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This is what makes teaching older students so difficult. Their habits are so deeply ingrained, it is hard to break them.

Beginners and kids are easy. Their minds are mush and you can put anything you want in their heads.

It causes some of it, but the biggest effect of playing the ball back is a low trajectory, and it take a lot of skill to do this. Otherwise you end up topping the ball hitting with a steep decent. There is very little room for error.

No it makes you use your core as the power source, and forces you to swing around your spine or the pivot point. You are over-cooking the thought.

I do not mean keep your right elbow glued to your side or against the body. Just about a hand width of distance is right. Watch the pros in slow motion where there right elbows are at the top and down through impact. Right before impact it is buried right into their hip pocket. FWIW don't use Jim the looper Furyk as the model. However notice the first thing Jim does at the top is correct his fault, he drops the right elbow straight down to his side.

Ever see on of these Golf Training Swing Jackets, or straight jackets? They are to train you to keep your elbows close together and pointing at their respected hip pocket.

Yes I am up there in ages and yes I do hit low balls - they're nice into the wind. I can't quite do Furyk but when my shots are not good, I try to be Trevino which kinda works but not very accurate for some reason. Thanks for your comments. I'll definitely try them all this weekend.

The DTL view is revealing. It looks like you are set with feet closed and shoulders open, but you still come across the shoulder line due to left shoulder disconnect. Other than shortening your swing, which I still think will help immensly, ball position will help many of your setup issues, but with some further tweaking. "Left Shirt Pocket" is a good guide for ball position because anatomically, that is located just prior to the low spot in your swing. It automatically puts your head behind the ball. so you don't have to exagerate your positions at setup as you do. If you want to improve, it would be best to go ahead and learn to setup square to the target line on the INSIDES of the feet. I know, such a change will set you back for a while, but no matter what your level of interest or ability to spend a lot of time on it, the dividends will be huge. And scratch, if you are aging, all the more reason to shorten your swing. I bet you hit much further by doing so.

I am counting on your words here CG. Leap of faith and I'll try everything you suggest. But as I was saying to D, I am having a hard time executing what my brain is trying to do. I guess I don't know where all my body parts are during the swing so Video is always a surprise. It feels like I need a good trigger for how to initiate a down swing. Short and gentle swing is always a good thing until I gradually degrade back to a beasts imitating JD.

Brain/body disconnect will quickly disappear once you begin to focus on the right things, but I would rather it be an intellectual decision rather than a leap of faith; make it make sense to you.
If you do decide to make fundamental changes, what would be good is to continue to video your progress. You will run into problems of misunderstanding and misexecution which if not caught, will frustrate you. Also, seriously give weight to this decision. It is not easy to "re-tool", a path laced with many obstacles and hard work, but rewarded at the end with golf swing "bliss". There is no reason why you can't continue to tweak your pull swing and play enjoyable golf however, so make sure you want to take this route of rebuilding, and if you do, fully commit to it. If you do, let me know and I'll post some beginning drills (which fully buttress what dbc is saying) to help you get started.

It is hard. Like any habit good or bad, when it is deeply ingrained change does not come easy. It takes more than faith, it takes commitment and hard work.


OK if you were my student hers would be my plan. Learn to keep the right elbow down on the backswing, slow down the tempo on the way back, pause at the top. and then start down by turning the hips and let the arms naturally follow while holding your spine angle until after impact and let momentum carry you you up to a finish. You loose your spine angle by standing and reversing. That is what causes you finish below your shoulders screwing up your swing plane. Take it one step at a time.

Yes I am committed to it. So let's try your drill. The whole thing started when I won a real small and cute Samsung Mini-videocam as a medalist of the tournament. So vidoe taping is no problem Thanks CG.

I have no problem with commitment and hard work ( I'm married for 28 years to a same women as a proof ). And I like your plan except that I am a short stocky type and having a hard time releasing my hip and keep my shoulder from opening. I worked on my flexibility so it's better but still I feel there is not enough distance between my shoulder and hip to make them go different ways ( This is true with even my practice swing I think ). Any suggestions ? ( How tall is Trevino? Even though most pros are a lot more flexible than AMs )

The first order of business then, is to get you set up square to the ball. First though, keep in mind you will be experiencing completely new feels and challenges to your muscles. For that reason, I do not recommend attempting full swings with these new positions, rather, stick with the drills and slowly work up to full swings. Developing new feels require the usual breaking down of muscles then building them back up slowly. It is not until the building back up phase that you begin to develop the feel. If you overdo it, the muscles will be very slow to repair and build, so healthful spacing of excercise interval is important. That's for you to determine, but every other day per muscle group seems to be best for most people.
The setup exercises can be done indoors or out, but what is important is to have a target line on the ground to line up to, which can be the bottom of a wall, the edge of a rug, etc. Think in terms of the tips of your shoes, your knees, and your shoulders, getting them parallel to the line. As an aid for your shoulders, lay a club from shoulder to shoulder across the front of your chest, and criss cross your arms to hold it in place. That gives your a line you can see to make it parallel to the target line. Go ahead and setup to the line as you normally do, but squarely face the line and feel your weight evenly distributed between both feet (The spacing of your feet and the DTL setup angles are about right in the videos, but the exagerated spinal tilt and right shoulder drop will vanish if you do this correctly. Yes, the spine tilts a little away from the target, and the right shoulder is about an inch below the left, but both occur naturally if everything else is in order, so there is no need to think about them or "make" them happen). Once setup to the line with your shoulder guide club in place, flex your knees just a little more than in the video, then close your eyes and kick your knees in toward each other an inch or more. Focus on the balls and heels of your feet (BH). Feel the weight of your body evenly distributed between the insides of both feet and evenly distributed between the BH. One more thing; keeping everthing else in position, raise your head just a tad, then re-adjust your balance. This should put you in an athletic position where you feel as if you are about to sit down yet you also feel erect. This is in part a meditative drill. Spend 5 or 10 minutes on it a few times a day. Practice it so that you can accomplish each detail with ease, then maintain the position while relaxing your muscles.
I will soon post the next drill which is designed for many purposes including learning the core of the swing and determining your range of motion. In general, two areas are being targeted for muscle development at present, the insides of your legs and your left shoulder. Any thing you can do to work on those muscles will be of value.

That is even more reason to have a rotary one plane swing.

I appreciate the drill CG but I thought my practice swing and set up was half way decent. It's my swing with a ball that's OTT and broken, NO?

In the swings you posted, yes there are differences between the practice swing and the actual swing, but you release early in both. In your actual swing, your weight is not transfering to the left, caused by several factors. So what I am saying is, even if you are able to replicate your practice swing for the actual hit, you are likely to not see much better results. Study the images. First is the practice swing and the second is the actual swing. The practice swing would certainly give you a better hit, but it would be no where near your potential due to releasing the club well prior to the the ball.

Attached Images

	CaptureScratchPprehit.JPG (11.8 KB, 34 views)
	CaptureScratchAprehit.JPG (10.9 KB, 34 views)

OK CG I got your point.
Here's my DTL swing again after 2 rounds not that I expect any improvements.
- I moved the ball position
- Try to swing half way ( even though it still looks full )
- Try to swing easy ( didn't lose much distance maybe 5 yards )

With this new approach, I struggled a bit with Driver and 3 wood but the rest was fine and actually my short iron accuracy ( which I struggled over the years ) was much better. Towards the end of 2nd round, I can feel OTT coming back with more forceful swing which is when the video was taken. I'll keep on trying.

Cheers - Thanks again CG & D.

YouTube - My Swing 2-3

One of the reasons for the setup drill is because it appears your weight is favoring the heels, which can be a swing destroyer. You may be about an inch too close to the ball, but I wasn't going to get into that until you got intune with the balls and heels of your feet. "Knowing your feet", and the feel of being balanced with the weight evenly distributed is a fundamental which should be ingrained into your setup routine.
Regarding OTT, you may not realize it, but your first move in the swing, picking the club up with your hands and setting the wrists, takes your club outside the line immediatly. The early wrist hinge also encourages early release. That is why I like a much shorter swing in order to overcome those habits; less room to release early.
Again, I think you are dwelling on something which just keeps you in a negative vein. It's not the practice vs actual swings, but the core fundamentals which should be your focus. If you want to ovecome that one aspect, get a bucket of balls and hit everyone of them as hard as you can WITHOUT taking a practice motion of any kind. Then get another bucket and do the 10 balls in a line drill. Space them out a foot apart on the practice tee, and hit them one after the other in a continuous motion without stopping; Hit the first one, immediatly begin swinging back while stepping up to hit the next, etc. Do the whole bucket that way using your favorite short or mid-iron.

OK, I'll try that next weekend CG. BTW, what part of my swing faults am I supposed to fix by hitting (2) buckets without practice swing? Or does it address ALL of the above stated fundamentals?