Synthesis

I decided to go to the practice range to try a little "polluted" 3 skills, and since this isn't the pure deal, I'm starting a new thread, with an obscure title, so no one is misled into thinking that what I'm doing is anything other than my own mongrel approach.

As I mentioned in the Mother of All Threads, I've had some trouble learning the three skills, or applying them consistently, or something of the sort. Despite working hard to hit down into the ball, I'm still getting a liberal share of thin shots. So I decided to go back and try to incorporate some swing ideas that I had been working with before the 3 skills experiment, and to use them specifically to try to get the skills to work.

1. Setup with weight on lead foot. This involves a slight shift of the hips toward the target in the setup, so that the left hip is just about over the left foot. This had been working pretty well for me, so I revisited it.

2. Pay attention to right knee in the backswing. Specifically, don't let it straighten or move far back, and keep the weight over the instep.

3. At the transition, fold the right knee toward the target. This is the new bit, based on the Calhoun article that cmays linked to in another thread. In reality, the knee isn't going straight at the target, but it feels like it is. What it's not doing is poking straight out toward the target line, which is what it "wants" to do.

The result was...amazing. The golf balls were flying like rockets, and with good accuracy. I'll have to wait until I'm hitting real balls off real grass to get a sense of the distances, but based on my usual range distances, they were outstanding. But the main thing is I was making good contact every time.

It seems that items 1 and 2 were working to facilitate delivering the club face down into the ball. I believe item 2 was helping me to bring the club to the ball from the inside (there suddenly seemed to be more room for it) to square.

This was all with the irons. I took out the driver and found that I couldn't get it quite right. The forward weight distribution didn't work, and I found that I was having trouble staying centered. So I tried a different solution. I put the driver away! Instead I took out this 13 degree 3+ fairway wood that I got at Boscov's for ten bucks. It has a shaft considerably shorter than the driver's, so I thought I'd be able to use the forward weighted setup and play the ball from the middle, hitting down slightly, essentially de-lofting the club to driver status anyway.

Bingo! That worked, and I was getting distance equal to what I'd get with the driver anyway. We'll see if that holds up on the golf course, but it certainly was working tonight. And there's something to be said for being able to use the same setup for all the clubs.

Obviously, practice range mojo often evaporates on the golf course, but I'm keen to put this to the test. Yes, these are "mechanical" ideas, but now I have a pretty good idea as to why these particular are working for my particular set of problems.

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Todd
Philadelphia, PA
USA

The reason the pro tells you to keep your head down is so you can't see him laughing. ~Phyllis Diller

Hi Tod,

The 3 wood and driver has been designed with very little or no forward lean in the shaft, if you strike the ball with your hands ahead of the clubface using these clubs you will get poor results. You should have your hands and the clubface level as you strike the ball with them. To facilitate this your weight needs to stay more of the back foot.

great news on the breakthrough with the irons.

hi Todd
i like to feel the weight on the inside off my back (right) foot and i have my right knee just inside my right foot looking down, i feel this stops me sliding my hips back and also stops me from bobbing my head up and down, the rest seems to follow what you have said. i feel my ball striking is very good and i can feel any off center hits but i don't really have many as my right elbow always is so close to my right hip on the downswing i seem to get a good repeatable contact on the ball.
bill

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Good stuff Todd, and Bill, about the right leg and weight shift.

Just after I started playing I was given some excellent advice by one of the teaching pros at my club. Basically, his view was that a lot of people really misunderstood weight shift in the golf swing and that this misunderstanding led to people swaying from side the side.

He said that the correct move on the backswing is really to settle into the right hip. As an illustration, he stood in front of me and held a club out towards me, horizontally, at about waist height. I then stood square to him, as you would in a golf set up, and pulled straight back on the club with my right hand only, as if pulling the club from him. Against his resistance, I felt what he meant about settling into the right hip. With this motion, the right leg will not look to straighten and you will not sway to the right. Basically, you get a decent coil from which to unwind. That's helped me ever since.

nice one todd
great to hear you have a breakthrough
your set up with the irons sounds identical to mine so i can believe you are hitting the ball sweetly
like the other guys have stated the weight should be on your right side when using your driver
keep it up buddy
low 90's are around the corner

I was thinking that the fairway 3+w would still use a slight descending angle, as in this Adam Scott video (especially the close-up bit at the end). At any rate, it was working well last night. If it keeps working, I'll retire the driver for a while. There doesn't seem to be any difference in distance between the two clubs for me.

I would agree that with fairway woods you require a slightly downward blow the same as long irons (10 deg) but I personally don't do that when hitting a 3 wood or driver from a tee, I want the clubface hitting directly into the core of the ball at it's equator, just like the 3SKs book shows us so that maximum compression is created.

I'll need to experiment more. The perennial problem is that what I think I'm doing often bears little resemblance to what I'm actually doing.

Just a quick note re: weight at setup. cmays made mention a while ago about weight being centered or slightly toward target for irons, and back for woods. I've been incorporating this at setup and it's been working well - like Brian, it's promoting a steeper swing with irons and an automatically flatter swing for the woods.

I think, for a lot of people, the 3W is much easier to hit than the driver. As a result, there's no loss of distance from the tee but there is more control. I actually use a SLIGHT downward swing path with the 3W even off the tee, but I do tend to tee it up pretty low with that club. I guess, if you teed up higher, you would play it more like a driver. This could require little more than adjusting the ball position though.

hi
i think of it like this, with the driver the ball is set foreword and that tends to move the center of the spine and your weight more to the left side and as the ball moved back in the stance so does the center of the spine move back and so when you get to say a wedge the balls near the inside of the right foot and so in the weight of your body is more on your right side.
i hope that makes some sense.
bill

Would that be due to the shorter shaft or higher loft?

hi lowpost
it should be easer to hit a 3 wood to a driver as it has more loft and also as you say a shorter shaft but you will also swing with a slightly slower swing speed too.
bill

Bill, do you mean to say that you intentionally swing your 3 wood slower? Or that due to the shorter length, the club head speed is diminished?

I'd argue that swing speed is a non-factor here as it decreases as clubs get shorter.

no lowpost
i mean that if you swing with a shorter club then you cant swing it as fast as you can with a driver, like your swing speed with say a driver is 90mph and with 5 iron 80mph. i don't mean you try and swing slower. i think it was about 20 years ago one club maker made (tiger) irons i think it was all had shorter shafts and said it would make you play better as it lowered the swingspeed a little and let you control the club better.
bill