Birdman03

Looking at the videos I sent to the pro for analysis I see that things look to be going awry in my takeaway. My arms and the club stay close to my body so I have to stand up to create some room before impact. This problem may be exacerbated by the closed set up.

Thanks for the clarification. That driver is a Rogue 13.5 deg with the hosel on N and S settings. It can be adjusted from -1 to +2. At this point I am going to leave the settings alone and concentrate on my swing issues.

Very good advice. I have a lesson coming up soon and I will see what he says about my posture issue. I agree with the consensus here - I am making a problematic move but can still hit the ball well by "timing up" various compensations. That won't be reliable long-term. I have noticed that I always hit a couple of weak slicey drives during every round when I lose my timing.

In my case I am definitely aware that I am coming out of posture at impact. I could focus on that, but fortunately I am able to fairly consistently put good driver hits on the ball and achieve nice trajectories with what I am doing now. I had a lesson recently and was told to set up closed to the target to promote more rotation toward the trail side. When I combine that with a good wrist set I hit the ball well. It is possible that this change has caused me to stand up at impact more than I did previously. Looking at my older videos that is what I am seeing.

Looking at both my strike pattern on the driver face and my DTL videos I note that my hands and the club are quite a bit higher than where they were at address (see picture). The clubhead is slightly toe-down at impact. I am wondering if this is a concern and if I could improve strike quality by using a driver with a flatter lie angle and/or getting the hands lower at impact. The impact tape in the picture is after 20 hits where I was hitting slight draws with good numbers on the LM.

Good advice, thanks.

In my recent lessons I have been told to set up closed to promote more rotation to the trail side. That stick is there as a guide for that.

When I did this exercise a key learning was that my driver swing flaws were showing clearly in the strike patterns as pointed out by @Valtiel. I did some practice with video and was able to find the center of the face much more consistently. I did it by moving away from the ball a bit and getting my back less rounded at address. I then bowed my wrists at the top, which has the effect of flattening the shaft and getting it more on plane in my downswing. I also delayed and reduced my lower body turn in the downswing. I am not able yet to do all this at full speed, but the progress is encouraging.

It doesn't. However I think there is a lesson to be learned from the consistency of center strikes I got doing that vs lack of same with driver. I think Valtiel diagnosed what is happening quite nicely back in the first reply to my post.

Yes, not normally of course. For this experiment I was testing what would happen if I did swing 7W like driver.

No I don't have actual AoA meaurements. I am assuming driver AoA is reasonable because I don't hit high on the face or launch any sky balls. Those are signs of too much downward AoA in my experience.

Sixteen to 17 degrees.

Normally I would hit 7W off the ground, but for this exercise I used a low tee and hit up on it to simulate a driver swing. Launch angle was 18 degrees.

I have been hitting two different drivers to test that, after seeing a lot of advice for low CHS seniors to use more lofted drivers. One driver is a Callaway with an R shaft set at 14.5 degrees and the other is a G430 Max with a Sr shaft set at 13.0 degrees. What are you seeing that makes you think I need more loft? I am launching both at 16 to 17 degrees.

Excellent analysis, thanks. I will try again after a bit more swing work with video. In the meantime I will try swinging under an alignment stick to force an inside-out path and see what the strike pattern looks like.