Mr. S Hank

[Burner]

Can someone describe the feel of hitting one of those shots that we never care to mention?

Is it a dull thud, as I imagine, or some other feeling?

Can it approximate to the feel of a decent connection?

I have recently started hitting shots that squirt off to the right of the intended target line at varying degrees, varying heights and varying distances. They almost all felt, and sounded, like reasonable connections. Divots appear normal at the start but taper off to a point at the end.

8i, 9i, PW and SW are the implements of self destruction and the intended shots are soft pitches or little punches rather than full swings.

 

[Jim Kobylinski]

Hit balls with your right thumb off the club

What'll you'll notice is that you are letting the sweetspot, in the down swing, get "under."

Meaning if you go to shake someone's hand with your right hand your right forefinger would be "behind" the shaft at that point. Rotate your right arm palm up a little bit, see how that right forefinger has moved more "under?"

Now bring that "under" feeling into impact slowly on a non swing and tell me which part of the clubhead you are "lagging" into the ball

 

[protagonist]

Yikes!

Not a dull thud, here. More like a TWANG. Ball comes off hosel at light speed...mostly 45 degrees to the right, but may hit hosel, then richocet off toe...and end up going towards target. If you want to stun your playing partners, just sh##k it straight.

btw, I never did this until I'd had lessons, so I blame the PGA.

 

[jbrunk]

Yikes is right!

BTW, I read this post yesterday and went to hit balls for the first time in 2 weeks (I have been working on short game).

Mental note: when working on a new pattern (mine is NSA with a sprinkle of show me your armpits lift), its best not to take 2 weeks off from picking up a club when you are going on a golf trip in 2 weeks. I started the bucket with 4 sw then 4 pw, dead on the pin, crisp and on the center of clubface. I pick up a 7 iron and hit 5 in a row with a wide open clubface (almost a shank). Wow WTH is going on here.....a ha danielson you must turn your left knuckles to the ground just before impact......ok done, hit 5 more perfect. Same result with 5 iron and then hit 5 perfect drives. Oh well, I gotta keep practicing.

 

[rprevost]

Here are my two cents, for what they are worth! I understand that a s*** occurs when you hit the ball with the hosel. This happens with me most often when I am focusing on educating my hands; the problem is that, when I think hard on what my hands are doing, I forget to pivot, either way, on the backswing or on the downswing. My lack of pivot pushes my hands out because my body is in the way. Burner, I noted that you were shanking when hitting soft pitches or little punches. For me, that is just the situation where I forget to pivot.

RP

 

[Edorf72]

Pay attention to the posts from Jim Kobylinsky regarding how to cure the dreaded shank.

Been shanking from time to time for 2-3 years now (same period I havebeen reading this forum...). Too bad it took me so long to get this information sorted out. No TGM instruction available in Norway (closest is Sweden I believe).

Again, listen to Jim Kobylinsky and watch the "home video" from Brian Manzella (the explanation).

My problem (I understand now). Too open club face, lag, and thereby being fooled to believe the hosel is the sweetspot.

Cure: PP3 more behind the club (read posts from Jim Kobylinsky). In addition to a Lagged Clubhead Takeaway (setting the wrists more on the top of the backswing works a lot better for me), which also helped me with softer wrists and hence being able to feel PP3 (key for me).

 

[Burner]

Hit balls with your right thumb off the club

What'll you'll notice is that you are letting the sweetspot, in the down swing, get "under."

Meaning if you go to shake someone's hand with your right hand your right forefinger would be "behind" the shaft at that point. Rotate your right arm palm up a little bit, see how that right forefinger has moved more "under?"

Now bring that "under" feeling into impact slowly on a non swing and tell me which part of the clubhead you are "lagging" into the ball

Jim,

Not too sure that I fully understood what you were saying exactly BUT I did loosen my right hand grip to the point where the shaft nestled in the crook of the middle two fingers - the thumb was not involved but PPs #3 and 1 added their support to the shaft through impact.

Results were good all round and no shots suffered significant loss out to the right of target. Impact was visibly more solid with compression audible for the most part, i.e when execution was as precise as it should be. The distance I thought I had lost was restored, plus some.

Now all I have to focus on is getting my right shoulder a little more consistently down before out . My other stroke losing shot is a pull - did I mention that?

Thanks for the reminder about the unruly influence of the right thumb - something I had allowed to creep back into my game whilst trying to fix other stuff.

Once again I have a golfing future to look forward to; rather than fleeting past "glories" to regain.

 

[Jim Kobylinski]

Jim,

Not too sure that I fully understood what you were saying exactly BUT I did loosen my right hand grip to the point where the shaft nestled in the crook of the middle two fingers - the thumb was not involved but PPs #3 and 1 added their support to the shaft through impact.

Results were good all round and no shots suffered significant loss out to the right of target. Impact was visibly more solid with compression audible for the most part, i.e when execution was as precise as it should be. The distance I thought I had lost was restored, plus some.

Now all I have to focus on is getting my right shoulder a little more consistently down before out . My other stroke losing shot is a pull - did I mention that?

Thanks for the reminder about the unruly influence of the right thumb - something I had allowed to creep back into my game whilst trying to fix other stuff.

Once again I have a golfing future to look forward to; rather than fleeting past "glories" to regain.

Well here's the thing, it isn't that your right thumb was in the wrong place. That ISN'T the problem, your over rolling of the sweet spot is (at some point in your swing).

By making you make swings without a thumb on the club you cannot over roll the sweetspot open because there isn't enough support (cuz your thumb isn't there anymore). So it forces you to open the club less and have it much more closed at impact. Now that doesn't mean you were closed at impact, it just means you went from a 5* open face to maybe a 2* open face. Make sense?

I'm going to try and put together 2 quick videos this weekend. I'll do 1 on shanking and 1 on accumulator lag.

Thanks

 

[hg]

Jim,


Now all I have to focus on is getting my right shoulder a little more consistently down before out . My other stroke losing shot is a pull - did I mention that?

I never realized that a down movement of the right shoulder occurred prior to an out....isn't the downswing movement of the right shoulder on an inclined plane?

 

[tourdeep]

down, out, and forward all at once?

I never realized that a down movement of the right shoulder occurred prior to an out....isn't the downswing movement of the right shoulder on an inclined plane?

I'm with ya, know what ya mean.

I believe Burner wants that thought to get back on the right track, or should I say back on plane. That in itself, may take care of his three dimensional swing.

For the most part, it's not an "or" situation. Rather, it's a down, out, AND forward downswing. The deal with this thinking, however, is how in the heck to combine all three in such a small time frame and muttering, OK, now go down, now forward, now out to add to the 1 to 100 swing thoughts! Obviously, that's not gonna work. I've tried a bunch of different sensations. Currently, some dude has repeatedly said to get the right shoulder to the ball. That works for me. In essence, it's just another way of addresing a straight line delivery path. It automaticlly takes me on the downward attack mode, to the ball on a outward plane and with a forward approach. Some others think about an aim point point somewhere on the plane line. The tricking of the mind simplifies the dimensions of the swing into one thought. Another outcome of my current thought happens to free up the "hit impulse", the hands getting too over active, the "moving your hand with your hands" dreaded thing, resulting in overacceleration. This is not to saying that my hands are left out of the equation. Rather, the hands know not to hit the ball with the hands.

and now back to our regularly sceduled topic at hand about the five letter word disquised as a fore letter word problem...

Lots of good stuff on shank avoidance/cause/effect via search. My nemesis happens to be with scoring irons. Generally, I like to come in low and I constatnly have to remind myself to not to get too flat, to get more up with the shorter irons, and not to sway thru the ball! At times, the clubface is wide open and not necessarily a shank, but a very wide to the right outcome. The only thing missing from that type of shot is the sound of hosel bashing! Been there done that, too!

A repost from the matrix man...

I have been curing shanks for decades by pointing out two things:

1) When you set up soft for a touch shot with your clubface centered on the ball, with left elbow bent a hair and wrist cocked a tiny bit, the distance from your left shoulder to the clubhead is, let's say, "X" inches. But when you swing, even just a soft swing, THE CLUBHEAD'S WEIGHT AND CENTRIFUGAL REACTION will pull outward from your body, straightening your left arm and unc0cking your left wrist. So at THAT instant, the distance from your left shoulder to the clubface is "X + y" inches. IT GOT TOO LONG for the available distance from your left shoulder to the ball. So your clubhead has to go somewhere (if you didn't lift your sternum): it will either go DOWN into the dirt and hit the ball fat, OR it will move further from your feet and make contact on the hosel.

2) If your backswing is with your arms too low vis-a-vis your left shoulder, and the clubshaft winds around behind your shoulderblade, IT WILL GET THROWN OUT, not DOWN, as the downswing begins. You need to make the backswing plane for short clubs MORE VERTICAL to prevent this. Long clubs have a flatter plane, obviously, so if you are using THAT plane with a PW, you can set yourself up for the shank.

Everything else that causes shanks comes in after 99.98% of the above reasons.

The delivery of a club to a ball ALWAYS is "hosel first" - but you'd have to hold it VERY VERY TIGHT to get it to hit a golf ball with the face wide open...

 

[davidmac00]

check your hosel!!!!

ok guys,
most teachers(due to bad teaching from the PGAs,both US and UK)think that a shank is caused by an open clubface.this CAN be true,but in my experience(full time teacher, PGA qualified for 10 years)it is VERY rare!MOST shanks,and a quick look at the hosel of your club will show this,come from the clubface being closed at impact while coming from outside.i know this sounds strange,but please just look at the HOSEL of YOUR club when you have just hit one.the ball will have left a mark on the inside next to the heel,not on the back of the hosel.ASK yourself HOW can i hit the inside with an OPEN clubface.the answer is ONLY if you come from inside and most of guys who shank it will know they DONT swing from inside!
David McCallum.

 

[chrisfx811]

ok guys,
most teachers(due to bad teaching from the PGAs,both US and UK)think that a shank is caused by an open clubface.this CAN be true,but in my experience(full time teacher, PGA qualified for 10 years)it is VERY rare!MOST shanks,and a quick look at the hosel of your club will show this,come from the clubface being closed at impact while coming from outside.i know this sounds strange,but please just look at the HOSEL of YOUR club when you have just hit one.the ball will have left a mark on the inside next to the heel,not on the back of the hosel.ASK yourself HOW can i hit the inside with an OPEN clubface.the answer is ONLY if you come from inside and most of guys who shank it will know they DONT swing from inside!
David McCallum.

I first read this in Harmon's book about his dad. He was talking about how he couldn't fix a guy, then Claude came out and fixed him up quick, iirc.
I have been going through a bout with the hosel shots, and it seems obvious to me that it is happening as you described.

I've been dropping balls right next to a metal bar, and chipping & pitching on that parallel line, and guess what?
At first my club clanged off the bar quite a bit. Once the clanging stopped, the shanking stopped.

 

[Jim Kobylinski]

ok guys,
most teachers(due to bad teaching from the PGAs,both US and UK)think that a shank is caused by an open clubface.this CAN be true,but in my experience(full time teacher, PGA qualified for 10 years)it is VERY rare!MOST shanks,and a quick look at the hosel of your club will show this,come from the clubface being closed at impact while coming from outside.i know this sounds strange,but please just look at the HOSEL of YOUR club when you have just hit one.the ball will have left a mark on the inside next to the heel,not on the back of the hosel.ASK yourself HOW can i hit the inside with an OPEN clubface.the answer is ONLY if you come from inside and most of guys who shank it will know they DONT swing from inside!
David McCallum.

This is absolutely true, you can hit a shank from a closed face and coming from the outside. But for most "better" players that truly isn't the case.

Are you going to tell me that the shank Tiger hit on Saturday was becuase he had a closed face and came from the outside?

 

[Burner]

This is absolutely true, you can hit a shank from a closed face and coming from the outside. But for most "better" players that truly isn't the case.

Are you going to tell me that the shank Tiger hit on Saturday was becuase he had a closed face and came from the outside?

Jim,

There is always an exception to every rule. Watch Tiger's mate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVsTKT1mTr8

Over rolling of the sweet spot and may need a reminder from you to keep his right thumb under control.

 

[Cope]

shut face cutters

I know at least one tour player who shanks alot with a closed face. On the downswing he works his arms well over his backswing to hit a pull cut. His clubface is very closed to keep the ball from cutting too much. When he gets going bad he can hit one shank after another. Any guesses who? Not sure I should say.

Agree that it's not now Tiger would shank it.

 

[Bigwill]

I know at least one tour player who shanks alot with a closed face. On the downswing he works his arms well over his backswing to hit a pull cut. His clubface is very closed to keep the ball from cutting too much. When he gets going bad he can hit one shank after another. Any guesses who? Not sure I should say.

Agree that it's not now Tiger would shank it.

Parry?

 

[Cope]

Buckle / Kostis

Kostis analysis of Andrew Buckle shows up after Clarke's swing. Not bad except Buckle hits a moon ball.

 

[Spike]

Jim,

There is always an exception to every rule. Watch Tiger's mate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVsTKT1mTr8

Over rolling of the sweet spot and may need a reminder from you to keep his right thumb under control.

I'm having trouble accessing youtube lately any suggestions?

If this is the Daren Clarke video, I've seen it but would like to see it again. I agree with Dave McCallum and Butch's dad. I didn't at first until I really gave it a look. The matrix man makes a lot of sense, too.

 

[Cope]

not Parry good guess same type of pattern

 

[davidmac00]

tigers shank?

jim,
sorry,but i really cant comment on any shank tiger has hit,ive never seen him do it!if he had one during the wachovia champ then so be it,but my post was in relation to normal guys who post and may read this on the forum.
i did also say that it is possible to shank open faced,but that it is very rare.
i would like to add though that most closed face shanks start with the clubface open at the top of backswing.i would love to hear from brian on this,its a very interesting and important subject.
p.s, spike,youtube is censored in thailand right now which explains why we cant get it.
David McCallum.