GolfTEC Lessons

[E.Appleton]

He told you should be playing blades?

Oh God no. It's just something he handed me to try. It could be a good learning tool to buy a single 7i to practice with though. I should absolutely not be playing blades. What it did show me is that some aren't as brutal as others and that a change is definitely needed for a lot of reasons.

I think it'll be trying to find the middle ground between forgiveness, launch, spin, and offset. It'll be a tall order but excited to try a lot of things.

 

[JB]

Also low key confirmed I should go back to standard grips from midsize, but that's something for later.

So should most

 

[Canadan]

Today's practice was interesting. Still having a hard time getting the hinge first feel. Shank a lot, overcorrect and hook a lot. It was coming together a bit better at the end which is good but it's a real work in progress.

The interesting part was I was chit chatting with the manager. He seemed bored so we talked about THP, my experience so far with Golftec, and equipment. He asked if I liked my irons and I don't. They're wrong for me confirmed by a number of professionals. So we start talking about gear a little bit.

Tried he had me try a Mizuno 241 head with a Project X LS 6.5 shaft and I was a little intimidated. Fairly different head from an AI smoke. Wouldn't you know I think I hit them just as well if not better. It would be more punishing on misses for sure, but not by as much as I thought. May not be the final thing I'm fit into but I appreciate the people at Golftec. I swing that head quite a bit faster than mine which Is interesting, but the bigger deal of course is hitting launch, spin, and descent better.

This guy is taking time out of his day, to work with a client who isn't his because he's interested, engaged, and cares.

He told me no one was in after me so I worked on my drills for another half hour after my hour was up. Could've stayed longer even, but had to go.

Learning more and more and it's great to be surrounded by people like him.

Also low key confirmed I should go back to standard grips from midsize, but that's something for later.

Man, LS 6.5 is a MONSTER shaft. What got you guys there?

 

[E.Appleton]

Man, LS 6.5 is a MONSTER shaft. What got you guys there?

It wasn't a fitting, was just talking about my current set up and issues so he just threw something together having seen my swing just a little bit. Honestly that shaft didn't feel boardy at all to me. Felt pretty natural. Had a number of these. Swing speed actually went up and unsurprisingly ball speed slightly down (but this one was pretty money despite being a little overcooked)

 

[blugold]

These lessons are always fun. Did you change anything in your setup or technique? What did you address?

Actually, setup was good. A tendency to not trust the swing and then either decelerate or get flippy. A bunch of reps trusting body rotation while holding wrist angle.

 

[jdtox]

Actually, setup was good. A tendency to not trust the swing and then either decelerate or get flippy. A bunch of reps trusting body rotation while holding wrist angle.

Yeah body rotation is tough to do for many on shorter shots, we tend to get too armsy

 

[Bernoulli]

I had my swing eval today. I could've saved so much frustration if only I had done this sooner.

I went to the Cleveland - East location to work with Joey. He met me almost as soon as I walked in even though I was about 15 minutes early. He took me back to the bay and told me about the tech they use, his approach, and how the session was going to go.

1. Discuss my game and why I was interested in the evaluation
2. Warm-up and get baseline swing video
3. Analysis
4. Lesson and drills
5. Discuss lesson plans and next steps

My game
I'm a high-capper, and while I get plenty of distance, I'm not consistent with my irons. I have a 2 way miss that I would really like to eliminate. When I'm fully focused I feel like my swing is in a decent place, but when I get tired/lazy it gets too steep and slices come into play. I told him I start going up, instead of across my body in the backswing. We spoke a little about wedge play and he gave me some tips to work on there as well.

Baseline
I was hitting my 'focused' swing today with a 7I. I had some slight two way misses during the baseline, but no hooks or slices. We started with my setup. He liked my position, but mentioned he thought my weight was a little too in my heels. We used Zach Johnson as the pro comparison. Notice how much straighter his legs are than mine.
View attachment 9384126
In position 2 (club parallel to the ground) he noticed that I lean over too far, especially during the backswing. The top green line is where he wants me to be (~15* less). I mentioned I do feel myself bending over more during the take back, exacerbating the problem. You can see the different angle between my back and swing plane compared to the pro.
View attachment 9384125View attachment 9384128
The club stays on plane, so I've got that going for me at least.

It was a similar story for position 3 (arms parallel to the ground) with the bend being too much. My shoulders were about parallel with the swing plane, which they shouldn't be.
View attachment 9384130

Position 4 (Top of the swing). I'm over swinging.
View attachment 9384132
102* Closed. I didn't know I was that flexible. Because of the over swing you can see my knee is bending a ton.

Position 5 (Arms back to parallel)
Numbers are good, it just takes me a little longer to get there with the overswing.
View attachment 9384133

Position 6 (Club back to parallel)
Numbers still look good, but he mentioned the bend is causing my weight to fall forward. I mentioned that there have been times I feel like I've needed to take a step forward in the follow through to maintain balance.
View attachment 9384138

We then went to the head on views. He pointed out that my grip needed improvement and recommend buying a clip on grip trainer. I should be able to see the logo on the glove, and the V should end at my wrists, not my hands. That was a big eye opener for me. Again, set up was good, and he even liked where I was on positions 2 and 3.
Position 4. We discussed this one for awhile. My hands are going behind my head and my elbow is breaking. I had no idea I was doing this.
View attachment 9384139

Because of my knee being bent so much and overswinging I really struggle with weight transfer. At the top you can see my knee is

still away from the target vs towards it. I also have a tendency to release too early.
View attachment 9384141

I'll get into the drills and stuff in another post.

Seeing this makes me wish there was a GolfTec near me. The visuals and comparisons would be good for me.

 

[Dan.The.King]

Seeing this makes me wish there was a GolfTec near me. The visuals and comparisons would be good for me.

They mentioned during the experience that they're planning some remote evaluations and lessons next year. My coach also recommended using 18Birdies or Sportsbox AI to record your swing and have it quickly analyzed.

 

[FlipFlop]

BEST LESSON YET!

This is gonna be a bit of a long one, but the excitement level has reached new heights.

I had a lesson scheduled for last night at 6 so I decided to get out and play an early afternoon round. I wanted to see where my game was at after the last lesson before heading into the next one. I wasn’t sure if this was the best idea, but it was the plan.

I decided rather than keep score on the scorecard, I was going to keep track of any bad shots. I wanted to see where the mistakes seemed to happen most frequently. At the end of the round I looked at the checkmarks I had made on the scorecard compared with the app and quickly realized that my short game is absolutely killing me. I had nine bad wedge shots at distances between 15 and 75 yards. When I say bad, I mean 55 yards out and the next shot was 35 yards out bad! I only had one bad tee shot and two bad iron shots all round. My scrambling % was 0.

I left the course with mixed feelings. On one hand, my tee game and irons were really good. The lessons and practice have absolutely been paying off. On the other hand, I was very frustrated that I left at least 4 to 5 shots out there with just the wedges.

Fast forward to my lesson. I got there a little early and was talking to one of the other coaches that I’ve chatted with on several occasions. He was asking how everything‘s going, and I told him about my mixed feelings after the day. As I was talking with him, my coach came out and listened in. He said ok let’s fix that!

We went into the bay and he had me hit a few iron shots to take a look at what we’ve been working on. He was very happy with what he saw and said that he saw no reason to not skip over to the wedges now. Had me take a couple wedge swings from 80 yards out to get a starting point after five shots he asked me about my thought process when coming up to a shot between 25 and 80 yards. After some discussion, he went into talking about my set up.

My problem is that I was setting up more like a full shot. My feet were shoulder with the part and I was getting a big turn and back swing. This led to me decelerating on the downswing trying to control distance and aim my shots. Add into that a slight sway and pulling my head up early to see where the ball was going and he quickly saw that there was zero consistency on my low point.

First thing was to get my feet closer. He wanted me to feel like I was more set up for a chip shot. We talked about how this would quiet everything down and I could get to a more consistent low point. Doing this would also allow me to open the club face up a little bit. I would be coming in more square and much more steep at the ball. We wanted to get me having a shorter back swing and being more aggressive through the ball. Face Open + speed = spin & stopping power.

On the left is my original setup on an 80 yard shot with 54°. On the right, the new setup.

In the backswings, you can see my head starting to dip down and forward and my weight is starting to shift. This leads to me coming in steep and taking away the loft.

You can really see the shift here. Look how my head hasn’t moved at all with the new setup!

The positions at impact are night and day difference. So much more stable and less movement on the right!

And the follow through just looks so much cleaner on the right. The best thing, that shot on the right hit just past the hole and spun back to less than a foot away.

We moved the target back and forth between 35 and 80 yards. What blew my mind is how easy it was to adjust the back swing length and speed at which I turned through the ball to easily hit all those distances with the same 54° club. I was manipulating the face from square at the 80 yard shot to wide open on the 35 yard shot. I wasn’t afraid of chunking or thinning it. Having that stable, consistent movement made it’s so easy to just let the club come through the ball. I have never tried to manipulate the face of a 54° wedge like I did today. It was working so well that he had me start finishing with my hands low and my hands high to manipulate the height of the ball flight.

If I can take this on course and behalf, as good as I was in the lesson, I will be beyond ecstatic!

 

[FlipFlop]

Seeing this makes me wish there was a GolfTec near me. The visuals and comparisons would be good for me.

The visuals are so helpful. Maybe soon you’ll have something to help and not need to go into studio…

 

[JHolt]

Oh God no. It's just something he handed me to try. It could be a good learning tool to buy a single 7i to practice with though. I should absolutely not be playing blades. What it did show me is that some aren't as brutal as others and that a change is definitely needed for a lot of reasons.

I think it'll be trying to find the middle ground between forgiveness, launch, spin, and offset. It'll be a tall order but excited to try a lot of things.

I was playing Ping G at the time. I travelled without my clubs so borrowed scary skinny blades to play nine. I played as well or a bit better with the blades and we chalked it up to increased focus and concentration. Don't know how long I could have kept it up, but was fun.

 

[E.Appleton]

I was talking with the manager where I practice about the difference between the GC bays and the SkyTrak bays regarding why the Skytrak bays are not lefty friendly. He was saying that the SkyTrak they connect via bluetooth and the GC is through cable ethernet. Due to the standard layout of the bay, moving the SkyTrak across the room caused connectivity issues wirelessly.

I wonder if with the new SkyTrak coming out if they would be able to utilize long USB C so that all bays could be ambidextrous? I haven't been in another bay to see the camera situation, so that may be another barrier, but curious! @Koske @B-Thor any input perhaps?

 

[blugold]

I was thinking of doing a mock playing lesson at Golftec. Before The Grandaddy (#TeamOurTime), I wanted to have the pro pick a course and I play around with their feedback shot to shot. More to replicate playing conditions, not hitting the same club over and over.

Has anybody done this before? I can't be the first to think of it

 

[jdtox]

BEST LESSON YET!

This is gonna be a bit of a long one, but the excitement level has reached new heights.

I had a lesson scheduled for last night at 6 so I decided to get out and play an early afternoon round. I wanted to see where my game was at after the last lesson before heading into the next one. I wasn’t sure if this was the best idea, but it was the plan.

I decided rather than keep score on the scorecard, I was going to keep track of any bad shots. I wanted to see where the mistakes seemed to happen most frequently. At the end of the round I looked at the checkmarks I had made on the scorecard compared with the app and quickly realized that my short game is absolutely killing me. I had nine bad wedge shots at distances between 15 and 75 yards. When I say bad, I mean 55 yards out and the next shot was 35 yards out bad! I only had one bad tee shot and two bad iron shots all round. My scrambling % was 0.

I left the course with mixed feelings. On one hand, my tee game and irons were really good. The lessons and practice have absolutely been paying off. On the other hand, I was very frustrated that I left at least 4 to 5 shots out there with just the wedges.

Fast forward to my lesson. I got there a little early and was talking to one of the other coaches that I’ve chatted with on several occasions. He was asking how everything‘s going, and I told him about my mixed feelings after the day. As I was talking with him, my coach came out and listened in. He said ok let’s fix that!

We went into the bay and he had me hit a few iron shots to take a look at what we’ve been working on. He was very happy with what he saw and said that he saw no reason to not skip over to the wedges now. Had me take a couple wedge swings from 80 yards out to get a starting point after five shots he asked me about my thought process when coming up to a shot between 25 and 80 yards. After some discussion, he went into talking about my set up.

My problem is that I was setting up more like a full shot. My feet were shoulder with the part and I was getting a big turn and back swing. This led to me decelerating on the downswing trying to control distance and aim my shots. Add into that a slight sway and pulling my head up early to see where the ball was going and he quickly saw that there was zero consistency on my low point.

First thing was to get my feet closer. He wanted me to feel like I was more set up for a chip shot. We talked about how this would quiet everything down and I could get to a more consistent low point. Doing this would also allow me to open the club face up a little bit. I would be coming in more square and much more steep at the ball. We wanted to get me having a shorter back swing and being more aggressive through the ball. Face Open + speed = spin & stopping power.

On the left is my original setup on an 80 yard shot with 54°. On the right, the new setup.
View attachment 9385979

In the backswings, you can see my head starting to dip down and forward and my weight is starting to shift. This leads to me coming in steep and taking away the loft.
View attachment 9385980

You can really see the shift here. Look how my head hasn’t moved at all with the new setup!
View attachment 9385981

The positions at impact are night and day difference. So much more stable and less movement on the right!
View attachment 9385982

And the follow through just looks so much cleaner on the right. The best thing, that shot on the right hit just past the hole and spun back to less than a foot away.
View attachment 9385983

We moved the target back and forth between 35 and 80 yards. What blew my mind is how easy it was to adjust the back swing length and speed at which I turned through the ball to easily hit all those distances with the same 54° club. I was manipulating the face from square at the 80 yard shot to wide open on the 35 yard shot. I wasn’t afraid of chunking or thinning it. Having that stable, consistent movement made it’s so easy to just let the club come through the ball. I have never tried to manipulate the face of a 54° wedge like I did today. It was working so well that he had me start finishing with my hands low and my hands high to manipulate the height of the ball flight.

If I can take this on course and behalf, as good as I was in the lesson, I will be beyond ecstatic!

Quite a difference there. The narrower stance is interesting to me, especially on the 80 yd shot but keep up the good work dude! Love seeing the changes like that. Its one of my favorite things to look at when going through things. The key now is to practice haha

 

[jdtox]

Instead of playing golf outside I decided to book a 1 hr practice session to go work on some things instead today. I was fairly happy with my play last weekend but still need to tune up some things.

 

[Nashtyone]

I was thinking of doing a mock playing lesson at Golftec. Before The Grandaddy (#TeamOurTime), I wanted to have the pro pick a course and I play around with their feedback shot to shot. More to replicate playing conditions, not hitting the same club over and over.

Has anybody done this before? I can't be the first to think of it

With my old coach in San Diego I did this a few times. We would pick courses and then play a round. Picking clubs, shots, where it would be safe to miss, etc. Was really helpful to see how he thought about his round and how he wanted to play

 

[FlipFlop]

Quite a difference there. The narrower stance is interesting to me, especially on the 80 yd shot but keep up the good work dude! Love seeing the changes like that. Its one of my favorite things to look at when going through things. The key now is to practice haha

The narrower stance on that longer shot blew my mind. Never would’ve occurred to me to even attempt that. As my coach talked to me about it and the reason why, it made a lot of sense. You can surprisingly still get plenty of club head speed but with less body movement (restricted turn & sway) you gain a ton of consistency and control.

Practice really has been the key. I do my lessons on Thursday night after work and work on the drills Friday & Saturday without hitting balls. I won’t play or go to the range until Sunday at the earliest. I’m lucky that I can get out during the weekdays for most of my rounds so it helps give me extra time to really drill in the new feelings.

 

[lukemartin93]

Had a good practice session today. I really enjoy having time to engrain the lessons. Though I didn’t have any optimotion homework after this lesson, I still used the cameras and video to check my position on my swing. Working on improving definitely makes me more excited to see what’s in store for future lessons

 

[E.Appleton]

Had a good practice session today. I really enjoy having time to engrain the lessons. Though I didn’t have any optimotion homework after this lesson, I still used the cameras and video to check my position on my swing. Working on improving definitely makes me more excited to see what’s in store for future lessons

Nice! What kind of optimotion have you had in the past? Hitting certain numbers type thing?

 

[FlipFlop]

Took the new wedge set up to the course today. I would’ve liked to practice more but didn’t really have a chance to yesterday. Oh well, trial by fire.

The first two wedge shots were thin and hopped just off the back of the green. After that, I started to feel much more comfortable with it. I started hitting the green pretty consistently. I’ll have to work on the distance control a little bit more but the foundation felt really good. Just like in my lesson, I was using my 54° from 85 yards down to anything just off the green. The best part is, I didn’t have a single chunked wedge the entire day.

I started getting really comfortable with it on the back nine. I was pretty regularly putting it within a 15-20 foot range, which is great for me with a wedge.

I have a one hour practice session scheduled for Tuesday. I’m gonna work on really trying to dial in distance & direction.

 

[lukemartin93]

Nice! What kind of optimotion have you had in the past? Hitting certain numbers type thing?

my coach had homework set up to track my hip movement to make sure I was pushing forward during follow through. I can’t remember what the ranges were for the numbers but it was also color coded

 

[jdtox]

Just showed up to a lesson and all bays are full. Usually able to warm up a bit but appears this is going to be going in cold. We will see

 

[GolfSquatch]

Had my eval last week. Firstly really liked the Golftec setup. My coach did good excellent job of translating technical into understandable, the red, yellow green improvement indicators in the app and video portals are all very nice.

Most of my issues came down to weight transfer and hip sway, which he did a better job of explaining than the last guy I took lessons from, but to be fair to him, my grip was so bad that hip sway was a secondary fault at that point. We made some good adjustments to set up and a shaft angle that were really killing my launch, and I'm seeing benefits from that already.

My only issue is that I think I need to take some time and work on the issues we identified in the eval and break and reset some patterns before I actually go full bore on the lessons. So I am going to take November to focus on some prescribed practice and drills to get some of the bigger issues adjusted so that I can go into future lessons with a better slate and get more out of those individual lessons so that I can make some better gains before May.

 

[jdtox]

Finished with today's lesson. The not warming up earlier was no issue. We actually were in the bay for 45 mins with essentially a 15 min warmup so no concerns there as we talked through what to work on. My game at Victoria National for WWGC was decent but my irons weren't where I would like them to be so we continued working on same thing as my last lesson.

We are still working on keeping elbows closer together and extending on the follow through instead of collapsing. A couple things happen, at setup I feel like I'm farther away from the ball. It doesn't look crazy on camera but it feels like it. When I do it right, its great and it feels great at impact. I'm actually turning through the ball and not getting armsy and saving it with my wrists. When I don't, its bad and I do not like haha.

Before Swing finish

After Swing Finish

We practiced hitting some shots into the wind and against the wind. Really fun stuff. I could probably do this for hours on the sim. Some good some bad but watching a 5 iron (which is my 190 ish club) go 150 and spin backwards on the green is hilarious.

As I told my coach, I feel like i'm holding it off and not releasing the club. Its not the case but its what I'm feeling. It's so strange because I know we will get there eventually but going to need lots of reps.

 

[JB]

Finished with today's lesson. The not warming up earlier was no issue. We actually were in the bay for 45 mins with essentially a 15 min warmup so no concerns there as we talked through what to work on. My game at Victoria National for WWGC was decent but my irons weren't where I would like them to be so we continued working on same thing as my last lesson.

We are still working on keeping elbows closer together and extending on the follow through instead of collapsing. A couple things happen, at setup I feel like I'm farther away from the ball. It doesn't look crazy on camera but it feels like it. When I do it right, its great and it feels great at impact. I'm actually turning through the ball and not getting armsy and saving it with my wrists. When I don't, its bad and I do not like haha.

Before Swing finish
View attachment 9386724

After Swing Finish
View attachment 9386725

We practiced hitting some shots into the wind and against the wind. Really fun stuff. I could probably do this for hours on the sim. Some good some bad but watching a 5 iron (which is my 190 ish club) go 150 and spin backwards on the green is hilarious.

As I told my coach, I feel like i'm holding it off and not releasing the club. Its not the case but its what I'm feeling. It's so strange because I know we will get there eventually but going to need lots of reps.

You said you feel like you are further from the ball. Are you actually further?