My Awful Golf Swing

My wife and I went on a wonderful trip to the Maine coastline last month. We stayed at The Samoset Resort, known as "The Pebble Beach of the East." The views from the fairways along the coast were phenomenal. Fortunately, the similarities ended there, as Pebble Beach $500 greens fees are a bit to dear for me. The early season rate of $70, including cart, suited me just fine at Samoset. And the lobster....yummy!

During one of our rounds, my wife caught my swing on video with her iPhone. Although the quality isn't exactly ShotLink-calibre, I was able to learn a lot from what she captured. I already knew that I had a problem with a lack of lag in my swing away from the driving range. Almost a yip-like reaction, in fact, when on the course. But what I saw on her phone was horrifying.

So I've decided to make lemonade from my lemon of a swing. I hope you enjoy my analysis, and if you have any thoughts to add, by all means....

I'm OK with this set-up.  The ball isn't as close to the left heel as
is commonly taught, but this angle is a little deceiving,
so it's not quite as much in the center of my stance as it may
appear. I tend to put the ball a little farther back in my
stance than "normal" with all of my clubs.

Still OK with the swing. Not quite to parallel, but I'm fine
with it.  J.B. Holmes, Tom Lehman, and others don't
go to parallel, and they generate ample club head speed.

It's hard to tell without the pictures side-by-side, or better
yet, overlapped, but my downswing starts with a quirky
move where I actually raise the club head a bit. I don't
like it, but it's not the worst part of my swing.

Here is where the worst part of my swing starts to
rear its ugly head. My wrists are already starting to
break down.  Horrible. The forearm/shaft angle should
still be at least 90-degrees here, and it clearly is not.
I also dislike how my legs flare, largely due to the
feet not being square at setup. I'm OK with the left
foot flare, a little at least, but don't like the
right foot.

One frame later, and there is almost no lag left. Absolutely
dreadful. One the absolute most key principles that
separate the pros from amateurs is the lag at about .05
seconds before impact, and I've already lost nearly all
of it here.

Right after impact, it's clear that I had begun my release
far too soon. And why is that right arm not tucked near
the side of my body? I taught myself that move in becoming
a fairly decent power hitter in softball. It's also a
fundamental of a good golf swing, and yet I'm nowhere
near doing it correctly.

This isn't so bad.  You would never know that what
immediately preceded it was so hideous.

Wrists rolling; again, not so bad.

A bit of a weak Reverse C finish, but not all bad.  A little
Nicklaus-like if I do say so myself.

Now for the positives:  Hmmmm. Give me a minute.

OK, that I can still swing at about 110 mph with this swing should mean that I have a serious upside if I can make the right changes. The lag/delayed release is what can generate so much effortless power from the pros. I have the strength to do it; I just need to put in the quality reps to make it habit.

I've already spent good time on the range trying to fix it, and results so far are positive. A nice side effect is that I re-aggravated an old back injury, which has severely limited my playing time, so I have to take it easy when practicing. How is that good? I'm getting to it.

Working on the small muscles to create lag in my swing is a lot easier on my back than trying to get it with a violent hip turn. I've lost no club head speed, despite swinging much easier now.  Once the back is 100% again (should I be so lucky), I would hope I could pick up a few more mph.

I'll keep the blog up-to-date with my progress, and assuming my back continues to get better, I'll do a similar bowling analysis. The debacle that was the USBC Open Championships this year made me do some soul searching.  But again, lemons to lemonade, it allowed me to discover a key thing the pros do that I don't do, and the similarity to my golf swing is striking, no pun intended.

Stay tuned.