Tag Archives: balance

Instruction

A Picture Is Truly Worth a Thousand Words

5 Comments

I headed out to the driving range this morning determined to fix the mechanical fault in my golf swing that had created so much angst last weekend.  If you’ll recall, I wrote that last Saturday’s range session had left me with a bad case of the pulls and I was able to slap a partial band-aid on for the following day’s round.  Needless to say but I had completely taken the right side of the golf course out of play.

Armed with the same band-aid, today I proceeded to have one of those range sessions where everything was pure garbage.  These things occasionally happen and I had the common sense to immediately whip out my iPhone and grab some DTL video with my gap wedge, Driver, and 6-iron.  What I captured with the 6-iron was revealing.  See if you can spot the root cause of Mickey Mantle:

The video coupled with a review of a couple DTL setup shots from previous blog posts solved it.  Here is a shot from me last November at Baywood Greens when I was beginning to suffer a case of the pulls:

18th tee at Baywood Greens
18th tee at Baywood Greens

Now here’s a shot From Ross Bridge in October when I was hitting it good.  Spot the difference?

On the tee at the par-4 eighth hole.
On the tee at the par-4 eighth hole.

In the good shot, I’m very balanced at address and in the Baywood Greens shot, my weight has started to slip back toward my heels.  In today’s video, my weight is very much on my heels creating the insight path on the back swing and over the top move on the downswing.  A good move in golf is an athletic move and I was in a poor athletic position.  I could feel something wasn’t right but couldn’t nail it with out the visual.

What’s fascinating and frustrating are how these things keep creeping into my swing, but I understand that golf more than any other sport is a game of never ending adjustments.  Part of the fun and challenge is trying to bank a group of recognizable adjustments that you can call on in short order when something goes a kilter.  So, if you aren’t periodically filming your setup and swing you should be, and the more you can, the more you will learn, and the steadier you’ll play.

Can’t wait to battle test this tomorrow afternoon at Northwest.  Happy Easter everyone!