Still fading.

I have asked for help on this before .Trouble is it comes and goes without warning and I am still at a loss to explain it.My shots are fine and predictable with every club up to and including my 5 wood.Numbers3 and driver always fade at the moment.Any ideas?
Peter

You are probably trying to swing them faster and coming out of your posture. Swing them the same speed as your sand iron and ensure you maintain your spine angle and keep your head behind the ball.

do you fade these clubs all the time, or just occasionally.

if you do it all the time it could be that the clubface is fractionally open on impact.. few ways to fix this.... close it a fraction, swing a little within yourself like brianw suggested. or possibly get a stiffer shaft which won't stay open due to being a softer flex than your other shafts (assuming it's softer).

or... buy a new driver with a more closed face, or buy a driver with a draw bias..

obviously the last 3 suggestions are the ones that cost $$$ and still might not fix your fade.

Hi Peter,

Your situation is not that unusual.

Many players have swings good enough to be able to manage the other clubs up to the 3 wood, and they slice the driver.

I say manage, because in many cases, although they hit the short irons up to say a 6 iron reasonably straight, perhaps the long irons, 5 wood and 3 wood have a slight though manageable fade.

I wonder if you can assess the above statement, and let us know if that is the case, and we can go from there.

Ted

Ted,All the irons go exactly where I want them With an A1 grouping during practice and precise in stroke play,same with 3 And 5 wood.could not be happier.Went to practice this morning and still spraying them with my driver, Although not as bad.I had noticed my left arm was not straight during back swing.Straightening this out and bingo they started to straighten out.More work on this to break this bad habit will be required.I can work with this.Next problem arising is distance.I can only get 180yds out of it.This may be a limitation placed on me because of the hardware in my lower back not allowing me to coil enough,posture, just dont know.How do i know if i am coiling enough ,I am hitting the middle to top third of the club ,it is very frustrating.I am even wondering if i bought a counterfeit club.I have a mate at the club who routinley drives 280 ,I will give him a go with it next wednesday and see what he gets out of it.I have never trusted it enough to put it in my bag until now.
Kind Regards
Peter

Hi Peter,

I don't think it's the club. I know what you bought and it's a good club. It would be interesting to have the other fellow hit it.

If you are slicing the ball, you will definitely lose distance, unless you have a power fade. If the ball is ballooning and falling to the right, it will likely go no farther than the 180 yards you speak about. You may have a lot of backspin as well as side spin.

When I had a slicing problem, I did not get distance with my driver also. I was better off using my 4 wood, which I made solid contact with and got as much distance as with the driver, and it was a lot straighter.

It could be a swing problem, like swinging too fast, path, face angle, or too steep. Asking you pertinent questions and with suggestions, we should be able to sort out the problem. It will require patience.

You say you are making good contact at the upper part of the face? Are basing this on the ball mark on the face, or masking tape? Is the contact centered, or to the toe? Missing the sweet spot by 1/4" in any direction, will reduce distance by 10%, and by 1/2" it will be a 20% reduction.

Do you know what your path or face angle is? Take a look at the thread "skull"ing fix, for ways to check for these.

Ted

Hi Ted,
I have pretty much got the ball going straight by straightening my left arm in the back swing. I even got a good grouping of balls but only at 180 yards or so. They didn't roll on so I believe there was a lot of back spin. This could also be why the tee always landed way in front of me. I don't know what path or face angle is but I did look at the thread and should be able to do the coat hanger thing tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I am hitting the sweet spot judging by the mark of the ball on the face of the club. So basically, by straightening my left arm in the back swing I've stopped the ball ballooning and fading and got a little more distance.
I am intrigued about the masking tape, can you explain what to do?
The next thing I was going to do was really work hard on flexibility of my trunk and shoulders. I really don't know how successful I'll be but I figure it's worth a go.
I thank you for your aid; I have plenty of patience and plenty of time.
Good health
Peter

Hi Peter,

Note that the left arm need not necessarily be rigidly straight. That could be the power loss, if you are straining to make it straight to the point your arms and wrists are not able to rotate and release properly. Particularly on the backswing you can allow the elbows to bend if it will allow you the extra arc, which your back will otherwise restrict you. It' a matter of "light" rigidity which keeps the elbow bend consistent through the swing, so you can meet the sweet spot. You could see this a bit in Fred Couple's video in the current thread "can the secret help...". You will see that even at impact, Couple's elbow is not ramrod straight. You can stop action and pause the video by putting you cursor on the duration button at the bottom of the video screen and while holding the mouse button down, moving the button.
I do not recall but I would bet you that Don Trahan's swing has a bent left arm. There are many good golfers who have bent elbows. Even when Hale Irwin was young, he had a very bent elbow, and I'm certain you will be able to find videos of his swing on you tube.

There is another point you might check. With your adherence to the Don Trahan method, I wonder if you are lifting your arms "up the tree", without continuing to turn your shoulders (i.e. body). I believe that any good swing should have the shoulders and arms connected, even in the restricted shoulder turn of the Trahan method, The arms and shoulder swing should each reach their end at the same time. If you disconnect the arms from the shoulders (body), you will probably have essentially an arm swing, whereas the shoulder and upper body (back, torso, etc ) working with the arms is excluded.

I believe there are misconceptions about the swing, in regard to what powers the ball. You can't think of muscling the club onto the ball, and that is going to propel the ball the good distance. Particularly, when people get a driver in their hands they think in order to hit it far, they have to grit their teeth and tense their muscles and bludgeon the ball. You can look at swings like Couples and get a misconception that he is using his hip and leg drive and all body parts to muscle the ball away. Look at the video again, or of tiny women golfers, like Mi Hyun Kim, with a new perspective. It's all about developing speed. The applicable physics formula is Force = ma. The mass of the driver clubhead is less than 200 gms, so what has a major influence to power the ball has to be increasing speed. You can now look at Couples' swing and see how relaxed his hands and arms really are. The arms are more like buggy whips than rebar. His whole swing is made to develop a crack the whip effect. Not to repeat myself, I commented in the "secret" thread about the supportive role of the hips and legs, which you might read. That is not to say that the hips and legs do not provide power, which has been a subject of debate on the forum and others, but my mind and others it is secondary. Again, Don Trahan's method does not advocate strong lower body action, and you can see he has good speed through the ball, and his son is not a short hitter.

Regarding the factor of faster hip and leg drive, I would say the stronger and faster the drive, it will be able to, and be needed to, support a faster upper body swing. So which comes first, the chicken or the egg.

Regarding the masking tape, just put it on the face and you will see the ball mark. Don't be afraid of taking this to the course and playing with it on. It will give you feedback, under real conditions.

Flexibility is good. Every inch of extension and arc will give you more distance. It's not only in the arms, shoulders and back, strengthening your core, hip flexors, glutes and hamstrings will allow you to maintain the angles and support your swing.

I apologize to everyone for being so long winded, but I wanted to be clear to Peter with this message.

Ted

Hi Ted,
I practised this morning using the coat hanger wire, may I make a suggestion have it coloured in bright tape, it's almost impossible to find if you miss hit and collect the wire on the way through ( I'm still hoping to find it!)
99% of the strokes seem to hitting the centre of the club using the tape. The main thing stopping the fade was not my left arm but not turning my hips early enough. Once I let my hips lead in rotation, the fading disappeared. I don't think the weight transference is right, it doesn't feel like I'm getting anything like Couples or Trahan or in fact anyone I have seen on video. I rotate the hips but I don't think I'm leading with the hips.
It feels a lot like I am muscling the ball which would explain why a 3 or 5 wood can make the same distance as the driver.
I can't tell if I am getting the wrist 'whipping' action; I probably need to get someone to watch me so I can get accurate feedback. It could be that the straight arm practise is so ingrained that it's stopping the wrist cock.Some of this I have thought of since arriving back home; another practise will reveal more I think. We don't have a driving range here, we use one of the fairways to practise on so it can get a little crowded at times.
I'm playing on the course tomorrow. I'll see if I can get some constructive feedback then.
Good health
Peter

Hi Peter, I sent a private message.

Stay with it.

Keep well,

Ted