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Here come the shanks again... help!

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tpcdeere

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tpcdeere - I stopped each video about half way down and reviewed this spot....I want you to do the same. What I want you to look for are: 1 - your right arm, 2 the clubhead, and 3 the clubface. In all of these videos your right arms is "away" or seperated from your body, the clubhead is still back by your butt, and the clubface is wide open. While it feels like you are doing the over the top move the path itself is still flat and your clubface is open so you are going to have to do a lot of "release" to get the clubface around but by doing so your hitting the hosel.

So, here is what I would want you to work on for the time being: A PUMP DRILL
The pump drill is there to give you the feeling from the top down to the ball. What to do? Take your backswing to the top and take a pause. Slowly I want you to bring your arms straight down keeping your right arm against your right pec. About halfway down the clubface should be just outside of your hands and the clubface should be slightly toe down.

The two big things are the right arm and clubface. When your right arm seperates too much from you in the downswing the club will be in a a very flat position. Review some tour player swings on youtube and watch them at that halfway down point and report back ok.

Remember - work the pump drill into your practice swings and then recall that feeling in a real swing. Start with slow swings and with your wedges and progress from there.

Patrick Nuber
PGA Certified Professional
GolfTEC - Golden, CO
 
GolfTEC said:
tpcdeere - I stopped each video about half way down and reviewed this spot....I want you to do the same. What I want you to look for are: 1 - your right arm, 2 the clubhead, and 3 the clubface. In all of these videos your right arms is "away" or seperated from your body, the clubhead is still back by your butt, and the clubface is wide open. While it feels like you are doing the over the top move the path itself is still flat and your clubface is open so you are going to have to do a lot of "release" to get the clubface around but by doing so your hitting the hosel.

So, here is what I would want you to work on for the time being: A PUMP DRILL
The pump drill is there to give you the feeling from the top down to the ball. What to do? Take your backswing to the top and take a pause. Slowly I want you to bring your arms straight down keeping your right arm against your right pec. About halfway down the clubface should be just outside of your hands and the clubface should be slightly toe down.

The two big things are the right arm and clubface. When your right arm seperates too much from you in the downswing the club will be in a a very flat position. Review some tour player swings on youtube and watch them at that halfway down point and report back ok.

Remember - work the pump drill into your practice swings and then recall that feeling in a real swing. Start with slow swings and with your wedges and progress from there.

Patrick Nuber
PGA Certified Professional
GolfTEC - Golden, CO
Click to expand...

TPC: I like Patrick's advice here. Though I didn't have the shanks, a while back I did suffer from a very similar situation that is evident in your videos. I was dropping the hands at transition and, even worse, laying down the club in the down swing. Like you, it was near my butt at half way down. I was, thus, getting VERY handsy to save the shot.

For me to fix it I videotaped my swing and compared it to Stewart Cink's and Nick Watney's swing (both tall guys). Once they got to the top of their backswing (from the down the line view), you could literally draw a line from their hands down to the ball and their hands would track that line all the way to impact. More importantly, the club face would pretty much follow the hands on that line, or be just slightly under it. I was shocked at the difference between that down swing and my own.

Once I got that vision in my head, I did a version of what Patrick recommended above. Worked like a charm and took very little time to get down. Even now, a few seasons after dealing with the issue, I still do that drill on the course if I think I am getting too flat with the club on the down swing.

Best wishes!
 
Thanks for the advice guys, I am excited to get out and try this, because I am tired of seeing the club behind me and can't fix it for anything.
@Patrick -- So I shouldn't be trying to come over the top, which seems wrong that I was trying that, the pump drill sounds like the hands come straight down, opposite of over the top?? Maybe putting something under my right armpit would help keep that arm from moving in the wrong direction? I looked at my video and one of Ben Crane, 1/2 way down I do see my right arm is totally away from me, unlike Ben's.
@interlooper -- Thanks for your input. If you were to draw a line on your old swing, did your hands go way under it and the club further under it? (Thats pretty much what mine do now) The things thats hard to visualize right now is if I do the pump drill, won't my hands be further under the line, and, what does the do to that clubhead?
 
tpcdeere said:
Thanks for the advice guys, I am excited to get out and try this, because I am tired of seeing the club behind me and can't fix it for anything.
@Patrick -- So I shouldn't be trying to come over the top, which seems wrong that I was trying that, the pump drill sounds like the hands come straight down, opposite of over the top?? Maybe putting something under my right armpit would help keep that arm from moving in the wrong direction? I looked at my video and one of Ben Crane, 1/2 way down I do see my right arm is totally away from me, unlike Ben's.
@interlooper -- Thanks for your input. If you were to draw a line on your old swing, did your hands go way under it and the club further under it? (Thats pretty much what mine do now) The things thats hard to visualize right now is if I do the pump drill, won't my hands be further under the line, and, what does the do to that clubhead?
Click to expand...

Hey tpcdeere. Yes, when I was struggling with dropping my hands and flattening the shaft on the downswing, my hand and clubhead would drop well below that line. (i.e. the line drawn from the hands at the top of the backswing to the inside portion of the ball). Indeed, the clubhead wouldn't come close to being near that line until it reached the height of my upper shins. As you can imagine, that gives the golfer very little time to correct the mistake, leading to very inconsistent shots (or in your case, sometimes shanks). It was incredibly frsutrating for me. It appears from your videos that is pretty similar. The club shaft is so flat coming down, that it doesn't come back near that line until it is the height of your lower shins.

I think Patrick will clarify the pump drill, but when I do it, I go to the top, pause, and then slowly bring my arms down that imaginary line. I believe Patrick is essentially stating the same thing. What I like to imagine is that on the down swing when the clubhead gets back to the height of where my hands were at address (typically the shaft is near parallel to the ground here)the club head is roughly in line with my hands or just barely outside the hands. Patrick is definitely recomending that, and I love that advice because that is what had helped me when I dealt with it.
 
interloop.... when you bring your arms down the imaginery line, do they feel as if they are traveling out toward the ball and then down... or just straight down? From what Patrick said, keeping my right arm (I'm LH) pinned against my chest on the downswing would make me think that my arms and hands would be coming down under the line quite a bit. I am hoping that keeping my right arm pinned will automatially put the club outside of the hands on the downswing a hair when the club is parallel, if thats the case, I will be celebrating big time, cause this is hard to fix. The thing I started working on a bit last week is keeping my right wrist flat, that has helped my ball strking a ton, keeping the face square!!
 
I will shank a short iron or a wedge once in a while and the reason I do that is I sometimes get loose with my right arm (right handed) on the takeaway and it flies out away from my body. What I have to do is really focus on making a pure turn back. I do a slow motion drill where I swing as slowly and perfectly back to the top and then down allowing gravity to take over from the top and I make sure to tuck my back elbow down to where it almost touches my ribs starting about half way down on the down swing to get the feel for keeping it close. Then I go back to swinging normally and it seems to stay in closer without any manipulation.
 
tpcdeere - it looks good! Nice work. The goal in the pump drill of keeping the clubhead outside of the hands is there to reduce the inside to out. Keep the right doing it and watching where your club is relative to your hands...the ultimate goal would be to get the club inline or just inside of your hands (assuming a good right arm).

great video from the previous swings. The over the top feeling a while back was simply there to get you away from being so flat. Its the opposite of what you were doing at the time and you needed a big exageration at that time to get a change to happen.

Patrick Nuber
PGA Certified Professional
GolfTEC - Golden, CO
 
Patrick..... Here are a couple of videos working on the pump drill and here is what I notice.

At the top of my backswing on the "good" video, the club seems more on plane and easier to bring down on a good plane.

At the top of my backswing on the "inside" video, the club gets fairly steep at the top, and from there it must flatten on the way down. This momentum of this flattening seems to be tough to adjust in the middle of the downswing. I am guess the flattening had tendency to pull my right arm away from my body and is what get the club to far inside.

So, while working on the pump drill, I think it's a good idea to make sure my backswing doesn't get overly steep at the top.... what do you think?


inside
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGU6pirvA70

good
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W14dMq1-qNw
 
I prefer a flatter position with the shaft at the top. It all depends on how much you can mentally process and try to do while playing. If you can put the flatter shaft position and the same pump together I like it..... If you can't then I don't. The good news is that you will be spending a long time on blending those moves together in your full swing so you might as well start on it so you get it some day!

Patrick Nuber
GolfTEC - Golden, CO
PGA Certified Professional
 
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