My GolfTec Experience

[MaxEntropy]

So it has taken me almost a month to finish writing this. Work has been crazy since November and it is finally starting to calm down a little bit now that budgets and project plans are finally done.

For my birthday, my wife had arranged for me to have a swing evaluation done at the GolfTec which is about a half mile from my house. I scheduled it over lunch time on 1/21/20. Before I get into the details, perhaps a little background from a lesson perspective…. I have taken two lessons in my golfing career: one a little over 20 years ago (with a local pro who had his own shop) and one about three years ago (at Golf Galaxy using a gift card). The first lesson was perhaps more impactful, in my opinion – things I learned then have stuck with me, even through a nearly decade long break from golf. The primary points from that lesson were things that helped me keep my backswing from going way past parallel and keeping my wrists more stable on the downswing so my hands are more likely to be ahead of the ball at impact. The GG lesson showed me something valuable (not maintaining spine angle during downswing), but, without giving away too much, the GolfTec coach made the argument that it was a symptom of something else, and it was a pretty compelling argument, but we’ll get to that later. The GG pro also gave me a couple drills to help with my spine angle and my path.

We spent the first 15-ish minutes talking about my game and why I was there. In my mind, even though I have lost a fair amount of distance over the last few years, I am not tragically short (I’m above average in distance according to the various charts online for age/handicap). I would actually be fine with my distance if I had more consistency. I showed him my current Arccos handicap breakdown (see below) and we talked about those a while, with him boiling it down to needing to improve my full-swing ball striking as chipping and putting are currently relative strengths for me. As of last fall, with driver in my hands, I miss left 36.4% of the time, miss right 27.3% of the time, and am in the fairway 36.4% of the time. I’m not a big fan of those odds on keeping the ball in the short stuff. Missing fairways at the course we play for our league is fairly penal - it's not uncommon to miss the fairway by just a few yards and have no shot at the green.

I also had a secondary motivation – is there some fundamental flaw I have that has been putting extra pressure on my lower back? Although I told him I have periodic lower back issues, I did not tell him I was hoping to learn something that might minimize it.

He had me warm up with my 7 iron while he got things set up. It had been since early November since I had swung a club, so I wasn’t hitting the ball very well – I only had a few shots I would consider “typical”, so there was a lot of rust. He then strapped me up with their sensor and I proceeded to hit more shots while he recorded a few, observed, and took notes. After about 10-15 shots we spent a bunch of time at the monitor as he was talking me through everything he saw, first down-the-line, then head-on.

Down-the-line: The very first thing pointed out to me was at address – my hips and feet were in decent position, mostly aligned with the target, but my shoulders were open to the target line by around 18 degrees according to their sensor. That was relatively straightforward to address, and it felt very odd to me, but I least I understand the feeling I should aim for. Apparently my take-away is pretty good and being “driven” by my body instead of my hands, leading to a backswing that is pretty good until about 90 degrees, then my hands start going almost vertical, so I am way out of position at the top with very high hands. This results in a very steep path getting back to the ball and an outside-in path. The coach suggested the very high hands is the main factor causing me to stand up/suck my hips towards the ball to compensate for the steep swing. He also suggested the high hands are preventing a full shoulder and hip turn (shoulder turn ~75 degrees, hips around 35 degrees) so this could be at least a partial explanation for some of my distance loss. He then set up an aid that I had to try not to hit on my backswing (essentially two shafts jammed together and covered with a pool noodle). It was not terribly hard for me to not hit the pool noodle, but hitting the ball suddenly became more difficult – I assume I was too focused on missing the noodle, so we worked on very slow speed swings for a while to improve the feeling and slowly ramped up the swing speed. Keeping my hands in “proper” position at the top improved my shoulder and hip turn to 87 degrees and 52 degrees, both of which are well within the “normal” range by their metrics. All this time I felt like my age and conditioning were responsible for the decreased rotation I knew I had, but it turns out it was at least partially technique related. He gave me a simple drill I can do at home to try to get my hands where they belong at the top. I’m sure there are other things that, over time, he would like to work on because this would only address a part of the of the things that effect ball striking: path, face angle, AOA,…. Below is a screencap of where I am at the top versus Aaron Baddeley.

Head-on: The head-on view did not really show too much in the way of serious flaws. Apparently I do a decent job of “covering the ball”. I had heard that phrase a bunch but never really understood what it meant. At least now I do. My take on it is that I get my sternum aligned with the low point of my swing at impact. The only real issue identified was that my swing becomes a little disconnected after impact with my shoulder turn being quite a bit larger than my hip turn. As the coach is a fellow lower back pain sufferer, he told me that this can put stress on my lower back. One other relatively minor issue was my ball placement. Apparently they teach ball placement should stay centered for irons whereas I learned to start at the center with a wedge and transition the ball more forward as the loft decreases. I know we have discussed on here plenty, but it was the way I was taught, so I have stuck with it. I will likely try to get the ball more centered and see if there is any improvement in the consistency of my contact.

Overall Impressions: Being a scientist, I very much appreciate the way they break down the swing into tangible metrics, as they do. I don’t see myself getting OCD about them, but I believe they are at least good indicators of getting into good positions.

As I have very limited experience with lessons/teachers, I don’t really know how to rank the experience, other than I found it very useful. I got along with the coach quite well and we related very well. I felt like he listened to me and had a very good understanding of what I would like to accomplish.

Part of the deal with the swing evaluation is them trying to sell you a lesson package. I am confident I could benefit from a 3 month package and would love to do their 6 month deal. Depending on the length of the package, they try to include 3 – 5 playing lessons to see first-hand how what they are working on translates to the course. I would really like to have that experience, if for no other reason, to have someone to question my intent before I try to do something heroically stupid instead of taking my medicine.  I would love to tell you I signed up for one of the packages, but the timing is really bad for us right now. We have two kids in college and I am expecting another painful tax season since my wife kept forgetting to change her withholding – I changed mine so it won’t be as bad as last year, but it's still going to hurt. Our car insurance (4 cars/4 drivers) is also due around the same time, so we will be bleeding money over the coming months.

I feel like the primary issue identified is something I can attempt to fix on my own. I already had suspicions about the steepness of my swing and had periodically tweaked things to attempt to flatten it out, with generally decent results. Now that I have an at-home drill and a good feel for where I should be, I feel like it should be easier to accomplish. I have no doubt there will be unknown (to me) side effects that I may or may not have a clue on how to fix, but I’ll cross that bridge when the time comes. Now, if only the weather would improve so I could get to the range....

[StrokerAce]

7 minutes ago, MaxEntropy said:

So it has taken me almost a month to finish writing this. Work has been crazy since November and it is finally starting to calm down a little bit now that budgets and project plans are finally done.

For my birthday, my wife had arranged for me to have a swing evaluation done at the GolfTec which is about a half mile from my house. I scheduled it over lunch time on 1/21/20. Before I get into the details, perhaps a little background from a lesson perspective…. I have taken two lessons in my golfing career: one a little over 20 years ago (with a local pro who had his own shop) and one about three years ago (at Golf Galaxy using a gift card). The first lesson was perhaps more impactful, in my opinion – things I learned then have stuck with me, even through a nearly decade long break from golf. The primary points from that lesson were things that helped me keep my backswing from going way past parallel and keeping my wrists more stable on the downswing so my hands are more likely to be ahead of the ball at impact. The GG lesson showed me something valuable (not maintaining spine angle during downswing), but, without giving away too much, the GolfTec coach made the argument that it was a symptom of something else, and it was a pretty compelling argument, but we’ll get to that later. The GG pro also gave me a couple drills to help with my spine angle and my path.

We spent the first 15-ish minutes talking about my game and why I was there. In my mind, even though I have lost a fair amount of distance over the last few years, I am not tragically short (I’m above average in distance according to the various charts online for age/handicap). I would actually be fine with my distance if I had more consistency. I showed him my current Arccos handicap breakdown (see below) and we talked about those a while, with him boiling it down to needing to improve my full-swing ball striking as chipping and putting are currently relative strengths for me. As of last fall, with driver in my hands, I miss left 36.4% of the time, miss right 27.3% of the time, and am in the fairway 36.4% of the time. I’m not a big fan of those odds on keeping the ball in the short stuff. Missing fairways at the course we play for our league is fairly penal - it's not uncommon to miss the fairway by just a few yards and have no shot at the green.

I also had a secondary motivation – is there some fundamental flaw I have that has been putting extra pressure on my lower back? Although I told him I have periodic lower back issues, I did not tell him I was hoping to learn something that might minimize it.

He had me warm up with my 7 iron while he got things set up. It had been since early November since I had swung a club, so I wasn’t hitting the ball very well – I only had a few shots I would consider “typical”, so there was a lot of rust. He then strapped me up with their sensor and I proceeded to hit more shots while he recorded a few, observed, and took notes. After about 10-15 shots we spent a bunch of time at the monitor as he was talking me through everything he saw, first down-the-line, then head-on.

Down-the-line: The very first thing pointed out to me was at address – my hips and feet were in decent position, mostly aligned with the target, but my shoulders were open to the target line by around 18 degrees according to their sensor. That was relatively straightforward to address, and it felt very odd to me, but I least I understand the feeling I should aim for. Apparently my take-away is pretty good and being “driven” by my body instead of my hands, leading to a backswing that is pretty good until about 90 degrees, then my hands start going almost vertical, so I am way out of position at the top with very high hands. This results in a very steep path getting back to the ball and an outside-in path. The coach suggested the very high hands is the main factor causing me to stand up/suck my hips towards the ball to compensate for the steep swing. He also suggested the high hands are preventing a full shoulder and hip turn (shoulder turn ~75 degrees, hips around 35 degrees) so this could be at least a partial explanation for some of my distance loss. He then set up an aid that I had to try not to hit on my backswing (essentially two shafts jammed together and covered with a pool noodle). It was not terribly hard for me to not hit the pool noodle, but hitting the ball suddenly became more difficult – I assume I was too focused on missing the noodle, so we worked on very slow speed swings for a while to improve the feeling and slowly ramped up the swing speed. Keeping my hands in “proper” position at the top improved my shoulder and hip turn to 87 degrees and 52 degrees, both of which are well within the “normal” range by their metrics. All this time I felt like my age and conditioning were responsible for the decreased rotation I knew I had, but it turns out it was at least partially technique related. He gave me a simple drill I can do at home to try to get my hands where they belong at the top. I’m sure there are other things that, over time, he would like to work on because this would only address a part of the of the things that effect ball striking: path, face angle, AOA,…. Below is a screencap of where I am at the top versus Aaron Baddeley.

Head-on: The head-on view did not really show too much in the way of serious flaws. Apparently I do a decent job of “covering the ball”. I had heard that phrase a bunch but never really understood what it meant. At least now I do. My take on it is that I get my sternum aligned with the low point of my swing at impact. The only real issue identified was that my swing becomes a little disconnected after impact with my shoulder turn being quite a bit larger than my hip turn. As the coach is a fellow lower back pain sufferer, he told me that this can put stress on my lower back. One other relatively minor issue was my ball placement. Apparently they teach ball placement should stay centered for irons whereas I learned to start at the center with a wedge and transition the ball more forward as the loft decreases. I know we have discussed on here plenty, but it was the way I was taught, so I have stuck with it. I will likely try to get the ball more centered and see if there is any improvement in the consistency of my contact.

Overall Impressions: Being a scientist, I very much appreciate the way they break down the swing into tangible metrics, as they do. I don’t see myself getting OCD about them, but I believe they are at least good indicators of getting into good positions.

As I have very limited experience with lessons/teachers, I don’t really know how to rank the experience, other than I found it very useful. I got along with the coach quite well and we related very well. I felt like he listened to me and had a very good understanding of what I would like to accomplish.

Part of the deal with the swing evaluation is them trying to sell you a lesson package. I am confident I could benefit from a 3 month package and would love to do their 6 month deal. Depending on the length of the package, they try to include 3 – 5 playing lessons to see first-hand how what they are working on translates to the course. I would really like to have that experience, if for no other reason, to have someone to question my intent before I try to do something heroically stupid instead of taking my medicine.  I would love to tell you I signed up for one of the packages, but the timing is really bad for us right now. We have two kids in college and I am expecting another painful tax season since my wife kept forgetting to change her withholding – I changed mine so it won’t be as bad as last year, but it's still going to hurt. Our car insurance (4 cars/4 drivers) is also due around the same time, so we will be bleeding money over the coming months.

I feel like the primary issue identified is something I can attempt to fix on my own. I already had suspicions about the steepness of my swing and had periodically tweaked things to attempt to flatten it out, with generally decent results. Now that I have an at-home drill and a good feel for where I should be, I feel like it should be easier to accomplish. I have no doubt there will be unknown (to me) side effects that I may or may not have a clue on how to fix, but I’ll cross that bridge when the time comes. Now, if only the weather would improve so I could get to the range....

Sounds pretty awesome!

How long was the lesson?  Did you hit each club - driver, irons, wedge?  Was there anything regarding putting?

[MaxEntropy]

26 minutes ago, GolfSpy Stroker said:

Sounds pretty awesome!

How long was the lesson?  Did you hit each club - driver, irons, wedge?  Was there anything regarding putting?

I was there about 90 minutes. All the focus was on 7 iron. Based on what he saw, he actually guessed I had the two-way miss with the driver - with my path, he suggested it's mostly a matter of chance on where I have the face oriented at impact resulting in everything ranging from straight pull to banana slice. I believe the Arccos stats confirm.

 We talked briefly about putting and we did a little putting while waiting for the room, but nothing terribly detailed. I'm fairly comfortable and confident in my putting. Right now, I view full swing as most room for improvement.

[fixyurdivot]

Great stuff and glad you're seeing some quick results!  Don't worry about the money, you'll get it back in winnings... at least that's what I tell myself .