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Burner
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Its because you are trying to do something different to your normal procedure and you have not, yet, perfected it.RyanB said:
Persevere and follow Brian's excellent example.
Shank = most likely, over rotation of the clubface going back not matched by equal rotation going forward.
Fat = Flipping the wrists into impact with faulty timing.
Pop up Hook = Ball teed up too high or too far back with too steep an angle of approach and an over rotation of the clubface into impact. Or an out to in swing path with the ball teed up too high or approach angle too steep.
shootin4par
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my first guess would be that you have too much angle between leading arm and club shaft at address, it can cause all of the problems you describe
Jim Kobylinski
Super Moderator
you're trying to get rid of your flip before you fix the clubface and thus all the different types of misses.
Work on clubface control first and then get rid of the flip. You'll be much happier.
Work on clubface control first and then get rid of the flip. You'll be much happier.
Perfect Impact
New
jim_0068 said:
I use a different procedure than this: clubFACE is automatically controlled by an uncompensated swing, and by using a strength of grip that arrives square without having to do anything during the swing to square it except swing.
I feel the problems experienced have a ton to do with measurement from body/shoulders to ball at setup, spine angle at setup, and ball position. AFTER good impact is achieved, the grip can be weakened or strengthened to straighten ball flight. This poor golfer is made to feel like a klutz and he is not: he is attempting to "fix how the parts of his machine work" instead of simply adjusting them.
It is my contention that if you try to control the clubface, your machinations to do that will cause you to build manipulations into your swing AND TO COME TO BELIEVE THAT THEY ARE THE RIGHT THINGS TO DO instead of swinging naturally and then adjusting the adjustables of measurement, setup angles, ball position, and later, grip strength for straight ball flight.
One doesn't blame an Iron Byron machine for mis-hits when the operator puts it in the wrong place or puts the club in the clamp the wrong length or orientation. It is operator training that's needed, not a new machine.
I shudder when I think of the number of golfers who try to manipulate clubs in response to "instruction" of that kind.
To be specific: impacts high on the toe of a driver or fwy wood are caused by a club passing closer to the feet and lower than the ball; the remedy is to raise the posture/chest angle and step a bit closer to the ball. Shanks with longer clubs are caused among other things mostly by throwout caused by taking the hands too far AROUND BEHIND the right shoulder instead of up in front of it: the rebound outward at transition is too much to deal with and the first motion of the downswing HAS to be out and around. With short clubs the most common reason for shanking is setting up with more slack (softer setup for touch shots) in the arms and wrists such that during the swing the armclub gets longer and the clubhead has to go SOMEwhere: it either goes down into the ground (fat shots) or outward from the feet (shanks). Another reason for shanks is setting up (or impact fixing) with the hands advanced too far in front of the ball with an angle instead of a straight line running from left shoulder to clubhead (as seen from face on); during the swing when that line becomes a straight one the arm club is longer than it was at setup.
As you can see, there are different issues in getting good results other than ONLY swing mechanics. It is a revelation to many to find out that they are NOT the klutzes their bad ball striking would seem to indicate, that indeed it was only a few adjustments that made a WORLD of difference.
IOW, there are other things to look at besides how or even WHETHER you "manipulate the club!"
lmisner1040
New
WOW
Too much to read here. Ouch. I think I will just work on alignment and the ever so secret roll of the left wrist.
Perfect Impact said:
Too much to read here. Ouch. I think I will just work on alignment and the ever so secret roll of the left wrist.
Jared Willerson
Super Moderator
Ryan, the reason you are shanking is because you are bending the plane line out while trying to hold on to your flat left wrist, bent right wrist angle.
The thing to remember is to trace a straight plane line. Flashlights and a straight line on the floor helped me with this.
If your arms start getting out away from your body in an effort to retain your wrist angle you will shank it. Hitting it fat comes from adding with your hands instead of letting your pivot carry them to the ball. Check out the Ben Doyle G.O.L.F. video for help understanding the concept.
Hope this helps.
The thing to remember is to trace a straight plane line. Flashlights and a straight line on the floor helped me with this.
If your arms start getting out away from your body in an effort to retain your wrist angle you will shank it. Hitting it fat comes from adding with your hands instead of letting your pivot carry them to the ball. Check out the Ben Doyle G.O.L.F. video for help understanding the concept.
Hope this helps.
Burner
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Perfect Impact said:
Very good points and well expressed.
However, sound mechanics and accurate ball placement will still not obviate the type of shots that the, well advised but inexperienced or less adept, golfer is apt to hit all too often.
Control of the clubface, via "educated hands", as the very essence of good golf. Eamon D'Arcy, Jim Furyk, John Daly, Pat Hurst, Natalie Gulbis et al are very good examples of the ranking of clubface control over perfect mechanics.
lmisner1040
If Georges reply is really too much for you to be bothered with then I am sorry but the brutal truth is that you are not going to get very far in this most unforgiving of all games.
Perfect Impact
New
Burner said:
I see clubface control as an effect of good mechanics but not the way in which they are achieved. Of course a golfer needs to obey good principles and be trained. But let's face it, an untrained child can hit a nail with good mechanics and without practice because it is intuitively obvious. If the nature of the swing is correctly communicated to a child, his grip can then be adjusted to produce a square-at-separation impact. It frightens me to think someone would be asked to manipulate the clubhead with what would be too strong or weak a grip for himself. And as I write this, it is even sadder, because the prevailing mentality regarding "curing the slice" and "why do I hook?" is ALWAYS addressed as though the issues were about swing mechanics.
And that is very very sad. It is tantamount to an inexperienced operator of the Iron Byron placing a club in the clamp too open or closed and the machine slices or hooks. It's not the machine that needs fixed: it's the operator's mistaken choice for how strong or weak the club must be!
Unlike the Iron Byron where rigid parts can be aligned at its setup, the human body DOES NOT NECESSARILY RETURN A CLUBFACE TO ITS SETUP ORIENTATION. To tell someone "this is your grip" and then ask him to keep trying to hit balls straight is in my book the absolute antithesis of how to train him. It builds manipulation into the procedure instead of letting the pupil get the SWING FIRST and the adjustments for good impact later. Nothing could be more fundamental, to me.
Jim Kobylinski
Super Moderator
Perfect Impact said:
Band-aid.
Setup is huge and a big thing i teach, but again....whether the grip be weak or strong you should be able to hit the ball anywhere you want. That's what clubface control is.
Tell that to my students who hit the ball straighter than any of their playing partners
. My one student was just in Vegas last week..played 3 rounds of golf:79 11/14 fairways 13/18 greens
79 12/14 fairways 14/18 greens
80 10/14 fairways 15/18 greens
Guy can't putt. lol.
Usually better players who already are great ballstrikers need little adjustments. Most bad players don't. That's why it's easier to tinker with a great swing than it is with a bad swing.
Really? Tell that to one of my students who was one of the worst timed flippers i've ever saw (for a good player anyway) who hates mechanics and is all about feel. In a 1.5 hour lesson i gave him (first one) all we worked on was hinging and clubface control. By the end he was a little confused which will happen as it's a lot of information but then i made him very target focused and he hit 7/10 balls in a bucket about 20 yards away. Ya, but his manipulation sucks
There are so many assumptions in those statements above i don't know where to begin. So i'll just leave it as that, assumptions. There are many more reasons why the above things happen than what you stated.
Again, WITH BETTER PLAYERS. You give me a 30 handicap and i could "band-aid" him like my normal PGA pro and he'd hit the ball marginally better but not for long. However if you really know how to teach you will instill in them SOUND mechanics but still make them leave the lesson HITTING IT BETTER not the whole "oh it's gonna get worse before it gets better" routine. That's the trick that many around me can't do which is why i'm doing as well as i am.
Sure, it's teacher's discresion and whether or not the student wants to take that manipulation out of their swing. You have to decide, well if i really make that go away will it REALLY make him play any better in the long run? That's a choice both the student and teacher have to make.
Perfect Impact
New
"Usually better players who already are great ballstrikers need little adjustments. Most bad players don't. That's why it's easier to tinker with a great swing than it is with a bad swing."
You seem to have missed the premise of my post, and in the process carry my point to the extreme, hence to the ridiculous. I am talking about good swings, NOT bandaids for beginners. But teaching a good swing is not brain surgery when it is presented efficiently. I say again: if a pupil becomes fixed on having to square the clubface and manipulates the club WHILE THE SWING IS IN MOTION in order to do this: (tries to square a too weak grip, or fights release from a too strong grip) WHEN IT WORKS it will reinforce and embed the very compensation he introduces into HIS procedure, and thus make permanent the action that works for him. Or buy the next issue of GOLF where on the cover it says "fix your slice" with the same heresy reinforced (that you have to do something WHILE YOU ARE SWINGING) to make the club square up.
I say that square clubface is an effect, and that it is related to the grip. That stands. Get at the real cause, of course, but then make the adjustments so that there are NO compensatory exertions during the swing itself. "Mindless genius" - like Daly, Montgomerie, and everyone else who is truly successful.
You seem to have missed the premise of my post, and in the process carry my point to the extreme, hence to the ridiculous. I am talking about good swings, NOT bandaids for beginners. But teaching a good swing is not brain surgery when it is presented efficiently. I say again: if a pupil becomes fixed on having to square the clubface and manipulates the club WHILE THE SWING IS IN MOTION in order to do this: (tries to square a too weak grip, or fights release from a too strong grip) WHEN IT WORKS it will reinforce and embed the very compensation he introduces into HIS procedure, and thus make permanent the action that works for him. Or buy the next issue of GOLF where on the cover it says "fix your slice" with the same heresy reinforced (that you have to do something WHILE YOU ARE SWINGING) to make the club square up.
I say that square clubface is an effect, and that it is related to the grip. That stands. Get at the real cause, of course, but then make the adjustments so that there are NO compensatory exertions during the swing itself. "Mindless genius" - like Daly, Montgomerie, and everyone else who is truly successful.
Burner
New
Perfect Impact said:
I see "educated hands" as being an essential pre-requisite to learning even basic motion swing mechanics.
Put the head of the hammer on the end of a three foot club shaft and ask the child to only swing it on an inclined plane of motion. My guess is that he will not demonstrate too much by way of the intuitively obvious.
Don't know why you introduced this bit into the discussion as it has no relevance to what I am saying about "educated hands" but, since you have, I would explain that teaching "educated hands" discipline is not about fixing grip issues with band-aids.
Furthermore, slicing and hooking issues are as much a result of poor swing mechanics as anything else. Poor mechanics, excessive in to out and out to in, are as damaging as incorrect club face control. Separately they are destructive but together one just compounds the other.
The guy who sets the machine up, a good golf coach, starts from the very basics and that would be grip first, followed by a brief description of why the club should be held like that as opposed to the intuitively obvious way a child might take hold of it.
I don't recall anything in my posts about manipulation in the context in which you are now using the word. Nor did I, or ever would I, advocate trying to hit the ball straight, "steering", which you have also introduced, for no reason that is apparent to me, into your arguments.
Perfect Impact
New
"I don't recall anything in my posts about manipulation in the context in which you are now using the word. Nor did I, or ever would I, advocate trying to hit the ball straight, "steering", which you have also introduced, for no reason that is apparent to me, into your arguments."
The layman reading your posts would infer that that is exactly what you mean: manage clubface alignment first, and everything else is secondary. NOT. And how could you do that anyway? with steering! So you and I are then saying the same things come first, but in different ways.
When people not privy to the specific meanings in TGM hear explanations like yours (manage clubface alignment first), I suspect they do indeed interpret them as I say. Furthermore, every golf mag tip about "fix your slice" is precisely about how to steer, manipulate, manage, etc. your downswing so as to make a club get square for impact DURING THE SWING as opposed to it being made inevitable with good mechanics BEFORE the swing is undertaken.
The layman reading your posts would infer that that is exactly what you mean: manage clubface alignment first, and everything else is secondary. NOT. And how could you do that anyway? with steering! So you and I are then saying the same things come first, but in different ways.
When people not privy to the specific meanings in TGM hear explanations like yours (manage clubface alignment first), I suspect they do indeed interpret them as I say. Furthermore, every golf mag tip about "fix your slice" is precisely about how to steer, manipulate, manage, etc. your downswing so as to make a club get square for impact DURING THE SWING as opposed to it being made inevitable with good mechanics BEFORE the swing is undertaken.
Burner
New
George,Perfect Impact said:
We are, as you well know, communicating on what is, essentially, a TGM site even if Brian does favour everyday language with which to get TGM principles instilled into his students . Others familiar with the site and its basic tenets similarly express themselves.
Most people of my aquaintance when faced with something they do not understand will ask questions. The only issues raised in relation to my use of the TGM term "Educated Hands" have been yours. Why is it that you have chosen to argue rather than simply enquire as to my use of the term?
HK knew a thing, or several, about the golf swing and how best to achieve each individuals optimum mechanical advantage. He also believed in starting at the beginning and not half way through a procedure.
You well know, I suspect, that my position on this subject has always been as HK states above and that this is nothing to do with manipulation, steering or any such thing - only the avoidance of it from the outset.
Pointless discussion really, don't you think?
Perfect Impact
New
To the concept you espouse, Burner, I have to "argue" for another dimension, in that one does not think of HANDs when getting the mustard from the refrigerator. The object of getting it draws the hands, legs, balance, etc. to do it pretty well. So HK's statement does not go far enough. WHAT YOU WANT TO DO WITH THE GOLF CLUB will more accurately form MY use of hands, legs, etc. than becoming hand conscious. Golf swing conforms to mental imagery. Of course one does well to know the different effects of "when I do this with my hands, watch what happens to the club, and how my body moves in response," but if the focus is on what you DO want to do WITH THE CLUB, the hands and body respond from computer systems so far beyond anything cognitively possible as to not be in the same universe.
So we approach the swing from more than one perspective.
If you don't want other viewpoints (today's commerical from one of the sponsors of the women's match play used that word, "viewpoints").... here to "help make BM the best teacher in the world," that's fine. I do think however that everyone's understanding can be increased when others' viewpoints are considered.
So we approach the swing from more than one perspective.
If you don't want other viewpoints (today's commerical from one of the sponsors of the women's match play used that word, "viewpoints").... here to "help make BM the best teacher in the world," that's fine. I do think however that everyone's understanding can be increased when others' viewpoints are considered.
Burner
New
Perfect Impact said:
George, you and I are of an age that has seen us doing these things on automatic for many more years than we would care to admit. However, it was not always so. The hands had to be educated initially before the rest of the procedure was attempted, let alone mastered.
Once the swinging process has been started, as you will no doubt have experienced in your long and distinguished teaching career, it is the devils own job to then get the hands out of the equation and back under control.
"Educating Hands" at the outset instantly establishes that control and allows for the monitoring of the clubs progress without the need to focus on the club itself.
I am as ready as the next man to consider other viewpoints and have been known to change my own perspective as a result. But, this is not the point at issue.
The point is that this is Brian's vehicle and he kindly lets us ride in it. I, for one, would not like to abuse that curtesy by introducing opinions that diversify and so dilute the underlying principles on which Brian's teaching is based.
Sure, different viewpoints are good when used constructively, as a straightforward exchange of ideas, for example.
However, viewpoints that undermine (intentionally or otherwise) the foundations on which this house, Brian's house, is built are not constructive.
Can't see that anyone one other than you or I is getting anything out of these exchanges so I will now butt out. Nevertheless, thank you for your interest.
Perfect Impact
New
Points taken. I will however hold out for the fact that if the DNA of the swing is taught first (what am I supposed to do with the club and why -- how does it work?), educating the hands becomes secondary, since same as throwing a ball or getting the mustard, you USE the hands but you're wired to use them without analyzing them.
In my early life I majored in music, taught piano for 11 years, and worked under a master-teacher descended from Beethoven, Lizst, and a line of greats,who was instrumental in DC in helping establish the National Symphony. He told me of this true story: two world-class pianists were invited to a soiree by a socialite, who greeted them on their arrival, and noticed their extremely small hands. She couldn't contain herself, so asked one of them:"Gentlemen, how do you play the piano so well with such small hands?" The reply: "Madam, what makes you think we play the piano with our hands?"
THIS is the core issue. Far from undermining Brian, I would hope he would learn what that means. (It is why MA used this title for his work: "Golf is Mental Imagery.")
In my early life I majored in music, taught piano for 11 years, and worked under a master-teacher descended from Beethoven, Lizst, and a line of greats,who was instrumental in DC in helping establish the National Symphony. He told me of this true story: two world-class pianists were invited to a soiree by a socialite, who greeted them on their arrival, and noticed their extremely small hands. She couldn't contain herself, so asked one of them:"Gentlemen, how do you play the piano so well with such small hands?" The reply: "Madam, what makes you think we play the piano with our hands?"
THIS is the core issue. Far from undermining Brian, I would hope he would learn what that means. (It is why MA used this title for his work: "Golf is Mental Imagery.")
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