What does this sole pattern imply?

[KGrinols]

Hello.  I'm sure there are a million potential reasons, but I'm just curious for thoughts.

 

I take an old club I don't care about, to work to practice swing on my breaks.  It's a concrete floor, and I toss down a piece of cardboard, draw some lines for the club width, and just try to work on keeping the club within a reasonable window.  While I was doing this today I got curious about the marks I leave on the cardboard, so I used a black marker, colored the entire sole of the club, and tried to identify where and how I contact the ground.

 

I swung directly on the concrete (don't worry, I've never taken a divot that wasn't 3 inches behind the ball 😂) about 20 or so times, until I saw a pattern form.  While looking at it, I can only imagine what I have to be doing to hit that part of the sole repeatedly.

 

I was just curious if there's anything to glean from this.  Obviously coaching and lessons are first priority, and you can only tell so much without seeing the swing.  I get it.  Just thinking out loud more than anything.

 

 

As you can see from the image, my contact location is toe side, on the back/trail edge of the sole.

 

[SLP1967]

club is way too flat.... not sure how to mark that far back on the sole???

[1s1k]

+2 on too flat.

 

Also, you're going to hurt yourself eventually. Has wrist injury written all over it. 

[Valtiel]

Lots individual things that can be gleaned but the main takeaway is obviously that your toe is down and the heel is up at impact, which a vast majority of the time is a byproduct of the very common early extension/depth loss types of issues that most people have, stemming from incorrect rotation/pivoting that in turn upsets club path, hand position, and dynamic lie angle. 
 

If the specs of the club or unknown or known to NOT be standard then there is a chance that the club is either exceptionally flat in terms of lie angle and/or far too short for you, but the common swing issues mentioned are far more likely. Video of your swing would reveal the cause. 

Edited June 15, 2023 by Valtiel

[Nels55]

Toe down with reverse shaft lean.  In other words the clubhead is passing your hands too soon. 

 

Get a mat or something to hit on because as mentioned above you are likely to hurt yourself doing that.

[KGrinols]

Appreciate the responses.  Forgive me for the video quality, (and framing) tried to quickly make something work since it was requested.

 

I put a piece of packing tape down, so you can see the intended path of 'straight'.

These are old clubs I bought for my grandfather years ago.  Ping Karsten, black dot.  A quick Google search says black dot is standard lie angle.  I believe they were standard length and loft as well and have not been adjusted.  Club used is the W.  I am 6'0", but could see my arms being considered longer than average maybe?

 

 

[Mrgreen36]

That's a lot of def 

[Valtiel]

4 hours ago, KGrinols said:

Appreciate the responses.  Forgive me for the video quality, (and framing) tried to quickly make something work since it was requested.

 

I put a piece of packing tape down, so you can see the intended path of 'straight'.

These are old clubs I bought for my grandfather years ago.  Ping Karsten, black dot.  A quick Google search says black dot is standard lie angle.  I believe they were standard length and loft as well and have not been adjusted.  Club used is the W.  I am 6'0", but could see my arms being considered longer than average maybe?

 

 

Cheers for that, no worries about the quality/framing. We can definitely rule out any club specs as being the problem as you're doing a number of quite severe things in your overall motion that should be corrected:



Two things to note here, the first being alignment. You mentioned the piece of tape which your clubface is more or less aligned with, but your body isn't aligned to it at all, you're quite closed in your feet/hips/shoulders compared to it. If anything you should be *open* to that line with your body given where on your swing arc you hit the ball with wedges (earlier). This shut compared to your intended alignment is always a red flag with short clubs.

The second thing is your takeaway, there are about half a dozen things you're doing the inverse of what you want here. Monte Schienblum (a highly regarded instructor that is a regular contributor here) has one of my favorite clips on this you can watch here, and I recommend watching the whole video as well. This move of dragging the hands low and way inside is no good, and the feeling you're going to want is something completely the opposite, described here. There are several reasons to correct this, the main one being the general idea that you want to avoid sending the club in directions that deviate too severely from the lines you've already established, and we can see that the relationship between the orange line representing your alignment and the direction the club moves away from it is severe. This means somewhere later in the swing you're going to have to reroute the club significantly and you want to be eliminating those kinds of requirements. In the AMG video above they describe the feeling of hinging the club up in front of you as the feel and that is something I would work on.

Your body is also doing a ton of stuff very early. Your legs here end up in the kind of position that a pro might be in at the top of the swing with a driver, and here you are in the first 1/4 of a swing with a wedge. Way too much early hip movement.



Immediately after this we see you introduce some wrist hinge, but it is extension and flexion primarily (hinging backwards) with no radial deviation (hinging upwards) as described in the AMG video that you'll want to practice. This puts you in kind of the holy trinity of bad positions because of how many lines are crossed up here. The club at this point (P2) should be pointing somewhere roughly towards your target, and because of the excessively low and inside takeaway plus this wrist hinge move back you're pointing the club directly into the boxes. Everything after this is forced to become a set of compensations/corrections to even get back to the ball:



Up to the top you basically lift your arms straight up (because of how stuck around behind you they were) and there is basically no shoulder rotation happening at all. Also because you maxed out your pelvic rotation so soon we see you now standing up on your toes and starting to get your hips firing quite early.



Your downswing is forced to come out and in front of you (again more compensations because of all the "behind you" your backswing created), and you're pulling the club down both steep and from the inside. You're also again restricting your shoulder movement, likely as a result of completely stalling them earlier in the swing.



Down into impact position you can see the clubface has come from WAY inside the tape line, and the face itself is pointing a mile right of where you started, interestingly far MORE in line with where you were actually aiming. This would either be a complete block or even a shank if a ball was there, partially because of alignment and partially due to the club path issues discussed.

I know that is a lot to start with, but I would focus purely on the takeaway stuff first and worry about everything else later.

Edited June 16, 2023 by Valtiel

[KGrinols]

1 hour ago, Valtiel said:

Cheers for that, no worries about the quality/framing. We can definitely rule out any club specs as being the problem as you're doing a number of quite severe things in your overall motion that should be corrected:



Two things to note here, the first being alignment. You mentioned the piece of tape which your clubface is more or less aligned with, but your body isn't aligned to it at all, you're quite closed in your feet/hips/shoulders compared to it. If anything you should be *open* to that line with your body given where on your swing arc you hit the ball with wedges (earlier). This shut compared to your intended alignment is always a red flag with short clubs.

The second thing is your takeaway, there are about half a dozen things you're doing the inverse of what you want here. Monte Schienblum (a highly regarded instructor that is a regular contributor here) has one of my favorite clips on this you can watch here, and I recommend watching the whole video as well. This move of dragging the hands low and way inside is no good, and the feeling you're going to want is something completely the opposite, described here. There are several reasons to correct this, the main one being the general idea that you want to avoid sending the club in directions that deviate too severely from the lines you've already established, and we can see that the relationship between the orange line representing your alignment and the direction the club moves away from it is severe. This means somewhere later in the swing you're going to have to reroute the club significantly and you want to be eliminating those kinds of requirements. In the AMG video above they describe the feeling of hinging the club up in front of you as the feel and that is something I would work on.

Your body is also doing a ton of stuff very early. Your legs here end up in the kind of position that a pro might be in at the top of the swing with a driver, and here you are in the first 1/4 of a swing with a wedge. Way too much early hip movement.



Immediately after this we see you introduce some wrist hinge, but it is extension and flexion primarily (hinging backwards) with no radial deviation (hinging upwards) as described in the AMG video that you'll want to practice. This puts you in kind of the holy trinity of bad positions because of how many lines are crossed up here. The club at this point (P2) should be pointing somewhere roughly towards your target, and because of the excessively low and inside takeaway plus this wrist hinge move back you're pointing the club directly into the boxes. Everything after this is forced to become a set of compensations/corrections to even get back to the ball:



Up to the top you basically lift your arms straight up (because of how stuck around behind you they were) and there is basically no shoulder rotation happening at all. Also because you maxed out your pelvic rotation so soon we see you now standing up on your toes and starting to get your hips firing quite early.



Your downswing is forced to come out and in front of you (again more compensations because of all the "behind you" your backswing created), and you're pulling the club down both steep and from the inside. You're also again restricting your shoulder movement, likely as a result of completely stalling them earlier in the swing.



Down into impact position you can see the clubface has come from WAY inside the tape line, and the face itself is pointing a mile right of where you started, interestingly far MORE in line with where you were actually aiming. This would either be a complete block or even a shank if a ball was there, partially because of alignment and partially due to the club path issues discussed.

I know that is a lot to start with, but I would focus purely on the takeaway stuff first and worry about everything else later.

 

 

I've read this a few times already, and will read it a dozen or so more in the coming days.  I just wanted to give you a heartfelt and genuine thank you, for taking the time to go through all of the things you did. 
While I think there are some camera/perception issues with you alignment analysis (You can use the edges of the cardboard for parallels lines) everything else regarding my swing/body, I will 100% take to heart, and I will read them again and again, as well as watch all of the links you provided.  Thank you again.

[KGrinols]

17 hours ago, Valtiel said:

I know that is a lot to start with, but I would focus purely on the takeaway stuff first and worry about everything else later.

Sorry to bother you.  I watched the videos you linked a handful of times going through each drill one by one.  I've been through about 300 swings so far, will do another 200 tonight, and then probably another 200 tomorrow at the range.

I was hoping you could just let me know if you think it looks like I'm on the right path, before I waste those next swings.  I got what looks like a half decent check point on camera.  I know feel isn't real, but it feels like I'm lifting the club up straight in the air on take away. 😂. My left knee is still out of control, but I'm really focused on hands, wrists, and arms for the sake of this point in time.  My hands still go high, slightly above the white line coming into impact for that toe down delivery, but... 1 thing at a time I suppose.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

 

 

 

[SLP1967]

movement with the body looks much better through the shot

[Valtiel]

2 hours ago, KGrinols said:

Sorry to bother you.  I watched the videos you linked a handful of times going through each drill one by one.  I've been through about 300 swings so far, will do another 200 tonight, and then probably another 200 tomorrow at the range.

I was hoping you could just let me know if you think it looks like I'm on the right path, before I waste those next swings.  I got what looks like a half decent check point on camera.  I know feel isn't real, but it feels like I'm lifting the club up straight in the air on take away. 😂. My left knee is still out of control, but I'm really focused on hands, wrists, and arms for the sake of this point in time.  My hands still go high, slightly above the white line coming into impact for that toe down delivery, but... 1 thing at a time I suppose.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

 

 

 

You're definitely overdoing it a bit, but that is always preferable to the opposite. When you're at one extreme like you started with it is more valuable to flip to the opposite extreme than the attempt to slowing change by degrees. That might be for everyone, but personally I prefer that. I'd suggest this as your drill going forward:



Get to this point and stop/freeze, then feel like you simply make a simple "one piece" turn to the top feeling like you're just using your shoulders, no further wrist or arm hinging. Right now you're hinging up correctly but then you continue more than you should, both with your hands and with the exaggerated folding of your right arm:



The broad goal here to separate all of the necessary "up" and "around" in the backswing so you get a feel for how much of each is needed. At first you were exclusively "around" in your takeaway with all of the "up" coming later in that disconnected arm lift I mentioned. By flipping that and getting all of the "up" happening right at the beginning via the 45* hinging you can then focus on feeling the "around" via turning your shoulders with your arms connected (moving with your shoulders). Ideally this will also shorten your backswing, because right now you're getting all the way to parallel at the top with wedge, which virtually no one does (the John Daly's of the world excluded).



That fact that your spine angle changes this drastically is also a good indication that you're over swinging as you should only ever be swinging as "long" as your mobility allows. What feels like a half swing to you now is likely very close to a pro's full swing.

And you're welcome btw, i'm glad it was helpful! Since you have video and visuals to compare here, don't be shy about searching for pro swings online to study. Simply punch in something like "Adam Scott Iron Face On" or "Tiger Woods Driver DTL" and you'll get tons of resources to compare your positions to. I recommend focusing on fundamental elements though, things like spine angle, lower body positions, leg flex, clubface positions etc. There are tons of somewhat superficial aesthetic differences between any given pro's swing, but there are far more consistent underlying fundamentals that connect them all that are what you're going to need to learn in working on your own swing. You'll probably still benefit from seeing a professional and some point, but its still valuable to clean up all the most egregious stuff first.

[Jeffinplano]

that upright?