Tuesday Swing Update 12.22.09

Here's a new swing video update.



One of the changes I made was getting my dominant eye behind the ball at address. A couple of months ago I experimented with this. I'm right handed, but left eye dominant and I remembered reading Dr. Craig Farnsworth's book 'See It And Sink It' and he talked about how golfers should put their dominant eye behind the ball. Even though this was in reference to putting, I knew of 2 famous golfers with the same predicament as myself, Nicklaus and Hogan. And if you look, both of them have their head rotated away from the target so their dominant eye is behind the ball at address.


I tried this a few months ago with some success, but eventually abandoned it. But I decided to try it again and once again, there was some success there so I think I will add this to my swing. Not only did I notice some improvement in my ballstriking, but it showed up on video as my path and swing plane looked noticeably better as well once I got the left eye behind the ball at address.

Here's a look at my address with me moving my left eye behind the ball. I'd say I'm somewhere in the middle between what Hogan and Nicklaus did with their rotating their heads away from the target.


I was also debating on whether or not to work on the right knee at P4 (it's pretty much locked instead of being straightened, but flexed) or the clubface from P4-P6.

I decided to work on the clubface since that should take precedent over everything else on most occasions. One of the things that Ted Fort and I have discussed a few times before is my tendency to release the #3 Power Accumulator and out of sequence. Basically for those non-TGM readers, my clubface tends to get closed too early in the downswing. Here's a look at my swing from last week. Notice the clubface is closed enough that we can easily see the sweetspot on the clubface.


Now let's take a look at Spanish phenom and arguably the longest Tour player going, Alvaro Quiros.


Of course, there will probably be somebody saying 'Hey, try to use your own swing!' I could make a lot of rebuttals to point out the foolishness in that statement, but here's a pic of me from this past May when I was hitting the ball superb at at about the same point in the swing.


Much more square clubface with the sole of the club almost directly vertical to the sky.

Anyway, let's take a look at my current swing.


I see some slight improvement, but still a lot of work to do.

My main thought is thinking of this Peter Senior sequence.


Notice the pic on the upper right hand corner. Take a look at the clubface which is pretty much directly facing the camera. That's more of what I'm trying to achieve because if you get there you will create a lot of force with the clubhead.

In fact, I've been borrowing my buddy's SwingSpeed Radar (it works really well) and I've now noticed frequent increases in clubhead speed. Before I was consistently in the 85-87 mph range with a 6-iron and now I see a lot more readings at 90-91.

The Medicus works in the same fashion as if you close the club too early, the club breaks down. I think what more or less happens is that the club starts to feel heavier and becomes less aerodynamic and that's why my clubhead speed has started to increase as I'm probably getting a square clubface on the downswing much more often.

I'll work on that until I can get it down pat and then I'll likely move onto the lower body move and attack the head/neck tilt.





3JACK