While I’ve been striking the ball well lately, some days I stand over the ball and start to swing without any idea where the ball is about to go. For instance, just the other day my driver was spreading about 100 yards from left to right. While I know the physics that would cause the error in each drive, I’ve been struggling to understand how my body mechanics are causing such day-to-day inconsistency.
That’s really my goal at this point: day-to-day consistency. I know I can play well. The problem is that depending on the day I can also play very bad. On the days I play well, my shot spread is very small (+/- 15 feet for a wedge). On the days I play poorly, that spread can be 3-4x’s larger, if not more. I also tend to see more pulls left on those bad days.
This weekend I’ve really focused on what I can do to get more day-to-day consistency. I pulled out the video camera and recorded some swings, and I’m starting to see a couple areas to work on after comparison with Tour player videos.
To start, I need to keep working on staying connected through the swing. I’ve made progress on this in the last two weeks, but it’s not quite where it needs to be yet. The benefit of staying connected has been less pull-hooks and more small draws. My misses are starting to trend back to slight pushes or small fades, which is what I want.
Next is the shoulder turn. Or perhaps I should call it “the coil”. When I compare my video to a Tour player’s video, it appears that my hips are turning way too much, Instead of a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio of my shoulder turn to hip turn, it seems more like a 1.5:1 or in some cases even a 1:1 ratio.
Right off the bat, I know this means I’m losing power. I know that you leak out power if you don’t coil your body in the backswing. Basically, you want to get your shoulder turn to 90 degrees, but only turn your hips as much as is necessary to get your shoulders that far. From what I’ve read a 3:1 ratio is good (someone correct me if this is wrong).
A good example of the power I’m losing is some of the work I did today on the practice courses at LPGA. On the par 3 I was hitting from about 168 yards to the pin. I picked my 8-iron, which is usually around the 158-163 yard mark for me. I knew I hit the ball well, but I didn’t realize I overshot my target by about 10 yards until I got up to the green. So, by limiting my hip turn I hit my 8-iron somewhere around 170 yards instead of 160 yards.
While the added power is nice, I have another suspicion on the hip turn: consistency. I suspect that I’m over-swinging, partly due to my hip turn being greater than it needs to be (this also explains why I’m able to get my shoulder turn > 90 degrees). By over-swinging, I’m starting to believe that my entire swing has become dependent on timing.
Yes, timing is important in the golf swing, but having a timing-dependent swing can lead to pretty erratic results. Some days your timing will be good, other days it will be bad. And when the timing is bad… who knows where the ball is going to go.
As a result of this, I’ve also realized that I’ve started to keep my feet too close together at setup. Feet should be shoulder-width apart with a short-iron, and I’ve noticed on video that my feet are just inside shoulder-width apart. This would explain why I feel a little off-balance at times. I may video my putting stroke as well. I’m curious if getting a more stable base will translate into more consistent putts.
So, that’s what I’ll be working the next few days before going on vacation. I’ll be heading out of town for the 4th of July, and I won’t have golf course access so I’ll be working on drills and resting my body. The good thing is that the types of changes I’m trying to implement don’t require a golf ball, so by the time vacation is over I’ll be drilled-up and ready to go.