Hands further away from body at impact

[koonl]

Re: Hands further away from body at impact

Yeah, I hve to watch that sometimes - I'm told that I must pinch the right thumb against the forefinger, which sometimes leads to the V pointing to the chin. If I relax it, it then points to the shoulder, but I'm then criticised that the thumb and forefinger are too relaxed!

What's your opinion?

Thanks again for the comments - took me a long while to get there!

[GoNavy]

Re: Hands further away from body at impact

Yeah, I hve to watch that sometimes - I'm told that I must pinch the right thumb against the forefinger, which sometimes leads to the V pointing to the chin. If I relax it, it then points to the shoulder, but I'm then criticised that the thumb and forefinger are too relaxed!

What's your opinion?

Thanks again for the comments - took me a long while to get there!

Well with the right hand the thumb and first finger do absolutely nothing, you can hit with both of them completely off the club and it would make no difference, so relaxed is the way to go, don't know why anyone would critizes that being done. Grip presure with the right hand is in the middle and ring finger only. The presure points with the left are the last three fingers and only enough to maintain the contact of the heelpad to the shaft, which is not very much. If you do it correctly you will feel the muscles on the inside of the forearms, both left and right, these arre the muscle you need, not the outside of the forearms. If you tighten the forefinger and thumb on either hands, you will feel the difference, and those outside muscles.

Has for the pinching the thumb and forefinger deal, it really is only a touching, not a pinch, and people usually do this just to ensure that you get your thumb over on the target side of your club. If you allow it to ride on top, or worst yet, to the right, you will almost certainly end up using it, weather you want too, or not.

Don't feel bad, this happens to everyone. My grip gets off as well, it is something that needs to be checked often. Awhile back, I noticed my right hand had sneaked over to the top of the club, if I had not been here with GTO, might have been that way for months, before I diagnosed it.

[koonl]

Re: Hands further away from body at impact

Very good comments - thanks GoNavy and to everyone else - been to the range lastnight with excellent results!

Enjoy the Masters!

[a_hornsfan]

Re: Hands further away from body at impact

I suffer from the same problem in terms of my hands coming to far over the ball. I am really amazed and how much you have corrected this in the second set of photos. Can you talk about what you worked on.

[koonl]

Re: Hands further away from body at impact

I suffer from the same problem in terms of my hands coming to far over the ball. I am really amazed and how much you have corrected this in the second set of photos. Can you talk about what you worked on.

I first worked on flattening the shaft on the downswing. I stop half-way back in the backswing, and then rotate my forearms to flatten the shaft how I would like it to be in the downswing. I then rotate it back and forth, from flat to steep, to get a feel of how much I need to flatten the shaft, or rotate the forearms on the downswing. Then take a few practice swings, and when I pull the hands/arms down from the top of the swing, I make a conscience effort to rotate the forearms to flatten the swing. Of course how much rotation required will be judged by the exercise described earlier.

However, you need to make sure that you rotate the hips out of the way so that you can release your right side, otherwise you can either block or hook the ball. I find that correct hip clearance on the downswing also helps in getting the flatter plane. I now make a conscience effort to turn the left hip just before the arms come down, sometimes at the same time. I try not to let the hips turn violently, but steadily, otherwise the club gets stuck behind you. Make sure that you "turn" them, and not swaying to the left.

The hip clearance tends to let the hands drop down almost vertically back into the original address position, whereas a less dynamic hip turn will obstruct the path of thr arms, and so are forced to come down at a steep plane.

The action of flattening the swing by forearm rotation is not natural for me and it feels strange. But this seems to be the only way of doing it. Is this the correct feeling that we all should be doing? I played today but never did the rotation fearing that I will smother the shot somewhat - it went ok on the range, but didn't have the confidence on the course. I just swung like my old swing, though I did add that hip turn on the downswing.

Hope this helps

Thanks

[a_hornsfan]

Re: Hands further away from body at impact

I think you are definitely on the right track with the left hip starting the downswing, because even Ben Hogan himself said that should be your downswing trigger. :-)

I really don't understand the whole "rotate the forearms" and what that has to do with keeping your hands closer to the body at impact. I just can't figure that one out. Sorry.

[koonl]

Re: Hands further away from body at impact

I think you are definitely on the right track with the left hip starting the downswing, because even Ben Hogan himself said that should be your downswing trigger. :-)

I really don't understand the whole "rotate the forearms" and what that has to do with keeping your hands closer to the body at impact. I just can't figure that one out. Sorry.

No could I! It was Chessbum who mentioned on the side that my shaft was not over the forearm - I thouht I'd add the comment in for that as well. I don't think that it makes too much of a contribution to getting the hands closer, as I can still hit it left or slice/fade and still get my hands close to my thighs. The steady hip rotation, I believe, is the key to getting the arms down without obstruction. The forearm rotation is just to deliver the club more inside/square.

Just one other point - as an experiment when I first tried to correct this, I kept my lower body very quiet at the start of the downswing, and tried to swing with my upper body only. The idea being, is to see if I can return the hands down close to my body - and I couldn't, no matter how much I tried to force my arms down into the inside. If you clear your left hip correctly you will find that you can do this much more easily. At speed, it is difficult to route the arms down the correct path unless the hips are clear and at the right time - clear or spin the hips too early/fast will cause the hands to lag or get stuck behind. Just need the right balance of speed and timing to get it right - my key was to get the left "pocket" of my trousers to spin behind me.

I hope this helps you - I've been dogged by this problem ever since starting the game 5 years ago, and this is my turning point. I still have this problem on the Driver, but I can often reach 270 yards anyway, so I'm not complaining! For irons and approach shots, I think this is crucial.

Good luck and let me know how you get on.

[a_hornsfan]

Re: Hands further away from body at impact

One thing I would recommend is that if this is going to be your regular swing you definitely want to go get the lie check on your irons. Chances are you need a more upright club.

[koonl]

Re: Hands further away from body at impact

Can you explain how you came to that conclusion? I've just come back from a Cobra demo day, and I've explained to them my problem - I'm using MP-32 irons with DG R300 shafts, std lie and loft. I've also got another set of Mizuno irons that have S300 shafts - now this set feels a lot boardier, but goes fairly straight, whereas the R300s produce a slight pull or pull-hook. They only recommended changing the shaft to a DG Lite S300, but not mentioned anything about lie and lofts. Thanks

[golfonenemesis]

Re: Hands further away from body at impact

If your hands are further away at address, they will tend to be too close at impact
If your hands are too close at address, they will tend to be too far at impact.
Go back to posture at address, stand in athletic guard position, get that spine angle right(not too tall not too rounded-lay a club down from your head down spine), let arms hang naturally with club in left hand, then, place right hand on club-this keeps proportion of left and right shoulders, places you just right distance from ball. With driver, you can stand to be a little further away but with the irons-its a killer.

[a_hornsfan]

Re: Hands further away from body at impact

If you notice that your hands are just always going to be upright somewhat at impact, you probably should hit what the call a "lie board" a couple of times. It will give you an idea if you are consistently needing to adjust the lie of your clubs. I personally need about three degrees upright. Getting this adjusted can make a HUGE difference in the number of solid hits you get. Simple trick is to take a look at your divots. Is one side deeper than the rest??? If so, definitely get the lies checked.

Hope this makes since. I used to work in a golf repair shop. It always amazed me how hard people worked on thier swings but neglected getting their clubs properly fit. I mean it is the clubs that hit the ball and if they aren't set up for you, what good is it?

[koonl]

Re: Hands further away from body at impact

The tape on the sole was just off-centre towards the toe, maybe 1/2 to 1 centimetres from the middle mark. What does that indicate?

[a_hornsfan]

Re: Hands further away from body at impact

Depending on the shape of your sole, you might only be about 1 degree off. I probably wouldn't sweat it right this moment, but the next time you are in the presence of a GOOD club maker/adjuster I would ask their opinion, but I wouldn't necessarily run out today and get everything changed.

Honestly, I am surprised after seeing your first clips. You must have really fixed how far your hands were from your body. I want to see a new clip.

[koonl]

Re: Hands further away from body at impact

Since this clip, my hands have got back to their original position at the impact position! I don't think I have ingrained that feeling yet and I've wondered off that sensation - I still think it's to do with the correct hip action on the start:

If you look at the swing sequence of myself and Faldo, I've traced the hand path from address to impact. With both swings, you can see that the hands come down flatter in relation to the backswing. However, my hands are a good 5 inches from the original position at impact, whereas Faldo's are back to their original. This can be attributed to the correct hip clearance on the way down, giving the arms enough room to swing through the hitting zone. In my impact sequence, my hip angle has straightened somewhat, and as I am correctly feeling that my right elbow is connected to the right hip during the downswing, if the hip is going out nearer towards the ball instead of mainintaing it's distance, my elbow will also be closer to the ball and therefore so are my hands. It looks as if also my right knee/leg is going out towards the ball as well, instead of heading towards the target.

It's all complicated stuff, but I think that the correct hip transition, clearance, turn, transfer, or whatever you want to call it, is vital to allow the arms to return to their original impact position as closely as possible.

Having said all this, the same day this was recorded (yesterday), I had the lie angle checked on my clubs using tape and a lie board - all three shots tested were bang on the middle, and I'm using std length and lie clubs.

On another observation, my arms used to be on the same plane as my shoulder at the top of the swing. I recently had a free lesson with Cranfield at the London Golf Show the other day, and he spotted this and got me to swing the hands more in front of my chest, so that the hands are higher above the shoulder line. This would allow my hands to have more space to drop down to a flatter plane back to the ball. As you can see, the arms are more above the swhoulder line than my original pics posted, but I think it needs to be a little more.

On the subject of wrist cock, most of the pros have the shaft in this laid of look at the top, with little wrist angle than mine. If I'm using Greg's method of hinging the wrists (up and down), I tend to create massive amount of wrist cock and therefore power, but tends to go across the line and have about 45deg of rwrist angle - this is detrimental with my drive. It looks like Faldo is hinging more of his right hand back, generating a far flatter left wrist. Would this naturally happen when the hands are higher above the shoulder plane?

Thanks all

[koonl]

Re: Hands further away from body at impact

Forgot to add the pics! here they are now