Swinging flat sucks. There I said it. Ok for me anyways...
Seriously though, I don't know why I've been pursuing it. Trying to swing more and more "flat and compact" is just killing my speed. My driver speed has progressively dropped from 110 to 92 in the last 3 years, with no improvement in accuracy or consistency. In fact, my consistency is completely gone. Sure I have days of brilliance, but most of the time I'm downright awful. I don't even want to go play right now. Feels like I'm becoming that range rat we all fear.
Fooling around yesterday with a few drills, it finally dawned on me that swinging tight and flat, for my lanky tall body type, especially my long torso, is just wrong. I started trying to figure out how to get athletic again with my swing by throwing sidearm right hand pitches with a whiffle ball, trying to maximize my speed and kinetic sequence. Now, when I do this, I don't take the right arm behind and around... I take it up and back, feeling a stretch in the chest that I can turn into a snap on the way down. Very much a drop and sling move.
Progressed to swinging a golf club right hand only and noticed the resulting backswing was much more vertical and far wider than I have been swinging. Added the left hand while preserving the right hand width, and man it feels incredible. Mirror checks reveal the arms are now above the shoulder plane, versus on or below it. There is so much more speed at the bottom just by the evidence of the "woosh" it's scary
. The feel on the back swing is that my left foot, no, make that my entire body, almost gets lifted off the ground up and to the right because of the pull of the club up and away, then I can really crash the left foot on the downswing to get the club moving the other direction. Reminds me a lot of a baseball wind up, but I've never felt it like this with a golf club.
Couldn't get out today to hit golf balls (too many grad papers to write), but I can't wait to try. I worry about hooking it off the planet, but then again, that's not much different from what I worry about now.
Had to get this written down. Somebody remind me next time I start fooling with a flat swing to stop fooling around and remember that the point is to play golf, not golf swing.
Seriously though, I don't know why I've been pursuing it. Trying to swing more and more "flat and compact" is just killing my speed. My driver speed has progressively dropped from 110 to 92 in the last 3 years, with no improvement in accuracy or consistency. In fact, my consistency is completely gone. Sure I have days of brilliance, but most of the time I'm downright awful. I don't even want to go play right now. Feels like I'm becoming that range rat we all fear.
Fooling around yesterday with a few drills, it finally dawned on me that swinging tight and flat, for my lanky tall body type, especially my long torso, is just wrong. I started trying to figure out how to get athletic again with my swing by throwing sidearm right hand pitches with a whiffle ball, trying to maximize my speed and kinetic sequence. Now, when I do this, I don't take the right arm behind and around... I take it up and back, feeling a stretch in the chest that I can turn into a snap on the way down. Very much a drop and sling move.
Progressed to swinging a golf club right hand only and noticed the resulting backswing was much more vertical and far wider than I have been swinging. Added the left hand while preserving the right hand width, and man it feels incredible. Mirror checks reveal the arms are now above the shoulder plane, versus on or below it. There is so much more speed at the bottom just by the evidence of the "woosh" it's scary
. The feel on the back swing is that my left foot, no, make that my entire body, almost gets lifted off the ground up and to the right because of the pull of the club up and away, then I can really crash the left foot on the downswing to get the club moving the other direction. Reminds me a lot of a baseball wind up, but I've never felt it like this with a golf club.Couldn't get out today to hit golf balls (too many grad papers to write), but I can't wait to try. I worry about hooking it off the planet, but then again, that's not much different from what I worry about now.
Had to get this written down. Somebody remind me next time I start fooling with a flat swing to stop fooling around and remember that the point is to play golf, not golf swing.
