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Can't Get Driver Carry Distance Up


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Nice swing! A couple little power leaks though, no big deal. Number one you are over the top right as you start the downswing, so you get vertical to save the shot. In your case it causes early unhinging of the wrists, and standing up through the shot. 
 

From the face on view you can really see it. Go right to the top and pause, then go back and forth during your transition. See how the shoulders start unwinding and the club starts coming forward and high? Ideally you want it to go down and back. Or at least down. Before your shoulders start opening. 
 

You might need some lessons to smooth that out. But a drill to feel a shallow impact angle is to tee it low with your driver and hit little shots with the sole of the driver skimming the ground from just outside your right foot all the way through impact and past your left foot. Work your way up to more full swings. That is the feeling you want. The club gets down “early” then swings “level”. You cannot do that AND be steep. 

Stats: 5'4", Male, R-Handed, Moderate Tempo, Driver SS 115mph
 

Driver: Taylormade SiM Max 9*, TM Ventus Blue 6X
3w/5w: Callaway X-Hot, S-flex Fubuki shafts
3h: Tour Edge EXS Pro, Smoke Black 80g 6.0
4i-PW: Mizuno MP-4, DG S300
Wedges: Titleist SM7
56* Wedge: Callaway Jaws w/ 12* of bounce

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23 minutes ago, jddaigneault said:

You can certainly work on not releasing your hands so early. That kills distance. You need to hit through the ball. YouTube has a ton of great drills you can do for this. Club should not be releasing like this. Don’t get handsy. Getting handsy too early gets you in trouble in golf and with the ladies! You’re also collapsing your back leg, sapping all kinds of power. Lessons will make a huge and pretty immediate impact. Not a difficult fix with focused practice.

6809FDAD-AD6A-4F48-BC8C-3D440B978A2E.png.572369acb0ef4f0b72ce1e7f4bf71512.png

Thanks for the tips! My early release used to be way worse (at contact the club head would be well in front of my hands) but I'll continue to work on that. Any specific resources you'd recommend for finding an instructor, or just go through my local course?

3 minutes ago, dlow206 said:

Also, not sure if is the video angle, but the ball looks like it is teed pretty high. Looks like almost all of the ball is above the tee.

Yeah, later in the range session I started teeing the ball a bit lower and was seeing lower ball flights. I just switched to a tee that has depth markings on it so hopefully that allows me to be more precise with how high I'm teeing up.

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7 minutes ago, gavinski91 said:

Thanks for the tips! My early release used to be way worse (at contact the club head would be well in front of my hands) but I'll continue to work on that. Any specific resources you'd recommend for finding an instructor, or just go through my local course?

Yeah, later in the range session I started teeing the ball a bit lower and was seeing lower ball flights. I just switched to a tee that has depth markings on it so hopefully that allows me to be more precise with how high I'm teeing up.

I would recommend trying out an online lesson with Monte Scheinblum, he has an uncanny ability to find the real root causes of issues.

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40 minutes ago, gavinski91 said:

Thanks for the tips! My early release used to be way worse (at contact the club head would be well in front of my hands) but I'll continue to work on that. Any specific resources you'd recommend for finding an instructor, or just go through my local course?

Yeah, later in the range session I started teeing the ball a bit lower and was seeing lower ball flights. I just switched to a tee that has depth markings on it so hopefully that allows me to be more precise with how high I'm teeing up.

Research your local PGA chapter and see who pops as coach of the year. Ask around the bar at the course and see who people recommend. Sometimes the course pro is the guy to go to, sometimes they’re not worth the money. Honestly, Groupon can be a good place to start too. Sometimes they have great deals for multiple lesson packs. 

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41 minutes ago, gavinski91 said:

Thanks for the tips! My early release used to be way worse (at contact the club head would be well in front of my hands) but I'll continue to work on that. Any specific resources you'd recommend for finding an instructor, or just go through my local course?

Yeah, later in the range session I started teeing the ball a bit lower and was seeing lower ball flights. I just switched to a tee that has depth markings on it so hopefully that allows me to be more precise with how high I'm teeing up.

Need to find out why you’re early releasing. Early release is a symptom, in your case it looks like you’re athletically trying to hit the ball from a vertical plane. If you didn’t extend you would miss the ball high. Shallowing out the plane at the bottom will help. 

Stats: 5'4", Male, R-Handed, Moderate Tempo, Driver SS 115mph
 

Driver: Taylormade SiM Max 9*, TM Ventus Blue 6X
3w/5w: Callaway X-Hot, S-flex Fubuki shafts
3h: Tour Edge EXS Pro, Smoke Black 80g 6.0
4i-PW: Mizuno MP-4, DG S300
Wedges: Titleist SM7
56* Wedge: Callaway Jaws w/ 12* of bounce

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If you have a stand bag, put it just to the right of the stack of range balls with the opening facing you. Take an alignment stick and put just enough of it in the top sleeve that it keeps it there. Don’t hit the stick on your takeaway or downswing. Mess around with distance and height to find the sweet spot. You can also double down and put a range basket upside down in your swing path to prevent you going outside in. If it’s helpful, I’ll post a video. 

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Totally agree with @jddaigneault.  A lot of your power loss is because you release it way early and flip.  It looks like you're losing connection with your right elbow on the down swing and it looks like you lock your right leg out near the top which forces you to unlock your knee before the down swing.  Not sure if that is a trigger for you down swing but I think it's tough to get a good sequence with that.  The driver head/shaft possibly could be fighting your swing but it's more mechanical than anything IMO.  I would highly recommend getting a lesson.  In the mean time, if you're looking for some info online, I would check out top speed golf on youtube. 

@zrumble good chance another reason for the release is his body thinks he cant get a positive angle of attack because of the lack of that back tilted spine angle.  It looks like he has that tilt after contact but his shoulder line at set-up is straight.

Lastly, I see you have spineless shoes on.  There is test done that in spiked vs spikeless shoes, you lose distance with spikeless shoes.

Edited by Chizzle
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My initial thought from the head-on view is that moving the ball up in my stance will both fix that and help give more of a positive angle of attack, but I'm looking forward to hearing what others think.


From personal experience I can tell you that that doesn’t always work. I had a downward angle of attack and was always hitting high in the face. I would move the ball forward and try to swing more upward but that didn’t do anything, still high and still down. Ultimately, I had to make a change to my setup to get the AoA to be up.

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48 minutes ago, cnosil said:

 


From personal experience I can tell you that that doesn’t always work. I had a downward angle of attack and was always hitting high in the face. I would move the ball forward and try to swing more upward but that didn’t do anything, still high and still down. Ultimately, I had to make a change to my setup to get the AoA to be up.

 

Good thoughts. Don’t address symptoms but rather the cause of those symptoms 

edit: I’ve heard several top instructors talk about how you can’t fix something that happens in the downswing because of the lack of time left in the swing from the top to and thru impact and that those faults are the result of what happened at setup, takeaway and top of backswing. So getting that part right takes care of the other issues

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8 hours ago, Chizzle said:

Totally agree with @jddaigneault.  A lot of your power loss is because you release it way early and flip.  It looks like you're losing connection with your right elbow on the down swing and it looks like you lock your right leg out near the top which forces you to unlock your knee before the down swing.  Not sure if that is a trigger for you down swing but I think it's tough to get a good sequence with that.  The driver head/shaft possibly could be fighting your swing but it's more mechanical than anything IMO.  I would highly recommend getting a lesson.  In the mean time, if you're looking for some info online, I would check out top speed golf on youtube. 

@zrumble good chance another reason for the release is his body thinks he cant get a positive angle of attack because of the lack of that back tilted spine angle.  It looks like he has that tilt after contact but his shoulder line at set-up is straight.

Lastly, I see you have spineless shoes on.  There is test done that in spiked vs spikeless shoes, you lose distance with spikeless shoes.

Agreed. There are definitely some symptoms related to clubface delivery. That’s why I think if OP can relearn how to deliver the clubface on a flatter angle in the bottom, a lot of things would change in his swing. I think a lot of golfers don’t have a feel for how the club moves in the bottom of the swing, and a lot of flaws we see in the amateur game can be fixed by improving this understanding. 
Keeping the club on the ground from foot to foot and Harvey Pennick’s drill of clip a low tee out of the ground are my two favorite drills to help someone feel the bottom of the swing. Once someone understands how the club moves at the bottom, their sequencing and over the top moves disappear because it’s nearly impossible to be steep and deliver the club on a flat path into the ball. 
That’s also why I think “hit down” can be a dangerous teaching method. The best strikes in the world are indeed down, but by less than 10 degrees. For the human brain that is flat. If you can swing flat through the ball with some speed, the weight of the clubhead will pull it down. The slightly positive angle of attack with a driver comes from a flat bottom to the swing coupled with a forward ball position IMO. 

Stats: 5'4", Male, R-Handed, Moderate Tempo, Driver SS 115mph
 

Driver: Taylormade SiM Max 9*, TM Ventus Blue 6X
3w/5w: Callaway X-Hot, S-flex Fubuki shafts
3h: Tour Edge EXS Pro, Smoke Black 80g 6.0
4i-PW: Mizuno MP-4, DG S300
Wedges: Titleist SM7
56* Wedge: Callaway Jaws w/ 12* of bounce

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On 6/13/2020 at 9:19 PM, gavinski91 said:

Just spent an hour and a half at an indoor range trying to sort out gaps in my bag. The main thing I noticed is that my distance is all over the place on my irons (high handicap on GI irons, so that's to be expected I guess) but one thing that bothered me was my lack of driver distance.

According to the system my swing speed is consistently in the 100-105 mph range, and while I admittedly struggle with making good contact, even the times I did I was rarely getting more than 220 yards of carry. The best shot I had was 106 mph club head speed, 13.8° launch angle, and only 228 yards of carry, and it felt like I hit it right on the sweet spot. Meanwhile, my best shot with my 5-iron carried 189 yards.

So, what gives? Do I need to get fitted for a new driver? (unfortunately not financially feasible right now) Is it potentially a mental thing with swinging indoors? Is it an issue with the launch monitor overestimating my swing speed? (it was the built-in-to-the-ground style with three lines of infrared sensors) Can bad form take that much off my carry distance, even if I'm generating a decent amount of clubhead speed? Are all the online charts comparing swing speed to carry distance off a ways?

As mentioned before, at this point I would be looking at your delivery of the club, angle of attack is probably something to start looking at, sometime as mundane as the ball position can change your angles and affect your distances tremendously.

Work with a swing coach to try and find out where exactly you are leaving those extra yards is probably the best starting point.

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