New flat stick

First thing first. The rain finally broke and we had some amazing crisp Fall days out there over the Thanksgiving weekend. I love the Fall colors and light. From a photographers point of view, this is the best time of the year to capture some great images. I always have a phone in my golf bag and when I’m struck by a scene while on the course I like to capture some images. this is one of my favorite from the weekend:

When the light is this nice you can’t go wrong.

The practice was equally as nice over the past few days, although I’ll be the first to admit that it has been a frustrating swing week. Sometimes when you focus so much and spend hours upon hours thinking about something so theoretically detailed as a golf swing you can overwhelm yourself with analysis. I realized today that has been happening.

I made the mistake of trying to change too many aspects at once and because of it lost my way for a bit. The bad news: I was standing over the ball thinking “ok, swing back with both arms, don’t hinge the wrists too early, keep my trailing elbow tight in, turn my hands over during the swing, keep my head behind the ball, swing with my arms, extend my trailing arm through the swing, hold the finish. Ok, now swing.” I can tell you right now that having a long list of “dos” leading up to the actual swing is a recipe for disaster. I had forgotten one of my oldest lessons, which is to focus on one swing thought at a time. I hadn’t broken down all of my adjustments into manageable chunks and it was causing me in frustration during practice and play. The good news: I played two extremely off rounds over the past two days where I wasn’t hitting any fairways and my irons were horribly askew but shot in the low 80s (82, 81) on both of them. I think there was a combined 10 greens in regulation during the 36 holes, but chipping and putting saved strokes.

I don’t plan on scrambling my entire golfing life, although knowing that you can play decent when nothing is going the way you want it is good news.

Speaking of putting, two new putters arrived today and I’m excited to get them out there and sink some putts.

The company is called SeeMore and they are straight up milled steel putters that have a good feel and look. To date, I have only used three different putters in my life, and to be honest I have never had one that I loved having in the bag. I know that I am a good putter and am confident putting, but haven’t had a flat stick that felt right. I’m not going to assume anything about these, but am going to give them a real solid field test over the next couple of months to see what I think. When making an equipment switch, it’s important to allow for an adjustment period, so I will stick with them for the foreseeable future and see what happens. Hopefully I’ll be seeing more putts drop

My current putting stats, and all stats, have been updated on the statistics page: http://thedanplan.com/stats.php Over the winter the plan is to drop the putts per hole to 1.8 and putts per GIR to below 2.0 on average.

On TrackMan news: It has been a computer fiasco getting everything up and running with my laptops. I was trying to load it on a two-year-old Dell we had at the house that met the minimum system requirements for the software, but after downloading it and testing and ordering a new battery, TrackMan support and I realized that it was too slow to run and the software kept freezing the computer. So, we decided to use my mac laptop and run Windows through Bootcamp. To do this, I updated the OS to the most current version and ordered 4 gigs of Ram and a copy of Windows 7 64 bit to run on it. I finally received Windows in the mail yesterday and partitioned my hard drive via Bootcamp to load Windows on the machine. The Windows disk wouldn’t load and after an hour of cruising google for answers I realized that 64 bit software works on Mac Powerbooks made in January 2008 and later. My machine was from November 2007, so missed the 64 bit cut-off by two months. I called TrackMan support and we chatted for a while about solutions and finally realized that he had a copy of Windows 32 bit that he would trade me for the 64 bit copy I purchased. So, he’s going to mail me the 32 bit tomorrow and hopefully that will load on the laptop and I can get that awesome machine out to the range. It was kind of a long story, but will be up and running soon and the stats will be posted soon thereafter.

7 Responses to "New flat stick"

melissa + kenny says:

November 27, 2012 at 11:51 pm

love the pictures. you a professional photographer or something??
Richard Chen says:

November 28, 2012 at 5:08 am

Standard swing theory is to swing back and forth with the leading arm only (left arm for a right-hander) dominating and in control throughout the swing, with the trailing arm and hand (right arm and right hand for a right-hander) “soft” and passive either throughout, or just until the final release of the downswing. Nicklaus say that he do not consciously use the right hand, while Hogan said that he used the right hand (trailing hand) strongly during the release. However, Hogan is a left-hander playing from the right-hander side (ie. using right-handed clubs.) Hogan had to fight the hook, possibly from using a lot of conscious trailing hand action during the release. Hogan switched to the fade in his later career. Nicklaus plays the fade as the main shot.

Watson says to keep the trailing arm and hand soft. It is obvious that the stronger trailing arm and hand can have a lot of power to contribute to the shot. It is like a baseball pitcher, who needs to balance the amount of throwing power to keep ball speed high enough while at the same time to keep wild pitches from happening. Nelson increased the control of trailing hand power by selecting a target down range to “throw” the clubhead to. Nicklaus, not consciously using the hands, rather select a target just in front of the tee to swing the clubhead to. These allow the trailing arm and hand to provide power during the release, but under control with target focusing whether consciously or unconsciously drawing power from the trailing arm and hand.

Nicklaus is famous for the “flying” right elbow during the backswing, which was considered unorthodox, but in a recent article, Miller considered that an advantage, as it allowed a more upright backswing, and downswing (of the left arm.) Nicklaus tilt the head to the rear somewhat during setup, which tend to naturally force the right elbow (the trailing elbow) to return to the right side of the body during the first part of the downswing. With the head tilt back, and keeping the shoulders from opening too early, it is probably an automated and unconscious process of returning the right elbow to the side of the body during the first part of the downswing. The “Little Red Book” advocated conscious practicing of the returning of the trailing elbow tight to the right side of the body using slow motion practicing of the initial part of the down swing; although, few others discussed this aspect to such extend. Woods appears to often let the elbow(s) swing fairly far away from the body during the downswing.

Although not talked about in literature, there is such a thing as the “swing-paths of the left arm, and the left hand” (leading arm and hand) during the swing. Most modern pros have relatively upright left arm and hand (leading arm and hand) swing paths. They setup with the left arm fairly vertical. The left arm swing back fairly vertically. The left arm swings a little more flat in the downswing across the lower body.

From a physics point of view according to the Law of the Conservation of Angular Momentum, the left arm and left hand (leading arm and hand) swinging closer across the body during the downswing allows the body to automatically speed up more without using any more energy than if the left arm and the left hand downswing path is further away from the body. This is a fact of nature, that is best illustrated by figure skaters pulling their arms in to speed up their spins to amazing rates, and pushing their arms out to rapidly slow down their spins. Since golfers do a partial turn during the down swing rather than many spin rotations, it is hard to feel this effect of spin speed up, other than the possible feeling that the downswing is over in a shorter time than usual. With the downswing turn speeded up automatically, the downswing will be completed in a much shorter time. This can give a feeling of effortlessness in the downswing, as the downswing is over before the player has a chance to exert extra swinging and hitting effort during the downswing.

Nicklaus with the flying elbow backswing that extend the arms away from the body during the backswing is sort of like the figure skater extending the arms out to start the spin. During the downswing, he first has the right arm fold back to the body, and than at the final release he pulls the left arm as well close to the body just before impact. The laws of physics dictate the resulting effect of more automated speed.
Ken says:

November 28, 2012 at 6:19 am

What happened to your Webisodes?
Ken
Joe says:

November 28, 2012 at 10:20 am

Dan, I really think you should consider throwing one of your good camera’s in the bag, snapping photo’s while you are out there and selling the prints.

It would be so easy to do since you are already there and with your photography skills would be a really easy way to make some extra money.

I would be a customer for sure, your pictures are so great.

JOE
Elias says:

November 28, 2012 at 2:45 pm

Hi Dan,
Must be good to know you’re able to get up and down when your iron shots are letting you down. I understand you consider yourself a good putter, so I can’t see why you haven’t found a putter you really like yet.

Putting is highly affected by cofidence so you need to feel comfortable with your flat stick. Have you tried a mallet putter? Might not be your thing although it wouldn’t hurt to try one out. They are becomming more popular on the tours and it might get you that extra bit of confidence.

Keep up the good work!

/Elias
philip f says:

November 29, 2012 at 5:46 am

Hey Dan,
great blog again and nice pics.. it seems u are being TOO MECHANICAL about your swing DURING A ROUND which makes u forget to swing the club smoothly. which is suicide especially with the driver. do all that arm here right elbow here, left knee here ,right shoulder here on the range. play what feels natural and dont over think when playing the round. if you are over thinking on the course SLOW your back swing down and u will probably hit more fairways when u r stressed out there when we are stressed or over thinking our swing speed goes up when it should be the opposite.. with putters u made a good call with the see more ive always wondered about those putters (HIDING THE RED DOT gives u the right shaft angle?? i think that’s what was there catch.. if after a few months this doesn’t feel good and natural and your putting doesn’t improves there’s only one putter left to go to….. Scotty Cameron my mate is a pro trying to make it on the aus pga tour.i would make fun of him for paying $350 for a putter i used his scotty for a round when my idiot brother took my putter without asking a 2ball white dot. i was forced to use mates scotty cameron and was shocked ho w good it was they are the best balanced and made putters in the world and coincidentally the most expensive as well if all else fails go to the scotty all pros use different brand clubs but most of them use scotty cameron putters and swear by them . keep up the good work Dan loving the blog and stats cant wait till u get the shot tracker going.any chance of a few vids at least one a month . cheers
Dean P says:

November 29, 2012 at 1:03 pm

Hi Dan, Have been following you for some time way down here in NZ and enjoying everything posted but miss the videos.
Notice you are trying different equipment & that’s great but the best game improvement club I have by a long way is my Scotty Cameron putter. You have to try them.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply