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Well is a video taken a couple weeks ago of my 7 iron down the line and from the front as well as Driver down the line and from the front.

It's pretty amazing what you think you're doing in the golf swing and what you're actually doing.

Faults I know:

Driver: Go a little past parallel at the top (I've always done it, and I'm not to worried about cause I don't lose balance or anything). Ball is way to far back in my stance for the driver (probably why I've been hitting some lower line drives lately).

With both clubs, the clubhead gets slightly behind my hands at waist high on the backswing, so I need to work on fixing that.

Anyone else see anything obvious that I'm doing?

Seven Iron down the line

Seven Iron front

Driver down the line

Driver front

**Sorry, they are about a MB each. That's as small as I could get them!**

Obviously the swing of a lower handicapper...you look like a longer hitter, too. Of course, you've mentioned both in your posts but the video bears out your claims...in other words, nice swing. Which makes me hesitant to critique it, but you asked, right? Of course we're assuming you're swinging the same now as you were a couple of weeks ago but, based on the 4 views, here goes.

Things I think I see (in descending order of importance):

Your first move upon takeaway is to lift the clubhead with both clubs...I think this promotes a steeper angle of attack. With the ball so far back in the stance it's no surprise that you're firin' low screamers (but you said straight, so that's ok). Don't let the clubhead lift at all on takeaway...just take it back low and slow.

Oh yeah, I left that out...you have a nice slow swing with a good tempo...only thing I'd like to see is a little more pause at the top. Not that you're "loose" at the top, it just seems like there's a little extra movement...little less snap action at the top is all I'm saying.

You have a good athletic setup and a good spine angle and you maintain it well through the swing keeping your chin up and head still very well. I would like to see your hands in a little (probably won't take much) and the ball more forward in your stance...about a ball forward, maybe even a little more with the driver.

OK, last one...hips are pretty fast which isn't much problem but you seem to be rolling the left foot over. I'd like to see a firmer left leg keeping the left foot planted (may have to flare it out just a little).

Like I said, you have a good swing but it takes feedback and tweaks to break through to the next level...which, for you, would be scratch. Good luck and I hope my observations help.

Shade

After watching again, I agree with all you pointed out. My hips are another thing that have always been fast. I think it's more evident with my driver. As you can probably see, my 7 iron swing is much slower where I try to put all the emphasis on accuracy, where as my driver I take a pretty good rip from the top and my hips get out in front. I'll sometime lose it right or snap hook it because of this.

I see what you're saying about the lifting of the club head too. That's one thing that I didn't know I did. I think it's more evident on the front driver and iron view. There is just a small little lift before I take the club back.

I know what you're talking about with the "snap" motion too. With the front driver view, if you slow it down it almost looks like the shaft hits my right shoulder on the way down where I snap it into impact.

And the posture, that's something I've worked hard on in the last year. Here is a driver and 7 iron swing from last year. I think I think my posture has improved quite a bit since last year.

7 Iron

Driver

Thanks for your thoughts. You pointed out some things I didn't see.

Best looking swing video I have seen on this forum since I've been lurking!

IMO

Looks like you are taking the club away too far inside the target line. Pretty sure you get the hooks sometimes?

I dont know if that is exactly down the line but thats what I see. Other than that, very nice.

I think the ball is a little far back in your stance. But then again you prolly shoot better than I do. Did you say your shots aren't going straight? I didn't notice...

Good swing.

I would like to see you stand a little taller to the ball with less knee bend. Maybe you need longer clubs.

I think your ball position needs to be farther forward.

Also, and this is a judgement made only by seeing a few swings. Don't worry so much about tempo and "having a pretty swing". You have a good swing, now go ahead and hit the darn ball hard.

Nice swing Deron! It looks as if you pretty much have the fundamentals down and all you need is a little tweak here and there to put that nice swing together to take you to the next step.

Before I tell you what I see in your swing and what you may or may not want to do to fix it, let me put a disclaimer in here. Everyone sees different things in a golf swing. Ask 10 people what they see in your swing and chances are that you'll get 10 different answers. I'm in no way saying that what everyone else has posted is wrong and I'm right, I'm simply saying that people have different perceptions of golf swings, but you probably already knew this.

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, let me tell you my philosophy on the golf swing. It's simple: Have the least amount of moving parts as possible and hit with your big muscles while staying on plane.

I ordinarily don't comment too much on "video golf swings" because, like I said earlier, people sometimes get upset when you ask them to critique your swing even though you asked them! Your swing is an exception though. It's an exception because up until 3 months ago, my swing looked almost exactly like yours! So instead of telling you what to do, I'm going to tell you what my instructor had me do and I'll break down your swing in comparison while doing it. This is gonna be good so stay with me!

Stance:
You and I look to have the same build. I'm 6'2" / 185 and you look to be about the same. I noticed that your stance would be considered on the narrow side for a guy as tall as you are. My stance was narrow (as I think yours is) and that almost forced my swing to be more upright. I widened my stance. This was the first step to "re-tooling" my swing. I hesitate to call it "rebuilding" because I felt that I had a half-decent swing to start with. BTW, your spine angle, in relation to the forward tilt, looks really good. More on this later though.

Take away:
As you've already mentioned, the club does get inside of your hands on the take away a little, but I don't feel that this is a bad thing. I feel that this should lead to a flatter, more on-plane swing but it doesn't because when you take the club back, instead of turning around your body you start bringing the club up. Not straight up, but more upright than needed IMO. In one of the "down the line" videos watch your glove about halfway back in the swing.
To fix this in my swing, my instructor stuck 3 driver shafts together (the tip of one into the grip of the other and so on...) until he had one long shaft about 10 feet long. He then stuck the tip of the "shaft" in the ground out in front of me about 7 or 8 feet on an angle that had the opposite end of the "shaft" touching my right shoulder and extending beyond my right shoulder probably 3 feet.
This basically set the tone for the swing plane. He then had me hit balls while swinging under this "plane". The club must remain under this plane from take-away until impact. After impact it doesn't matter because the ball is gone. But from take-away to impact the club must remain under the plane (or shafts).
Ben Hogan was a huge advocate of this. He said that you should imagine that the swing plane is a plane of glass and you shouldn't break the plane (by having your club touch the shafts in this example).

Spine Tilt
Like I have mentioned already, I noticed that your forward tilt is really good, but that's only half of what makes up "spine angle". One of the very first things that my instructor did when we started was adjust my "spine tilt". I played a practice round with him at our state open this year, and fortunately for me he was paying attention. I knew that I hit the ball very high with just about every club in the bag but especially the driver. Sky high was more like it with tons of spin. No roll what-so-ever. All carry. This was attributed to a steep angle of attack. The steeper it is, the more spin the ball will have. Think wedge shot.
By having me tilt my spine (away from the target) about 3 or 4 degrees, this promoted a more sweeping angle of attack instead of being steep. With the driver this brought my spinrate down and flattened out my ball trajectory. In a nutshell, this combination produced mid-trajectory, flat bombs that had tons of roll when they landed.

Shoulder turn
I noticed that you don't get your shoulders turned very much. Your shoulders are barely getting to 90 degrees it seems. This is one of the main power suppliers, or power sappers of the swing. My instructor said that my shoulder turn was also lacking. A golfers' shoulders and legs go hand in hand with each other. Your legs turn the hips and the hips turn the core (or trunk) and shoulders. To fix this, he had me rotate around my right leg. At first, this felt very wierd, along with just about everything else he had me do! It almost felt as if I were reverse pivoting. But once I felt what rotating around my right leg did I knew that this was very important within the swing.

Here's and experiment I want you to do. This will show you what rotating around your right leg will do for your shoulder turn: Take your normal stance, and while in front of a mirror, take your swing to the top. Take note of how much shoulder turn you get out of just turning your hips and shoulders. You should be able to get 90 degrees judging by your videos.

Now, take the same stance and take your same swing to the top like you just did, only this time straighten (or rotate around) your right leg. Now look at your shoulder angle. By straightening (not locking!) your right leg, you moved your right hip back causing your core to rotate more, thus causing your shoulders to turn more. I was amazed to see what proper rotation could do to the golf swing.

At first, rotating around your right leg will probably feel like a reverse pivot. It did for me. It felt like I was going to fall over left, but in reality, I wasn't leaning left at all. Think VJ Singh here. At the top of his swing his left knee really comes toward his right leg. Perfect example of someone rotating around their right leg. Here's another golfer that rotated around their right leg about as good as anyone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMme63rleag .

Ball Position
I'm not going to beat a dead horse here. You've already said that you needed to work on that.

I really like your tempo! Nice and smooth. No rush.

I know changing a golf swing isn't something that we want to do if we don't have to, but if you were to ask me, "What's the most important thing that I need to work on?" it would be to widen that base, work on that spine tilt and work on your swing plane. It would be easier than you think and the results would be well worth it!

Again, I'm not telling you what to do. I couldn't help but notice how much your swing now, and my swing then, looks alike. Hope I helped. Good luck! Simp

Thanks for the very in depth review of my swing Simp! I agree with everything you've said. You're right also, we're about the same build. I'm 6'2'' but about 175 lbs.

I was playing around with my ball position today while looking in the mirror and I think my lack of spine tilt was because of my poor ball position. I noticed that with the ball back in the middle of my stance as it is in the video, my shoulders are more or less level at address, but when I put the ball a little more up in my stance the shoulder tilt came naturally and my right shoulder was quite a bit lower than my left. So Maybe I can kill two birds with one stone so to speak with improved ball position.

You're right about my stance width. It used to be real wide, then I started narrowing it down, and I think I just got to a point where it was to narrow. Easy fix.

The shoulder turn deal...yeah you're right. My shoulder turn is terrible. I hit the ball a long way by most peoples standards, but I could hit it so much farther if I had the shoulder turn that I should have instead of just swinging with the arms. I think the lack of shoulder turn and just swinging with my arms is a big reason why I have a tendency to hit some hosel rockets ever now and again.

I was playing around with what you said about straightening the right leg, but not locking and it does seem to allow for a few more degrees of shoulder turn, which would result in quite a bit more yardage if utilized right. I just have to play around with it and see what happens. I've always heard NOT to straighten your right leg as it would lead to a reverse pivot as all your weight is staying on your left leg....

Thanks again.

Think of it as simply rotating your hips instead of physically straightening the right leg. If you rotate your hips properly the flex in your right knee will decrease resulting in your right leg being straighter than the left leg. If you do it properly it will definitely feel wierd at first. It will feel like a reverse pivot. It did for me. I asked my instructor, "Is this a reverse pivot?" and he assured me that it wasn't.

He proved this by putting the grip of one of those shafts on my left shoulder allowing the tip to hang straight down, like a pendulum. He said that if I were to reverse pivot with the shaft where it was, that my left hip would make contact with the shaft. I made a practice swing and didn't come in contact with the shaft. No reverse pivot.

Again, these suggestions that I've explained only applies if you're a "student" of this particular swing philosophy. I was willing to sacrifice the latter half of this season to work on getting these moves down. Some people don't want to go the extra mile. Believe me, it's very hard to work on your swing to this degree and still play good golf. I almost pulled my hair out while I played, but I knew sooner or later it would start to come together, and it has. I'm also glad that I went this route instead of just dealing with my swing the way it was. Hope this helps! Simp

I'm definitely commited to doing whatever I can to improve my swing. I mean I could definitely play with my current swing with seemingly no problems, but I'm not consistant enough with my ball striking. It seems like now, my swing is so long and I do a couple small things that hurt me if my timing isn't on. I could go two weeks where everything is clicking and I don't shoot anything higher than a 75 anywhere I go, or I could go two weeks and not even break 80 because something small has gotten out of whack and I feel like I can't make decent contact to save my life. I need to be more consistant and I think working on a lot of the things you pointed out is key.

Deron, I applaud your commitment. Are you going to be seeing someone or are you going to work on your swing by yourself?

That's a good question. I'd love to work with someone, but I don't know about paying 50 bucks or more everytime I go. That can get really expensive. I've been to one teacher that I really like but the sessions are 90 bucks for 45 mintues with him. That's for the whole video session and everything (which isn't that great because they video tape you inside, not out). We'll just have to see. I've only had 4 lessons my whole life, so maybe I can work some of the things out myself, I've gotten this far doing it. lol. If I do go to someone I need to go when I'm swinging good as well as bad. I tend to only go to a teacher when my swing is bent out of shape and since I don't have a regular teacher, the sessions that I've had haven't really been all that great because these guys don't know how I swing normally, all they see is me hitting hosel rockets or whatever and can't help much cause they have no idea how I normally swing.

Watch out moving the ball forward in your stance, it can get your shoulders open to the target. Just keep that in mind.

Good Luck!

Yeah, I'm not to worried about it to much though, as opening my shoulders should in theory straighten out my hook a little. At the end of the year when I hit one bad it was a hook (which I like to play, just not as much as I was). Plus I was hitting it way to low (which I also like, just not that low). The higher the ball flight the more carry distance. Hitting it low is only nice in wet conditions. Plus I might even gain a little clubhead speed by playing the ball up a little. From that video my driver is more toward my back foot than it is my front, so you would think that at the point of impact, my clubhead speed had not reached it full speed. I guess I'll see. Suppose to be 60 tomorrow I think, so may have to hit the range.