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.

I suspect what I have observed is limited to those of us with low CHS, but even with that I am a bit surprised. I hit two different drivers and measured the ball speeds and other parameters using my SC300i launch monitor. After that I hit 20 balls with a 22 deg G430 7W off a low tee. The ball speed difference for quality hits was only 6 mph (105 vs 111 mph). In contrast I note LPGA Trackman data shows 18 mph average ball speed difference between their drivers and hybrids (I assume that is similar to my 7W). My results I think are somewhat due to consistency of center contact, which is significantly better with my 7W (see attached picture). I can swing as about as hard as I want with 7W, hit it on the center, and get a nice tight dispersion pattern. I can't do that with driver. The smaller head of the 7W seems to promote more center contact. This brings up the possibility that an optimal tee club for me (or maybe others with my low CHS) could be something in between driver and 7W in length and loft.