Swing Video: Can't feel my casting

Hi everyone, just joined the forum a couple of days ago. I picked up golf when I was 12 with a full year of lessons, and played through high school on the team and such. Once college hit, I completely dropped the game, and now that I've graduated and joined the corporate world, I'm trying to pick up my game again.

My main gripe is this casting move I have at the top to start my downswing. I could not feel this at all, until I took some videos and looked at myself. You can see my before swing below. I then decided to take a lesson to get a couple pointers. The instructor's teaching philosopy wasn't based too much on mechanics, so my slight casting move wasn't touched upon. Instead, we worked on getting my hips firing better, increasing my swingspeed resulting in a much crisper and compressing impact on the ball.

While the results of the lesson were satisfying, I'd still like to see if I can eliminate my casting move. The second video is my swing after my lesson, and to my surprise, the casting move was still there. I could have sworn that I felt like I was dropping my arms into the "slot" with initiating the downswing with my hips. But I was wrong. As you can see, there is the initial cast, but I'm somehow able to make up for it and get the clubhead coming a little bit from the inside.

How do I work on eliminating this casting, especially if I can't feel it at all?? I'd really appreciate any help I can get with this frustrating flaw.

Swing before lesson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjahNc2m6pQ

Swing after lesson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJFXG9pUKyY

Slow motion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG6wQknnDlc

When your hands are the top of your backswing, make sure they aren't dancing around, they just simply pull back down on the same swing plane in which they took off.

Great backswing for 70 % of the way, and then as you complete your backswing your right arm gets very deep (flares out and goes behind you) this causes the club to cross the line (pointing right of target line).

From this position there are two things that can happen, you can re-trace the line that your club travelled on which will result in a path very much from inside of the ball resulting in either a push to the right or if the hands get over active a hook left

the second thing that can happen and does with your swing is that your shaft angle steepens on the way down leading to a very crouched impact position which does make it hard to have a consistent ballflight


Remedy:when completing your backswing, try to get the feeling of laying the club off ( pointing left of the target) which would be helped by not letting your right arm fold behind you. this will then help you to put the club on a better plane on the way down

I see a couple of things which, at least, I would find troublesome.

In the video of the swing after lesson, it looks like you make a rather bad move at the top of the backswing, as you try to get some extra extension. The problem is that your left arm breaks down, and for most every person who golfs, breaking the left arm during the backswing is bad. Very bad.

Keep your left arm straight is one of the best starting points for a golf swing, and would likely help you a lot. It stabilizes the the position of the clubhead at the end of the arch, and helps to promote more consistent contact with the clubface. Also, keeping your left arm straight will help prevent you from making a move to get your hands whipping out in an effort to try to straighten out the left arm on the downswing.

All of the above is just based upon the limited data of your videos, but it looks to me to be a good starting point to address a problem area in your swing.

To a certain extent "keep your left arm straight" is a little bit misguided sometimes.

It all depends on your flexibility on whether you can maintain a fairly straight left arm, Nick Price is a classic example of a player who plays with an ever so slightly bent left arm.

as regards width on the downswing, because of your right arm folding in behind you, your arms are naturally working back down on a steeper plane as this is the easier of the two routes on the downswing, this can sometimes look like a casting motion but is actually a result of the shaft steepening and the hands reacting by trying to release in some sort of a way earlier than usual.

Well, sure it can bend some, but I'm guessing a bit from the angle that our threadstarter here is making a somewhat nasty little bend at the top of his backswing that may be causing him a number of troubles.

The left arm bending can likely be especially bad for golfers who tend to cast or come over-the-top, because it can make the swing very handsy in the attempt to get everything back to square for impact. At least I know this for me: if I keep my left arm straight, it keeps my hands very quiet on the downswing. If I go and make a swing, and bend my left arm, my hands want to start doing all sorts of awful things which very often deviate from a good swing plane.

I believe it is generally easier to maintain a good and stable swing plane by keeping the left arm straight.

There are some who can disregard such advice because of their supemely better and native eye-hand coordination.

i didnt disagree that his left arm was bending but it is a consquence of his right arm folding in behind that then pulls his left arm more across his chest causing his left arm to bend.

That makes for an interesting question, as to what causes what.

Conceivably, by trying a swing thought of keep the left arm straight, that could preclude his right arm from folding in and bending the left arm. The advantage of it it seems to me is the simplicity of the thought, and it's not a negative type of thought which Harvey Penick didn't like.

Instead of "Don't fold my right arm in" it may be better to think a positve type of thought, "keep the left arm straight."

Of course, as you suggested, laying the club off thought might also prevent the folding in of the right elbow, and it might also lead to him maintaining a straight left arm.

I'd prefer the arm thought over the club thought overall, but that just might be the way I like to think about it.

Thanks for the suggestions.

That left arm has also been a bother for me as well. Ever since taking a good 4 year break in college and coming back, I've developed all these bad habits that could drive anyone crazy.

I think my left arm breaks down because subconsciously I'm trying to overextend my swing, as ravenous said. Next time I hit the range, I'll be working on laying off the club and keeping my left arm straight. That left arm is going to need alot of work if I'm going to work on creating lag.

Can't wait to hit the range once my sore back heals up a bit.

And swing easy, nice and easy is always a good way to start, don't try to kill the ball.

Definitely. I keep having to relearn that time and time again.

Fixed my swing!!!!!

I've regained my old feel back! I'm super excited. I think I've gotten rid of that hitch at the top. Now it feels like i'm coming at it alot better from the inside path. Slowed down my tempo and hitting it at 50% really helped too. Here's the new swing....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRxiK5lTxuQ

Now I need to work on upping the swingspeed, and staying grounded a lil better. You can see that upon impact, I'm actually on my tippytoes. Pretty ugly.

Thanks for all the help guys.

That looks much better.