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Post by imperfectgolfer on Aug 3, 2012 7:08:34 GMT -5
See this 3jack blog on his driver woes during a competition. 3jack.blogspot.com/2012/08/3jack-round-73112-fsga-amateur-qualifier.htmlHe was snap-hooking his driver shots. He then tried to "hold the face off as much as you can with the driver" (whatever that means), and then he states that he finally figured it out later in his round. What did he figure-out? Or did he figure it out? I noted that his next drive was described as follows-: "This drive was hit well, but I pushed it and it over-cut too much into the right fairway bunker". I would be interested in knowing if 3jack really knows why he was snap-hooking his driver left during that round. Jeff.
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Post by richie3jack on Aug 3, 2012 9:36:40 GMT -5
I stopped recording my swing on my Casio hi-speed camera about 2-weeks before the qualifier. This was done from more of a mental perspective as my feeling is that the greats of yesteryear often worked on their swings, but saved it for the range and avoided it in actual play.
Last year I tried this, not using the Casio for 10 days leading up to the Mid-Am qualifier. It worked decently enough, shooting 74. So I thought I was onto something. Looking back, I think this time it was a mistake and it’s a process I’m still trying to figure out how the best way to handle working on your swing going into a tournament without being over-consumed with mechanics when you actually play in the tournament.
Anyway, ‘holding off’ just meant that I felt like I wasn’t allowing the face to rotate closed. More of an angled hinge that *felt* almost like a vertical hinge. It worked as I hit a 300 yard drive on #5 (my 14th hole) when the ball actually landed in the rough at Metrowest. Then I hit a 320 yard driver on #6 which is on a flat terrain (also we are near sea level in Florida). #7 I overdid it and hit a cut into the fairway bunker. #9 I hit one about 280 yards down the middle of the fairway, but that hole you get almost no roll on.
The problem for me is that leading up to the tournament, I had bouts of this same thing happening. I would hit the driver poorly and then start to hit it really well on the back 9 and then go on the range and hit it well. The only difference was that in the tournament my bad drives were far worse.
Thus, I don’t believe that feeling like I’m almost vertical hinging the club is really the answer. It’s more of a band-aid approach that likely works for a day or two, maybe a week or two, and then goes back to the same problems.
One of the things I’ve started doing in my practice is to make sure to get some time with the Casio and the driver. Most of my swings I tape are almost exclusively with a 6 or 7-iron. But, I’ve found that the quality of my mechanics drastically changes with the longer clubs, in particular the driver.
One thing I found this week is that my feet at address were super-wide apart. I’m talking Moe Norman wide. I never even noticed it until I taped it on Wednesday. I don’t have Moe’s lower body action and I think you need that with the feet that wide apart. For me, I think the feet that wide apart were giving me a few sequencing issues on the downswing and stalling my pivot too much coming thru impact. So the path was getting a bit out to the right and I couldn’t time the face. With the irons, my feet look fairly ‘normal’ in their distance apart from each other and that’s why I have been hitting the irons great.
What’s funny is that once I narrowed my feet with the driver, my backswing plane looks much better as well.
There’s some other things I’m trying to work on as well, mainly trying to get my hand path in the backswing to move more on an inclined plane to reduce the compensations I make with my handpath which tends to go more inward and then upward.
George and I will be going over some videos I sent him tonight.
3JACK
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Post by imperfectgolfer on Aug 3, 2012 14:10:07 GMT -5
3jack,
You didn't actually address the issue of what was likely causing the snap hooks, and how you would correct the problem.
Jeff.
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Post by gmbtempe on Aug 3, 2012 14:28:02 GMT -5
3jack, You didn't actually address the issue of what was likely causing the snap hooks, and how you would correct the problem. Jeff. My experience is this can be very hard to detect, I end up trying a few different things to see the affect. (check alignment, check grip, swing further left, maybe not have as much #3 roll). Since the ball was starting out to the left the face likely had to be closed, maybe closed a lot if his normal shot is a CP type fade.
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Post by richie3jack on Aug 3, 2012 14:29:00 GMT -5
Read my post again, it's in the 7th paragraph.
There's other things I want to work on as well, but I would prefer not to discuss them online.
3JACK
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Post by richie3jack on Aug 3, 2012 14:35:34 GMT -5
Oh, one other thing.
Rear foot on the driver swing was too flared out, but just with the driver and 3-wood. Old habit that causes me to over-turn the hips too early in the backswing and throws off the sequencing and some alignments.
I did forget about that one. Again, with the iron swing I don't over-flare the rear foot.
3JACK
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Post by richie3jack on Aug 3, 2012 14:47:07 GMT -5
My experience is this can be very hard to detect, I end up trying a few different things to see the affect. (check alignment, check grip, swing further left, maybe not have as much #3 roll). Since the ball was starting out to the left the face likely had to be closed, maybe closed a lot if his normal shot is a CP type fade. I don't think it's overly difficult to detect. From a D-Plane perspective, particularly if you have hit this shot on Trackman, the face is almost always way too closed at impact. The question then becomes if the path is also going more inside-to-out. If you get on a Trackman, that will give you measurements and tell you point blank the D-Plane perspective, which is nice. Still, in the situation with a duck-hook, I think the face angle is far more important and I could have told you that was the main culprit. However, from a swing mechanics perspective it becomes hard to detect *when* you do not have a camera. That was my point in the first post I made...I wasn't using a camera for 2-weeks up until the tournament and I think it cost me. Once I got back on the Casio, I could see how some issues at p1 were affecting other mechanics in the swing and causing a very closed face at impact. Still, there are other things I am continuing to work on, particularly with my hand path which I believe as I improve that it will help improve the mechanics and alignments in my downswing and lead to more consistent path and face angle numbers. Some of those things I plan on working to improve my hand path I don't want to discuss here. I plan on getting on Trackman on Sunday to help get more concrete numbers and see how far I have to go. 3JACK
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Post by imperfectgolfer on Aug 3, 2012 15:08:05 GMT -5
3jack,
Maybe you think of the causes-and-cures of a "snap-hook" problem differently to me.
I think that snap-hooking is most likely due to one or more of these factors that predispose to a flipped clubhead at impact - i) slowing of the left hand motion through impact and/or ii) push-pressure applied to the aft side of the club at PP#3 by the right hand. I think that the solutions are therefore i) actively maintaining the forward motion of the left hand through impact so that the left wrist remains flat to well beyond impact and ii) avoiding any right arm push-pressure against the aft side of the club (at or near PP#3) at any time-point between P5.5 and P7.
I think that snap-hooking can also be associated with an uncontrolled roll action through impact - due to slowing of the pivot motion +/- an over-assertive forward motion of the arms/club through impact causing the forearms to roll-over through impact. I think that the solution is to concentrate on rhythm - making sure that the body and arms rotate at the same rotational speed (same rpm) between P6 and P8.
To solve the "snap-hooking" problem during a golf round, I think that one has to be able to "feel" if the club is flipping through impact, "feel" if the right arm/hand is over-actively pushing the club at PP#3 and flipping the club through impact, "feel" if one is stalling the pivot and/or left arm motion at impact, "feel" if one has torso/arm-club rotational asynchrony with the arms rotating faster than the torso through impact and "feel" if the forearms are uncontrollably rolling-over through impact.
Jeff.
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Post by burner on Aug 3, 2012 17:01:56 GMT -5
I think that much of Richies problem is in the wide stance, as he mentions, which restricts his pivot back through the ball. He then ends up reaching for it a little and out to in with a similarly aligned club face causes the hooks.
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Post by imperfectgolfer on Aug 3, 2012 17:18:30 GMT -5
Burner, You wrote-: "He then ends up reaching for it a little and out to in with a similarly aligned club face causes the hooks". I think that an out-to-in clubhead head path with a similarly aligned clubface produces a straight pull and not snap-hooks. I think that snap hooks are produced by a disproportionately closed clubface - as shown in the next diagram. The white shaft represents the ball-target line, the yellow shaft represents the clubhead path, the grey-black line represents the clubface angle and the red curved-arrowed line represents the snap-hooked ball flight due to a very closed clubface (relative to the path). Jeff.
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Post by gmbtempe on Aug 3, 2012 21:13:00 GMT -5
Burner, You wrote-: "He then ends up reaching for it a little and out to in with a similarly aligned club face causes the hooks". I think that an out-to-in clubhead head path with a similarly aligned clubface produces a straight pull and not snap-hooks. I think that snap hooks are produced by a disproportionately closed clubface - as shown in the next diagram. The white shaft represents the ball-target line, the yellow shaft represents the clubhead path, the grey-black line represents the clubface angle and the red curved-arrowed line represents the snap-hooked ball flight due to a very closed clubface (relative to the path). Jeff. I would like to know the miss is when it does not hook, if its out to the right I would imagine the path is usually inside out, the hook comes from the face closing, which could be so many causes it would be a pure guess. If the miss without the hook is a straight pull though the path is left, the duck hook is the same swing but the face gets closed. Richie said he missed out to the right so my guess is his path is relatively square to slightly inside out. Pure conjecture though.
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Post by richie3jack on Aug 3, 2012 22:21:40 GMT -5
3jack, Maybe you think of the causes-and-cures of a "snap-hook" problem differently to me. I think that snap-hooking is most likely due to one or more of these factors that predispose to a flipped clubhead at impact - i) slowing of the left hand motion through impact and/or ii) push-pressure applied to the aft side of the club at PP#3 by the right hand. I think that the solutions are therefore i) actively maintaining the forward motion of the left hand through impact so that the left wrist remains flat to well beyond impact and ii) avoiding any right arm push-pressure against the aft side of the club (at or near PP#3) at any time-point between P5.5 and P7. I think that snap-hooking can also be associated with an uncontrolled roll action through impact - due to slowing of the pivot motion +/- an over-assertive forward motion of the arms/club through impact causing the forearms to roll-over through impact. I think that the solution is to concentrate on rhythm - making sure that the body and arms rotate at the same rotational speed (same rpm) between P6 and P8. To solve the "snap-hooking" problem during a golf round, I think that one has to be able to "feel" if the club is flipping through impact, "feel" if the right arm/hand is over-actively pushing the club at PP#3 and flipping the club through impact, "feel" if one is stalling the pivot and/or left arm motion at impact, "feel" if one has torso/arm-club rotational asynchrony with the arms rotating faster than the torso through impact and "feel" if the forearms are uncontrollably rolling-over through impact. Jeff. I think there are a multitude of mechanical reasons that can cause a snap hook where the face gets too closed at impact. And I think there's numerous feels or visualizations a person can use to correct the problem mid-round...with none being 'right' or 'wrong.' Looking at the swing more with George, there are some other issues that are a bit problematic as well, even with the irons. I think the super wide stance with the driver just amplified those compensations even more. 3JACK
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Post by imperfectgolfer on Aug 4, 2012 0:06:47 GMT -5
3jack,
You stated-: "I think there are a multitude of mechanical reasons that can cause a snap hook where the face gets too closed at impact."
What are the other many causes other than those that I mentioned?
Jeff.
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Post by richie3jack on Aug 5, 2012 20:05:36 GMT -5
grip issues. may be incompatible with the swing or how the golfer swings it. Could be too strong and the golfer gets the face closed from the get-go and then closes it a little more in the downswing to impact. Could be too weak of a grip with the golfer making a big rotation of the face on the downswing and too early of a face rotation means a very closed face and a snap hook.
Could be LAFW issues in the backswing causing compensations in the downswing. Could be a simple closed faces at address (my dad's clubface is super-closed at address and he typically hits fade, but every once in a while he'll hit a snap hook). Ball position could cause a multitude of compensations.
Just to name a few. Depends on the golfer and their swing.
3JACK
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Post by imperfectgolfer on Aug 6, 2012 0:32:54 GMT -5
3jack,
You wrote-: "Could be a simple closed faces at address (my dad's clubface is super-closed at address and he typically hits fade, but every once in a while he'll hit a snap hook."
His closed clubface at address is obviously not causally responsible for a snap-hook if he habitually hits a fade shot, and only rarely hits a snap-hook. There must be some other biomechanical factor in play on those rare occasions when he hits a snap-hook.
I also do not think that a strong grip or weak grip is causally responsible for a snap-hook. There must be "something" else in play when a golfer suddenly hits a snap-hook, and that "something" is the casual agent.
Jeff.
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