the through motion (which led to the heel shots), but my balance did feel markedly better, and for session 1, I'd say it was reasonably productive.
I'm going to do nothing but this drill for the next several weeks to really ingrain the swing changes.
Wish me luck.
HJ.
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Good luck with that! Sounds like you are going it alone? I'm afraid to make a major swing change without guidance - I just can't feel what I'm doing well enough to know if I'm doing it correctly.
I actually read up on slicefixer's swing last summer, but found I didn't quite understand the drills well enough to do them on my own, specifically the 9-to-3. It seems like one of those drills that you could think you're doing right, but be doing very wrong, and just screw yourself up more. I was never able to find an explanation that really clicked for me on that one, though admittedly, I didn't look all that hard. Making a major swing change is a huge commitment, and takes a lot of patience - hope it works out for you.
I'm working on setting up some lessons for myself to try and improve my ball striking. I have a similar problem with flippy hands/wrists, and haven't been able to get over that on my own. Put up an 84 yesterday, which is great (for me) for my first full round this season, but my iron play pretty much sucked - need to get that fixed...