It’ll make your emphasis on comparisons of old and new swings much clearer. And you’ll take videos from consistent DTL and FO views.

Nicklaus says to use one basic swing, and even one basic setup for all clubs short and long. He takes this one-basic-swing-and-one-basic-setup-for-all-clubs-short-and-long concept quite literally. He says to place the ball near off the leading heel for all clubs long and short.

Woods book on page 100 says “Ball gets closer with shorter clubs, but hands stay same distance from body.” “Hands stay same distance from body regardless of the club …. hands remain the same distance from … thighs.” “… driver … ball … farther away … make no wild attempt to reach for the ball.”

Sam Snead in his “The Driver” book said to swing with 80% of available power to maintain control.

In my book, a simple mathematical formulas for the amount of “power” needed for short and long clubs to generate specific ball distances are formulated. For the long clubs, power = one-third ball distance wanted. For the short clubs, power = three-third ball distance wanted. The above two formulas say that the long clubs can cover the same distance as the short clubs with only a third of the swing effort. This is because the long clubs send the ball out at a lower trajectory. This means let the long clubs provide distance naturally.

The setup for the long clubs has the basic shape as the short clubs in most cases for the top players. The leading arm hangs fairly vertically with the hands fairly close to the body for both the short and long clubs. The stance is wider for the long clubs, although Jones had a fairly narrow stance for all clubs. In the older days, a closed-stance is usually used for the driver setup, while an opened-stance is usually used for the shortest clubs. The swing temple, and speed is governed by the kinetic swing sequence, which is one-stage simpler for the short clubs so that the short clubs can be swung faster, while the long-clubs have an extra kinetic swing sequence stage of leveling out the clubhead before impact, so that the long clubs have to be given a little more time during the swing. The long clubs have to be swung smoother.

Good to hear from you. To answer your questions, I do spend a lot of time on the short game and am always working on improving with those “scoring” clubs and am pretty darn good from 150 yards and in. In particular, I have a very solid wedge game from within 100 yards. I don’t blog about that so much as it’s the longer sticks that have been my Achilles for some time now as you mentioned. Improving my driving accuracy is very similar to improving from the 175-225 range and what I am working hard to improve is basically full swing long sticks. As the driver swing improves, so does the woods and hybrids; they are all very similar.

I never let the short game sit by the wayside, though and am always working on improving that part of the game. I should blog more about that.

Thanks again,
Dan

We know that the driver has been your Achilles heel for the past 18 months or so, and thus it merits the attention you’ve been giving it. Most of your lost strokes have been the fault of wayward tee shots. Ug. What I’m wondering, though, is whether you’ve been able to continue to devote significant time to improving your accuracy with the so-called scoring clubs — wedge and putter. When you began, you were committed to attaining proficiency or mastery with them from a certain distance before moving back to longer clubs. So
Question 1 is this: Have you continued to track your ability to score from within 60 yards or to get up and down when you miss the green? With a wedge in your hand, how does your game compare with that of the low-cappers you play with?

Question 2 is slightly different and it somewhat contradicts the premise of Question 1. As I think you know, a lot of the recent research on Strokes Saved indicates that the biggest indicator of success on tour is NOT actually wedge and putter play but accuracy with longer irons. Somewhat counterintuitively it seems that hitting it “close” from 175-225 may be more important than how well you play on or near the greens. So I wonder how much this has factored into your short- and long-term planning?

While I recognize the need to fix your driving, after you learn to drive straight and long (275-290? on manicured courses), further improvement will come much more from other facets of your game.

Good luck, and I apologize for knowing nothing about swing planes, clubfaces, and elbows…