Any striking suggestions

[ezra76]

I have been hitting my irons very well off the tee on par 3's lately. I have all the confidence in the world and have been all over the stick with the 6-pw. Without a tee, it's like I'm a totally different golfer. I have been chunking shots, pulling them hard to the left, I can only recall one decent shot off the fairway today. On 4 different holes I had drives in near perfect positon and blew the approach big time. I'm actually happy when I hit it in the rough. At least I have a chance to get a little more grass under the ball. Any suggestions would be great, I'll be hitting the range a few times before I torture myself again on the course.

[ualtim]

I wish I knew how to solve you problem, but alas I am experiencing the same sensations over my last round and a half I am very much looking forward to an answer as I desire it as badly as you do.

[Ravenous Bugblatter Beast]

Check your weight when you take your stance. Is it back towards your heels, or are you getting your weight forward on your toes? A couple of weekends ago I had some trouble with my full swing shots, and it wasn't until I thought about it and realized that I had been getting my weight on my toes, that I figured out why I was having trouble getting my swing arc to bottom out at a consistent point.

Your description sounds like your swing arc isn't bottoming out at a consistent point, leading to fat shots when you drop your weight back down from standing up on your toes, or when you pull them to the left, your weight leans out even farther forward, and you have to pull the club back to the inside. With a fluffier lie, you may be feeling less anxious about having to pick the ball from a tighter lie, and you may subconsciously relax your weight more back towards your heels, and you end up with a more consistent swing.

All of the above is just a guess, but you may want to check that.

[chollyred]

Might also check that your weight shift on the backswing is not getting on the outside of your right foot. I have that problem if my right foot gets too perpendicular to the target line. The height of the tee let's me get away with it, where a tight lie ends up fat.

[Eracer]

Focus your vision on a spot an inch ahead of the ball, or at least on the front of the ball. Try to hit that spot with the leading edge of the club.

Same with your practice swing.

[ualtim]

Originally Posted by Ravenous Bugblatter Beast

Check your weight when you take your stance. Is it back towards your heels, or are you getting your weight forward on your toes? A couple of weekends ago I had some trouble with my full swing shots, and it wasn't until I thought about it and realized that I had been getting my weight on my toes, that I figured out why I was having trouble getting my swing arc to bottom out at a consistent point.

Your description sounds like your swing arc isn't bottoming out at a consistent point, leading to fat shots when you drop your weight back down from standing up on your toes, or when you pull them to the left, your weight leans out even farther forward, and you have to pull the club back to the inside. With a fluffier lie, you may be feeling less anxious about having to pick the ball from a tighter lie, and you may subconsciously relax your weight more back towards your heels, and you end up with a more consistent swing.

All of the above is just a guess, but you may want to check that.

Weight on the toes was it for me. Leaned back a bit today and things were clicking once again. Thank you RBB!

[SilverUberXeno]

I have salvation for you. I, like you, am capable of playing an exquisite iron shot. Yet we find our problem to be inconsistency. The key is the shoulders.

The next time you go to the range, SWEEP your shoulders. Do NOT dip your right sholder toward the ground on the downswing. Bring the head through the ball with your arms and hands as your body turns, but keep your shoulders level.

The last time I went to the range with my 5 iron, I hit about 20% well, 60% playable (that includes the 20% well) and 40% plum sad.

I went today, and out of 100 balls (with varying clubs), I hit maybe 5 bad shots. And they were because I let my shoulders dip. I'm at the top of my game in a day because I started making a very solid effort to rotate the shoulders instead of dipping them. I hope it works as well for you as it did for me.

Or maybe I secretly don't.. I could move up a spot in the world rankings.

I'm closing in on T-1,298,004,546 on the world money list.

[ezra76]

Thanks for all the suggestions guys. I'll be hitting the range after my morning class tomorrow. First bucket hopefully I'll get back to comfortable with my swing. Second bucket, I made a course outline with the tee and approach shots for every hole. Taking into consideration my strengths (play the fade when I can) and the slope of the greens (leave uphill putts whenever possible). I also took the location of the traps into account as well as playing on a side where I can run the ball instead of trying to stop it dead on the green. Hopefully I'll beat my dad on Sun. My real goal is to break 90 on this course. They should have all the teeboxes open finally. It's a 129 slope, difficult as I used to play a 118 all the time.

[Matthew_22]

The problem may just have been with your confidence also, you may have had a bad lie and hesitated on the shot.

But now that you seem to have it sorted out, I guess it just comes down to practice so that you can get that swing ingrained in your mind.

One drill that I recommend is using an old iron, and hitting a small bottlecap from the cement. This requires a near perfect strike, and might also help your confidence too as I gaurantee for the first few times your swing will be very hesitant.

[ezra76]

I just had the biggest revelation in the past year at the range. I hit over a 100 balls off the grass with my irons and shit you not when I say 90% were absolutely perfect. I even started putting the ball back into my divots...not a problem at all. I took a lot of your suggestions, a few things from Golf magazine as well a minor swing change I've slowly been implementing. Here are my changes.

1. Biggest change - Opened my right foot instep and worked on rolling my foot instead of lifting it. This was the key, I hit literally 40-50 dead straight, perfect flighted shots in a row. I had to slow my swing down a bit since it really hurts the hip to go to violently with the foot planted.
2. Kept the shoulders more level.
3. Maintained the shaft angle through impact. This I did using the wrist hinge rather than the old shoulder dip that was causing my chunkfest.
4. The swing change... I have been working on keeping my left arm much straighter, using more wrist hinge instead of elbow bending. I hope to develop smoother more consistant power by doing this.

I hope I can carry this into tomorrow's round. I feel so confident I'm considering pulling the Sonartec's and breaking out the 3 and 4 irons.

[SilverUberXeno]

I definitely know the feeling, buddy. Using my arms for the vertical movement instead of the shoulders gave me that same awesome confidence. I actually had the guy at the range next to me offer to play a round. He must've been impressed =)

Keep it up, and tell yourself what you're doing that works so well. You don't want to slip sometime and forget the golden swing.

[ezra76]

Originally Posted by SilverUberXeno

Keep it up, and tell yourself what you're doing that works so well. You don't want to slip sometime and forget the golden swing.

Thanks. I havent been playing that long but long enough to know that the "golden swing" never lasts that long. I am excited to keep working on it, hopefully continue to simplify it. Felt great today though, just like last year when I shot 84 and 85 in back to back rounds.

[SilverUberXeno]

Well, the 'golden swing' is just knowledge enough to know what you're doing wrong. If you're chunking the ground before the ball, you're losing altitude somewhere. Check your shoulders, then your spine-angle, then your knee bend. If you're hitting it thin, I'd go knees first, then spine, then shoulders.

The next time you're hitting those fantastic shots, just try to map out what you're doing. No shoulder dip, just a lateral turn. Moderate hip turn, wrists swinging through comfortably... It's alright to have a bad round, but it's not alright to not be able to fix it.

[ezra76]

The swing made it into today's round. I hit 2 bad iron shots all day, one in the drink with a 9 I caught real thin and the other doesn't really count... 50* wedge on a par 3 where I stupidly didn't use a tee and hit it fat, stayed on by 18". The course had a replica of Sawgrass #17 from about 115yds. My poor dad hit it in twice. My driver on the other hand really screwed me over. I switched the weights around again and could only hit fades. I sliced 3 drives OB and it wrecked my scorecard.