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Just wondering if anyone has had any problems with duckhooks after implementing the flattening of the shaft on the downswing and how you addressed them. I haven't really had time to work on my game but next time I was out wanted some ideas to work on. As of last session my buddy informed me I was a little closed so I opened the stance up and this seemed to straighten it out somewhat but the hooks were still there and I felt like so open that I was going to slice one of the world, but never did. Would a culprit of the duckhooks be the fact I am flipping due to not staying committed to the shot for fear of going right? Or would it be more corrected just implementing the more open feel, flatting my equipment (irons are 2* upright but I open them up slightly to compensate for the toe being up), and retaining the right arm for as long as possible "through" the swing as Grady implies.

Just seeing if anyone might have any input. My apologies for not having a video of the swing, but just take my word that I swing on the flat side naturally.

CCM

Oh and also wondering what ya'll think of Johnny Huh (Question Mark). He has a flat set up and was playing a nice fade in his win at Mayakoba.

Was supposed to be a youtube link to his swing:

Carson,

Send me private message and I will explain something to you that will help .

Lane

Lane,

Forgive my ignorant tomfoolery but every time I see the last name Holt I think of this recurrent joke from my favorite show of all time:



John Huh's swing is awesome. I wish I could have it.

I wonder if his family is from the same horse thieves as mine?

.

Lane

Carson wrote:


I can honestly say I have not hit a duck hook in over 2 months since starting Bradley's program. It used to be the shot that killed me, my home course has OB or water left on at least 7 holes, the dreaded duck ruined so many good rounds for me. Now I can stand on a tee and aim down the left hand side of the fairway and just rip it because I know it won't/can't go left. My hands are locked and I rotate everything as one, the toe of the club will never pass the heel, total control. I know myself that I am still too steep coming into the ball and sometimes dig the toe in, but we have not worked on the backswing/downswing yet, only impact, post impact and ground pressures.

You say you naturally swing flat but you have your gear 2* upright? Your brain will make your hands rise up through impact because it knows the heel will bury into the ground if you don't lift the hands. Hands lift up, body stops rotating, hands and arms take over to try to square the club face = flip city.

Lane Holt wrote:




LANE HOLT!

Quick update after being back in Australia for a few weeks now.

Played the Vic PGA immediately after I arrived. Hadn't hit a shot for about 7 weeks since The Masters ended in mid December so had some rust on my game that week and didn't play too well.

Last week was Qld PGA which went reasonably well with a 71-67-71 (3rd round was washed out)

Playing again this week on the Gold Coast in a 4 day pro-am...have shot 73-70 so far.

All in all been very happy to get out playing again and the past 5 rounds have been quite good with a minimum of 14 greens in reg for each of those 5 rounds.
Putting has lacked a little. Mind you I haven't practice putting for about 3 years so not too disheartened just need to gain some confidence from playing more... and tournament golf mindset is different to just screwing around, so it has been a good start back so far.... A nice weekend here with some putts dropping would be great.

Next week I am in Sydney doing some lessons at Twin Creeks in Sydney's Western suburbs.Details and info can be found about half way down page 5 of my website www.bradleyhughesgolf.com
Dates available are Wed March 7-Fri March 9....
Saturday March 10 is sold out. Please contact me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it if you are interested in setting up a 1 or 2 hour lesson or even a playing lesson on course....

Good golfing to everyone and thanks for reading my thread.

Well done Bradley,

After your layoff making cuts is a key to regaining your competitive edge. Thanks for the update I wish you well and look forward to hearing your success stories.

Bill

Way to go, Bradley! I am working hard on what I've learned from you and I hope you play great! I'm sure I can speak for many of us here that we are rooting for you with all we've got!

Carson wrote:



Just the fact alone of flattening the transition/downswing will not necessarily result directly in a better process....
It depends how you flatten the shaft......do the hands drop down and behind....or do the hands stay on a similar path and the shaft /head get behind. Do the knees lower/ Shoulders stay closed/ torso maintain angle/ feet provide resistance and so on
Do it the wrong way and you ask for trouble...... do it correctly and have a range of motion available to the body by using ground forces, wristcock, shallow entry, forearm rotation... then the hands can hit hard (late) and the body should come to the picnic and help out... so all units are working as a team and nothing is stopping to allow another part to play catch up or ruin the orchestrated movements of all motion.

This is one of the main reasons I wait until drill 5 before I teach my students anything to do with transition. We need the guns at the bottom and through and beyond impact in place ready to assist and fight off urges of overacceleration, straightening arms and legs among many things and we need the visual of bringing the club into the ball from that shallow/behind angle and we also need to know what to do with it into the strike and thru....before we can utilize the flattening aspect of the shaft to our benefit.

It is painfully obvious that this guy here (below) is going to have a heck of a lot harder time controlling his golf ball from hole to hole and day to day than someone who moves in motion into and through the strike without having to stiff leg and straighten his arms with opened hips and square steepened un-matching shoulders just to get bat to ball
This is just a velocity induced arm and hand action void of the power package that is the entire body.
Much better to have an acceleration motivated action using the sum of all parts of the body motion together through and beyond the impact arena

Makes sense he hit a fade---Face is slighlty closed through impact--path is a fade path.....

Makes sense he hit a fade---Face is slightly closed through impact--path is a fade path.....

Bradley do you still teach out of Greenville SC?

Robert wrote:


Robert, No Mate....am currently in Australia and will be teaching out of Sydney and Melbourne.... I update info as to when and where on page 5 of my website

Let's make another thought.......
* At address for all intent and reasoning our right arm is bent...or less rigid than our left...why?.... because our right hand is lower on the club, so the right shoulder is lower.... so unless we have our right arm built shorter than our left it is going to be softer/less rigid/bent at address.

*At transition and into impact our knees/head normally (they should if we are compressing into some downward force) are lower at impact than they were at address to some degree.

So if our knees/head get lower into the strike......why would be want to straighten the right arm out into the strike and have one system going downward and one system raising and going upward. ?
This is why people lose their body form and shape and raise or 'goathump' as some call it. And why equipment setup is so important...upright just leads you to raising and straightening to sole the club out

See pic below:





It doesn't matter who this is but he does play quite well but has been having control issues....so thought I would use it to show a little about what I am talking about....Lets look at a few lines on it (hate doing that but it is a better visual for some)






-Head has gone down some as I suggested should happen if we are compressing our knees and utilizing the ground a bit.
-Shaft at address compared to impact has altered considerably as the right arm seeks to straighten on a steeper descent that a swing style would have
-Hands move away farther from body to make room for the straightening
-Upper body/back straightens up into a curved hunched look as it can't turn out the way (has to stop into square ) as the right arm wants to swing and straighten out

So as we can see a LOT of things have altered from address to impact that is going to have a lot of bearing on the start path, the spin, the curvature and also the low point of strike, and probably more aches and pains long term by stopping, straightening and having body parts fight one another.
I genuinely suggest that takes a lot more timing to produce and tension of a good round or a good result in an event or Championship is going to be a greater task for most unless they have a super human mind and nerves of steel to control their body in tight situations.

What I talk about liking is more or less returning the shaft into impact as it was at address..... right arm supporting the club and not moving it centrifugally away from the body altering the face alignments.

Plus the body is a HUGE power source if we keep it in an accelerated continual movement at the moment of truth and beyond.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Posted this in Rock's thread:......thought I would swing it in over here also and give some address and impact shots of one of the best who was able to return his club shaft and hands into an almost identical position at strike as at set up.....still with some head lowering to compress some ground forces to be able to utilize for all the work that occurs into impact and beyond....

To Bradley, First a tip of the cap to a player from an old lover of the game. Bradley you said...
Let's make another thought.......
* At address for all intent and reasoning our right arm is bent...or less rigid than our left...why?.... because our right hand is lower on the club, so the right shoulder is lower....

Not to quibble over details but allow me to interject this thought here regarding the statement above.
As an art student I learned of the concept of 'foreshortening' when trying to draw an image in perspective and relational scale. If I stand truly vertical without any tilt of the spine to either side and take up a grip on a golf club with my hands merely reaching straight out in front there is no need to ever consider lowering the right shoulder. Following that action I believe it to be possible to next bend forward from the hips, again without need to lower that shoulder one bit. Done just this way you as an observer stationed directly in front of me would see what surely appears to be a lower right shoulder than the left.............. foreshortening....... the right hand and thus the right shoulder are reaching out further forward from my trunk than the left hand/shoulder and as
a result of their nearer proximity to you the observer due to the forward tilt from the hips what you see is not exactly what you would generally assume as you have in your statement above.
This 'given' assumption has, imo, caused many to distort their balance unduly in order not to violate one of golfs 'absolutes'. George Knudson for one knew better as he instructs through his video that what he called a square setup posture has the left shoulder appearing open to the target and as can be plainly seen his right forearm is above his left. Apart from the club shaft between the arms illustration in Power Golf Knudson's idol and mentor Ben Hogan had the same posture of the arms. Just a thought from the sidelines. DTS

Jerry,

Talked a lot about set up with Martin this weekend. Question for you. With that set up structure where do you feel your hands at the top of the swing. I have come to want to perceive feeling that my left palm is facing the ground and my right palm is facing the sky. When I have your set up I feel very open and under rotated at the top and feel like I have no choice but to hit it right. Does that make sense? PM me if you want.

Thanks,

Grady

Jerry
Absolutely agree...Trying to have a bent arm at address is not the paramount.
Looking at the pics of Hogan and Knudson the right arm is certainly softer/freer than the left. Hogans arm can look straighter as he had his right hand grip in a weaker turned left setup which automatically raises the elbow and gives a straighter right arm above left arm look. We can see looking at Knudson's right arm the crease in his sleeve at the elbow when compared to the left arm.



Someone with a stronger right hand grip such as Peter Thomson would look like his right arm is even softer and he is more tilted in the shoulders and behind the ball with his right arm/elbow


Grip alignment & stance width all have a bearing on the visual look also at address......
As we take the club away the right arm can only go so far away before it bends significantly and folds while the left arm stays reasonably intact and solid.....so in setting up we are really just having this occurrence and awareness ready to us to use without having to force or fight it.

.Grady Dickens wrote:


Grady, In short I would answer that I 'feel' that both hands are in a more or less vertical posture i.e. thumbs under the shaft. More to the point in considering your preference as compared to mine I would liken it very much to an arm wrestling analogy in which case I have described a neutral quality one against the other in my
reference above. In your chosen posture the left hand would have a 'superior' posture over the right in terms of
leverage advantage. From neutral my choice would be shaded towards the right hand superior. This analogy is
in keeping with the concept of containment or as I originally termed it trapping the triangle. Very much what I saw in the Abe Mitchell 'wound towards the target' illustrations when I was first introduced to his little green books back in 1985. From that early Mitchell inspired intuition much has been added that is all Martin's insights.
I mean to say that he added real substantive value to my early inklings.

As for reasoning out why I prefer this it goes straight in the direction of 'opposing forces'. In transition down is going to be a given..... aided by gravity and the clubs mass. In setting the tone for a right side superior posture of the arms, and consequently the hands as well, we would be meeting these forces head on and in so doing adding to the momentum of the accelerating mass. The club is poised to overcome this opposition as well it should and must............. it's our job to put up the challenge with these opposing forces. Smash will follow. This, to me, is the crossroads where 'push' beats 'pull'. Jerry

P.S. Your comment about feeling under rotated seems to suggest to me that while you may have the hands closer to vertical they are not supporting containment via the triangle's balance and further by support of the right side itself. Call me persistent but this is a direct result of your body posture (spine/eye/body mass) all set
against the balance needed to wind into the triangle and not allow the club to journey outwards and around. The rotation you seek which delivers your preferred left palm down and right palm up just spells out the outward nature of your desired arm rotation. In my fashion the left forearm breaks inward and there is no rotation of the right arm at all. If you held an axe vertically in front and above your right shoulder the back of your right hand would be flat and the left wrist would be broken inward (cupped).

Jerry thanks for this thoughtful response. When Martin and I talked it occurred to me that part of my issue with your setup structure and DOCF more generally goes back to when I was 9 years old and just starting the game. My dad would take me out to a driving range after work. The driving range pro came up to me after my face got familiar and gave me a drill that I did a lot of during those formative years. He would stick a tee in the ground about 18 inches to two feet behind the ball and in front of the ball and wanted me to hit the tee on both BS and DS.

I think getting to that tee on the BS is at the heart of things. I have to turn and drop down with my shoulders to get to that tee and I think my weight goes out to the balls or even toe of my right foot. I have to recover from there. I haven't done that drill in 40 years, but I think it is still in my golf DNA if ever so slightly, and that may be why I have a bit of backout in the DS.

Having said that I still don't see why we can't both pull and push, but I think your position would be any pull would impede and diminish the effectiveness of the push.

Great timing on this photo grouping Bradley!! I was working hard on my drill 2 stuff tonight and trying to stay "packed in" at impact like these demonstrate...

Wow, the DHBM group way looks less....."painful"