The perils of change

Tee shots have been an enigma over the past six months. When I think about it, actually, tee shots have been a perplexing aspect of the game since the first time I swung a driver back in October 2011. Twenty-one months later it remains the only part of the game that I do not have confidence in my understanding of the shot.

My coach, Bruce Furman, is doing amazing work with me to help my brain process the differences between a good pass and one that produces a snap hook or high slice. It takes time, though, and during this swing transformation my golfing patience has been tested on a handful of times. The current goal is to learn how to work the ball both ways off of the tee and Riverside is a great course for that as it has 12 doglegs so you really have to be able to move it if you want to go low. Recently, my percentage of tee shots hit successfully has been about 15-20 and the misses are deeply offline which has made scoring not highly likely. My iron shots are looking and feeling good and the short game is getting tighter, but getting out of the box has been the obstacle in the way of progress.

It’s going to come with time. There are a few aspects of learning this game that have taken longer to grasp than I would have thought and driving is one of them. In a way it is pretty funny that the only shot of the game in which you get to prop up the ball on a tee and typically have a perfect stance is, for me, the hardest shot of the game. Give me a ball deep in the rough where you have to rope-hook it around some trees 165 yards to the green and I got it, but hand me the perfect tee high lie and….

What I am working on right now with the driver is making a better shoulder turn in the backswing and then clearing my hips and posting up tall on my lead leg in the downswing. Before going to Bruce I was real shallow with my driver which was causing some big misses and losing distance for me. In the old swing my back arm would break down and the club would end up so far past parallel that I made John Daly look short. Then when I brought it through the ball I was drop it low and come in around 6-10 degrees from the inside out. The more you go away from a neutral swing plane the easier it is to have a severe face to path issue (for me at least, there is a swing out there for everyone that can work, but when I go 6 degrees from inside-out and square up the face it becomes 6 degrees closed to the path and creates way too much draw). For more reading about this check out TrackMan’s info: http://trackman.dk/getmedia/2f6c5cdc-e153-466c-9e1a-f8b612947435/TMNewsJul2009_1.aspx

There is a ton to this, but the gist is that making a big change in the driver is much more difficult than the same change with the irons. I have regained confidence with my irons and have been hitting them better than ever from wedges to the 4-iron (although I somehow lost my 9-iron yesterday, but that’s another story altogether and I’m sure it will turn up somewhere). The next step is to keep working and spread that feeling of confidence through my hybrid, fairway and driver.

It’s a long process and has instilled in me a greater appreciation for people like Rory who changed both his swing and gear at the same time. I’m not sure why he did it, but it was and is his decision and I hope that it pays off for him down the road. In the meantime, I can see what he is going through and making those changes when the entire world is watching has to be bitterly hard. Too many people don’t understand the overall intentions yet feel the need to weigh in on the situation. It makes no sense to be a couch commentator when all of the facts are not laid out for us yet.

Changes take time. There are no shortcuts if you want to do it right. Something simple can potentially post beneficial results in a couple of weeks or even that very day, but when fundamentals are addressed it can be two months to a whole season before the new swing is completely ingrained.

Off to work on the driver.

15 Responses to "The perils of change"

Richard Chen says:

July 25, 2013 at 11:42 pm

The whole approach of long sole periods of stepping up from putting, chipping, short irons, irons, and finally driver appears to have produced some very odd results. For example, in putting, the putter head is kept moving closely along the target line, which when extrapolated for longer clubs should produce extremely upright backswings, as keeping the clubhead closely above the target line for as long as possible during the backswing should produce ultra upright backswings. A full swing based on the putting stroke of keeping the clubhead closely above the target line, in theory, ought to produce very upright swings. Historically, many of the great putters also have fairly upright backswings on their full shots like Nicklaus. Yet, this approach of ingraining months of the putting stroke produced unexpectedly an ultra flat backswing instead. The exact opposite of what would be expected from theory.

The natural swing for starters is to swing and to release the hands from behind the ball, as almost all starters mentally try to swing up on the ball to get, and to scope the ball up into the air. Swinging and releasing the hands behind the ball will consistently top iron shots almost all of the time, and even a fair number of teed up drivers. However, once the starters learn to delay the releasing of the driver a little, they overcome topping the teed up driver shot. With a little delay of the release, the starters relatively easily overcome topping, and they start to hit the ball fairly consistently, although consistently with slicing or pushing trajectories. The natural instinct for starters is to increase the loft of the clubface during the release to help the ball into the air, rather than decreasing the clubface loft during the release, so as to return the opened clubface back to square during the release by decreasing (back to “normal loft”) the loft of the clubface during the release. A simple turning back toward the target will decrease the driver clubface loft to square the driver clubface during the release. A light twist will decrease clubface loft to square the clubface, and it does not require much effort nor force, but it is fairly difficult mentally for starters to decrease loft of the driver clubface through impact, excepting for tennis players, who are used to performing the top spin forehand stroke, although tennis players over do this in the golf stroke, as the golf ball should not dive down with top spin like a tennis ball, which does not need to fly hundreds of yards.

Long periods of staying on irons ingrains and forces delay releasing in front of the ball for iron shots, as releasing early in the back of the ball will produce either fat or topped none teed up iron shots almost all of the time. While delay hits on irons is good, and even necessary, delay hits on drivers cause a lot of problems. Drivers cannot be delayed like irons.

In my opinion, the swinging of the driver should not be excessively postponed when starting golf, as it can be a problem if the iron swing with its delayed release, and extra large weight transfer to the front foot is too ingrained to suppress the natural tendency to swing behind the ball for the driver.

The “staying behind the ball” for the driver swing needs to be relearned it appears, when the iron swing is too ingrained. It is in large measure a mental thing of when to release. Irons are released in front of the ball, while the teed up driver is released at the back of the ball.

One way mentally is the 14 slow motion frames of the driver downswing to impact can be memorized. It is not too hard to memorized 14 picture frames. Memorizing 14 picture frames may mean the ability to draw from memory the 14 picture frames on paper. If the ability to draw is a problem, an artist articulated mannequin model can be used to pose from memory the positions of the 14 frames of the driver downswing. The 14 frames are shown in the Toski and Flick book as previously commented in the previous blog. This movie sequence is shown complete with every 50 frames per second frames printed on the two facing pages from setup to followthrough.

One of the key positions shown in the 14 driver downswing frames is the trailing kneed together with the trailing leg bending in toward the target during the release to help the trailing shoulder to turn more downwards to prevent a late stage of the trailing shoulder from coming over the top, or for the trailing shoulder to shift and sway to much in the direction of the target.
Brian Kuehn says:

July 26, 2013 at 8:21 am

You are on the right track making your driver a priority. As you have discovered, it is very hard to score well from the rough and behind trees.
I suspect your recent experience in the club championship has left your psyche a bit bruised and battered. When my tournament performances are not up to my expectations, I often get into a funk. It was good to see you went out the next day and played again just to prove to yourself that you could play the course competently.
Once you get your driver under control, you really should try to play competitions more frequently. The more chances you give yourself, the more likely you will have that needed breakthrough where you post a great score. Of course, there are going to be a lot of days when the performance is poor but you won’t dwell on the failures since another opportunity will roll around in a week.
Marshall says:

July 26, 2013 at 8:37 am

Have you tried to simply choke down on your driver? This has brought success to many who struggle with driver alone, including myself. It makes the misses significantly better, and many don’t even lose distance from it, because its easier to hit the center of the clubface everytime. I would suggest giving it a try.
Richard Chen says:

July 26, 2013 at 10:23 am

Another key position of the driver swing is the orientation and position of the hands at the moment of impact. Orientation wise, the back of the leading hand, and the palm of the trailing hand have rotated to face toward the target by the moment of impact. Since the driver face angle correlates with the back of the leading hand, and with the palm of the trailing hand, turning these hand parts to facing square toward the target also turns the clubface back to square at impact.

About four movie picture frames before impact (ie. 4/50th of a second before impact,) the back of the leading hand faces perpendicular to the target, and the palm of the trailing hand too faces perpendicular to the target, meaning the driver clubface is also way opened at the beginning of the final release phase. 4/50th of a second later, the hands have turned and rotated from perpendicular to the target to facing towards the target at impact. In 4/50th of a second (just short of a tenth of a second,) the clubface too turns from opened to squared. Waggling can be utilized to train this action during the final release during development.

The position of the hands at the moment of impact should not be much in front of the ball, nor much behind the ball for the driver. Preferably, the hands are even with the back of the ball at the moment of driver impact to prevent any “glancing” blow on the ball. It is analogous to hammering long nails into hard wood. If the hands are not positioned just right at impact, the nails will be bend sideways by the hammer. If the hands are too far down at impact, the nails will be bend away (ie. late hits.) If the hands are too above at impact, the mails will be bend in (ie. early hits.) It takes a fair amount of precision in hand positioning at impact to drive long nails straight into hard wood without bending a lot of the nails. Similarly, precision in hand positioning at impact is critical in driving golf balls. Sarazen credited driving zillions of nails during his job as a carpenter’s helper as developing great ability in driving golf balls.
Chris Villasenor says:

July 26, 2013 at 2:06 pm

I agree with Marshall. I took my gamer driver, adjusted it to max loft (10.5) then cut 1.25 inches off it. After this I started killing it from an accuracy standpoint so much so that I threw my 3-wood out and strengthened my 5-wood. This works for pretty much every course that I play. I gained so much confidence this summer that I bought a “strong” driver (8.5 deg, standard length) and my good swings bled into it. I still use my “safe” driver most of the time but I will throw out my 60deg wedge and play 2 drivers on some courses where I can really bomb it.

TL;DR, perhaps you can configure a “safe” driver until your confidence comes back.
Richard Chen says:

July 27, 2013 at 7:18 pm

In regards to orientation and position of the hands at impact, Johnny Miller gives a “PHD course” on impact positions on Youtube. A search on Youtube using the keywords “Johnny Miller” brings up some interesting video presentations by him on impact positions. The only thing to be aware of is that he is very tall, so that his swing is naturally fairly upright using a “weak” grip position.
Richard Chen says:

July 29, 2013 at 6:31 am

Another thing In regards to orientation and position of the hands at impact which is not addressed by Miller, is that there is a difference between the release of iron shots and the the release of the driver shot.

The release of the driver shot is a “full” release, while the release of the iron shot is a “partial” release.

The driver release has the rear hand swing up to become “even” with the leading hand at the moment of impact to make the club shaft essentially “vertical” similar to setup. The iron release has the rear hand swing not quite up to even, and somewhat “behind” the leading hand at the moment of impact to allow the club shaft still retain some “lean” so that the iron club shaft is just short of vertical at the moment of impact to allow the iron clubhead to impact the ball while the iron clubhead is still traveling on the downward part of the clubhead swing arc.

With the hands “even”, and with the club shaft “vertical” at the moment of the driver impact, the hand can only be lined up with the back of the teed up ball at the moment of the driver impact based on the dictates of geometry.

With the hands “behind”, and with the club shaft “leaning” at the moment of the iron impact, the hand can only be lined up in front of the ball at the moment of impact of the iron shot based on the dictates of geometry.
Richard Chen says:

July 29, 2013 at 11:52 am

A. Correction: the last paragraph should be:

With the rear hand still somewhat “behind” the leading hand at the moment of iron impact, and with the club shaft “leaning” down at the moment of the iron impact, the hands can only be lined up in front of the ball at the moment of impact of the iron shot based on the dictates of geometry.

B. Ok, now we have enough knowledge of the final-release action sequence for the drive:

(1) Three frames before impact (3/50th second before impact):

Rear hand is horizontally behind the leading hand, as the driver club shaft has swung down to horizontal at the start of the final-release. The shoulders are slightly closed at the start of the final-release. The rear knee and the rear leg bend in toward the target, and they shift in ahead of the hands. The knee shifting toward the target starts to open up the hips, while the shoulders still remain somewhat closed. The rear heel starts to lift off of the ground, if it has not already lifted off the ground, while the front heel has been already solidly planted on the ground way early during the start of the downswing. The hands have almost swung down in front of the rear foot and hip.

(2) Two frames before impact (2/50th sec before impact):

Rear hand starts to swing, and to releases down and forward toward the ball. The leading hand’s last three fingers pull on the top end of the club handle to pull the club shaft down and out toward the ball. This “turning” action of the two hands relative to each other allows the rear hand to catch up with the leading hand. The rear knee and the rear leg continue to bend in toward the target, and they still shift inwards ahead of the hands. The knee shifting toward the target continues to open up the hips, while the shoulders start to turn from closed to open. The rear heel continues to lift off of the ground. The hands have swung down to in front of the rear hip.

(3) One frame before impact:

Rear hand almost swings down to even with the leading hand at below the leading hand, but not quite just before impact. The club shaft is still leaning down just before impact, and the club shaft is not yet fully vertical. The hands are still slightly behind the ball. The shifting action of the knees and legs has stabilized. The hands have swung down to in front of the rear knee. The left shoulder turns further open and back pulling the club shaft to near vertical.

(4) Impact frame (unfortunately the Watson photo sequence of the Toski and Flick book missed capturing the exact moment of impact, so that the description below is based on photo 5 on page 137):

Rear hand catches up with the leading hand to come even (and below) with the leading hand at driver impact. Even hands allow the driver club shaft to swung down to vertical at impact (unlike the forward and downward leaning none vertical iron club shaft at impact.) Leading shoulder has swung open, back, and up to make vertical the club shaft at impact. The rear hand, and rear arm have released forward to get even with the leading hand to make the club shaft vertical at impact. The rear shoulder has mostly stayed back to prevent swaying forward toward the target so as to not pushing the hands in front of the ball at impact.

The evenness of the hands at impact contributes to squaring the driver clubface at impact. The verticalness of the club shaft contributes to squaring the driver clubface at impact. The verticalness of the driver club shaft at impact contributes hitting the back of the ball at impact with the hands lined up with the back of the ball. The back of the leading hand, turning on the last three fingers of the leading hand, facing toward the target contributes to squaring the clubface at impact. The palm of the rear hand uncocking to face the target contributes to squaring the clubface.

In miller’s video, he presents a drill of stopping practice swings at the impact position with the clubface squared, a little closed, and a little opened to imprint the controlling of the clubface angle in the brain for various stright, draw, and fade shots.

Waggling can be utilized during development to ensure swinging the driver club shaft to full vertical (rather than short of full vertical as called for for iron shots) in addition to waggling providing practicing of closing the driver clubface from wide opened to square during the final-release phase of the downswing.

The final-release phase happens in a short time. It is easier to perform the final-release when setting up closer to the ball, than setting up too far from the ball.
Phil Winn says:

July 30, 2013 at 8:03 am

Dan,
I took your suggestions to your tee game to the course last night and when I made a more complete turn, cleared my hips and stopped swinging so hard, I was in the fairway with more length than normal. Duh!
Enjoy your posts.
Brian Kuehn says:

August 1, 2013 at 12:03 pm

Sounds like you are changing trainers. Is that correct? Why?
Randy says:

August 2, 2013 at 1:56 pm

Don’t give up, Dan. It’ll be an aha moment, but just stay open to it. Don’t get locked into how you are swinging now. Keep experimenting. For me, it came with loosening up my body on the backswing to get more of a turn, and then letting the arms relax more. I’m not perfect, but it was huge improvement literally overnight. You can do it.
Randy says:

August 4, 2013 at 6:29 am

Agreed. I played many rounds early on just hitting irons for everything. I got to a point where I was scoring better than my friends with their drivers. That way, my driver just looked like a bonus. It also helps groove your irons.
3foot1 says:

August 4, 2013 at 10:56 am

I completely agree with this. Using a shorter club off the tee will force you to use longer clubs than usual on your approaches. You could even limit yourself to playing 3-4 clubs and a putter, just to get a better feel fro working the ball and playing improvised shots that are unfamiliar. Even better, you could play Around the Clock: Start with your longest club and decrease by 1 with each shot, regardless of where you lie, except on the tee where you’ll use a putter.
Bernhard says:

August 5, 2013 at 1:06 pm

Hi Dan,

no swing advice from me—I don’t know the first thing about golf, and more importantly, I don’t know nearly enough about where you’re at. So a question or a request, as you like.

What you’re going through right now, plateauing at a level you’re not satisfied with, uncertainty as to the cause of the problem (I’m saying this on the basis of reading in the 10,000 countdown section that you think it might be mental, which presumably is a change in perspective), and corresponding uncertainty about how to make progress, is probably one of the most important reasons for people to either never start out on a project of self-invention like you’re undertaking or to quit while they’re in its early stages.

So as a long-time reader and sporadic commenter, it’d be interesting to read the regular and more or less unfiltered day-to-day ways you’re dealing with your situation. I can imagine (though here, too, I admit that I don’t know your situation) that it’s tempting to want to post a more complete narrative. “Here’s the problem. Here’s how I solved it. It was hard work, but it was worth it, etc.” But the day-to-day grind probably isn’t this neat, and it’d be great to see how you make it through that grind, including giving up in frustration for a day or two to work on other stuff, the doubt, the rays of hope, the false start, and so on.

Keep on keeping on.
Ennix Buchanan says:

August 6, 2013 at 6:21 pm

1,000 hours practicing the feet together drill will get you closer to your dream. Good luck!

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