3Jack's Swing Sequence

[cloran]

Richie,

I just watched you new video on youtube... man you get flat in the back swing. It looks great. I can't seem to get there for the life of me.

[Richie3Jack]

Thanks Cloran. I was getting wayyyy too flat at one point. This backswing is better and I get more leverage on the downswing and generate more speed. If I can keep this backswing, I'd probably be happy with it and just avoid getting too flat or getting laid off. I like a lot of the downswing from startdown to impact. The club exits much better and the clubface looks entirely better in the downswing.

I just want to start M3 with me hitting the ball pretty well and feeling comfortable and confident out there to hit 12 greens with ease and creep more into the 15-16 GIR level. With some changes I've made in my backswing it's not quite there yet. But if things go pretty well tomorrow, I'll probably go full bore into M3.

At one point last year I had my swing looking like this:



The head still hanged back a tad, but nowhere near what it does now and has done most of my life. When I was swinging like the pic above, the ballstriking and ballflight was incredible. I hit nearly everything flush, and the ball would bore thru the wind, raise up like a rocket and then settle down the middle.

If I can take the majority of my swing now, get the head more centered at impact and get an angled hinge, then I'll say 'I've reached nirvana' with my golf swing.






3JACK

[Richie3Jack]

Hitting the ball pretty well lately and I think I made a breakthrough on Module 3 to get that down. I asked Lag Erickson about it via e-mail to see if other students did the same thing.

Anyway, I've got an appointment to get on TRACKMAN this Saturday at 1pm at Celebration Golf Academy in Celebration, FL.




3JACK

[gmbtempe]

Nice, hopefully you will get a printout of the reports?

[Richie3Jack]

I told them that I want the reports e-mailed to me. Who knows if they'll do that. When I e-mailed them about the request to rent their Trackman, they said that was the first time anybody asked for that and they have only used it for fitting purposes.






3JACK

[gmbtempe]

Jun 22, 2010 21:25:56 GMT -5 Richie3Jack said:

I told them that I want the reports e-mailed to me. Who knows if they'll do that. When I e-mailed them about the request to rent their Trackman, they said that was the first time anybody asked for that and they have only used it for fitting purposes.






3JACK

maybe you can just snap a pic of the computer screen of the shots.

[Richie3Jack]

That would require me to have a digital camera. When it comes to technology, sometimes I'm a sad sack.





3JACK

[gmbtempe]

Jun 22, 2010 22:02:47 GMT -5 Richie3Jack said:

That would require me to have a digital camera. When it comes to technology, sometimes I'm a sad sack.





3JACK

use your phone, unless its one of those block things from the 80's ;D

[Richie3Jack]

Jun 22, 2010 22:07:38 GMT -5 gmbtempe said:

use your phone, unless its one of those block things from the 80's ;D

Don't you know I'm the lovechild of Gordon Gekko and Neno Brown?







3JACK

[Richie3Jack]

Today I had my Trackman session at Celebration Golf Club. If you have never been there, at least drive by it. This place is awesome. It's next door to Disney World and the course is immaculate. They have a private range for the golf academy which is beautiful and they will be adding an A/C indoor place to hit balls in October. But, you are hitting floater balls into water. That really takes out things like fitting out of the equation, but I'm mostly here to look at the club dimensions.

Going into the session I had discovered that if I keep my left shoulder low while I'm turning the torso thru and well after impact and just bring the hands around with me, the hands will go 'low and left' and I can start CP releasing it. I've only discovered it a few days ago, but I have video of me CP'ing it really well with an angled hinge.

My thoughts before the session were that I had really good clubface control and without trying to brag, I thought it was as good, if not better than half of the PGA Tour goes right now. Path wise I thought I was probalby swinging left now to a degree, but probably not enough to square up the path and the path was probably going out to the right a tad. And then my bigger nemesis was low point control and still working on my pivot.

I couldn't get the numbers e-mailed to me because they would look like a mess since I hit every club in my bag and never noted it. But, I saw the numbers on every shot and can give a general idea as to what they looked like.

IRONS

I was wrong on my iron assumptions a bit. However, I was correct on my clubface control.

Let me preface this by at first the target that we chose was actually a bit to the right of where I thought we selected it to be. I could tell because at first I was flushing shots straight at the target and the numbers had everything well to the left. Then I aimed shots right of where I had been aiming and everything started to make sense.

With that, once I got the target down, my clubface control was superb. I would say that 90% of my shots were in the range of 0.0 to -1.0* (left of target). Then about 95% of the shots the face was in the range of -1 to +1* of the target. And that was with all of my clubs. Really pleased with that.

But with the irons, I was actually swing a little bit too much leftward. As far as my attack angles, I would say they would be in the range of the PGA Tour average with the irons or shallower than that. For instance, I could hit a 7-iron with -4* attack angle on on shot and then flush another 7-iron and it would say -0.8* attack angle. As I mentioned, my low point control needs to be better and with the attack angle moving around like that, it makes sense that low point is a problem for me.

So my typical numbers with say a 6-iron would look like this:

-2.7* Attack Angle
-0.4* Face Angle
-4.0* HSP
-2.0* Path

It actually looks like a straight shot, but it's probably the tiniest bit of fades.

Again, that was with the irons.

With the driver, there was some great stuff here.

I can honestly say that I would 'zero out' the driver on the majority of my swings. Meaning that the:

- attack angle
- face angle
- HSP
- path

Would all be in the -0.5 to +0.5* range. Usually it leaned between 0.0 to -0.5* rather than 0.0 to +0.5* range.

So it's no wonder why I consider myself a good driver of the golf ball, the physics of my driver are excellent.

Now, I think before I got into Module 3, the numbers with the driver were probably very good, but more towards a draw swing.

The only problems I had with the driver was occasionally I would hit a little more down on the driver than usual, normally it was a -2.0* attack angle.

Also, while it's tough to tell with Floater balls, I think it was easy to see that my driver spins way too much and thus has a very steep landing angle. The vertical launch was at 12*, which is about perfect.

There is a swing I like to make on long, wide open fairways where I try to hit the driver on the upswing. I tried this a few times and it would result in a +4.5* attack angle every single time. But, to do this with the Module 3 work I've made in my swing, I have to aim my body WAYYYYY to the right. I did this a few times at Eastwood today and it worked great.

My 3-wood spins at an outrageous rate and I really need to find a different one for me.

Right now my misses are usually a bit on the fat side or the clubface gets really closed.

iteachgolf and I were discussing my swing the other day and the major problem I have is the clubshaft gets really flat on the backswing because I over-roll/over-load the #3 Power Accumulator. That causes me to get laid off at the top.

I think I can play scratch golf with that move and Trackman shows I can have excellent impact conditions with that move. BUT, I think my misses (fat and closed face) are due mostly to that move. Thankfully part of this will be worked on with a future module of ABS, but I think once I get that situated along with complete future modules of ABS, I am very excited about my future in golf.

In the meantime I really need to start dropping some weight and getting in better physical shape in order to make a more powerful pivot and add some more power to my game.

As far as Trackman goes...what an awesome tool. If you know D-Plane and you have instruction that is geared towards improving your D-Plane (even if your instructor doesn't really now D-Plane), combine that with Trackman and you'll be shocked at how it can help you. For instance, I do have a slight issue with aiming my body a little left of parallel and that little change saw me firing at flags today, even after the session I played at Eastwood and hit the ball quite well. And I probably only used about 1/4 of what Trackman has to offer.






3JACK

[slice_oftheday]

Awesome and informative post. That's some great data right there it seems like

I was on a trackman today at a demo day, path on irons would range from -3° to +3° with quite a few -0._'s and 0._'s, although fewer positive numbers. My attack angle was around -2 to -4 as well for a 6 iron. Driver swings had about the same path I think, possibly more low positive numbers like 2.

What does HSP (Horizontal Swing Plane) measure?

[johngrahamgolf]

Jun 26, 2010 21:24:07 GMT -5 slice_oftheday said:

What does HSP (Horizontal Swing Plane) measure?

Plane line at low point. Direction of the swing path: tangent to low point, not impact.

[jonnygrouville]

Richie,

You mentioned in another post about arching your left wrist at the top and some discussions you had with Dan. What are your thoughts on this at the moment? Is this something you are worried about or is this to be covered by a future module?

Cheers!

[Richie3Jack]

Jun 26, 2010 23:21:22 GMT -5 jonnygrouville said:

Richie,

You mentioned in another post about arching your left wrist at the top and some discussions you had with Dan. What are your thoughts on this at the moment? Is this something you are worried about or is this to be covered by a future module?

Cheers!

I think it's definitely a 'kink' in my swing. I think it does two possible things when I hit a bad shot:

1. The downswing plane gets a little more upright than usual and I swing a bit too far left and that causes the attack angle to get a little more steep I catch it fat.

2. The face gets a bit more closed at the top than usual and that closes the face at impact.

According to TeddyIrons, a future module works on getting the wrist a little more cupped at the top of the swing than bowed. If you've ever seen Lag's swing, it looks textbook. I'll probably wait to work on that until I reach the module. But I was very pleased with the Trackman results. I think my control of the club is quite good, I just need to keep working on it to ingrain it, get rid of the laid off move at the top, and continue to work to improve my pivot to better power the club.






3JACK

[TeddyIrons]

Ha ha... Lag would love your laid off move at the top! :-) He doesn't mind across the line or parallel either, but laid off works well with Lag's hitting protocol and he prefers it. I know you don't like laid off, but I guess you'll find out soon enough why he likes it and then you'll be able to evaluate that for yourself.