The blogs after yesterday's article had this interesting and important question.
Randy Pegram says:
Hey Don, I am having a heck of a time with the timing of my swing. I get too fast and my shoulders open (outside in swing plane) or too slow and hook the ball, or release my wrist too fast (casting) or hold my wrist too long and block my shot. Any ideas on how to establish my timing?
Randy,
Since you are hitting pulls, hooks and then blocks, the first place I will suggest looking for the problem is not timing, but alignment. This is classic aiming right (for right hander) flight pattern problems. When aiming right, and you are about to start your transition, your body is in the way of swinging your arms and club straight down on the aiming line to hit a straight shot to the target. The brain senses a straight down path to the ball and sets the compensations into action to right (pun intended) the wrong alignment.
Since the transition is likely already started, or within a split fraction of a second from starting, compensations are extra moves that are added to your swing sequence. Since extra moves are not part of your timing sequence to impact, and extra is more, your brain knows that the only way you can get to impact in time is to speed up your swing.
The hips clear faster, pulling the shoulders and arms and the club on the outside to in path, hitting a pull if the club is square to the path at impact. And, as you say, you also hit hooks when you release your hands, which means on those shots the clubface was closed to the path at impact, imparting the hook spin on the ball. After a few too many hits to the left, your brain, every now and then, will react with, 'this is not going left' and here comes, 'hello right.' Sometimes you get lucky and time it right and hit a good one right down the middle or right at the flag.
So, first and foremost you have to address alignment as the problem for your inconsistent timing in your golf swing. The next time you feel your timing is bad, and hit one left and even a block to the right, you need to check your alignment. Holding your finish position, turn back to your address position and place the club down on the ground touching your toe line. Then walk behind the club and look where it is pointing. Proper alignment is parallel left and thus the club should be pointing parallel left of your aiming line. If it is pointing near to it, at it and right of it, you were aiming right. The brain sensed it and went into compensation mode to try to change path to the aiming line and your swing speeded up, so your timing was thrown out of sync.
An Aid to help develop and maintain a good timing sequence, from takeaway to impact, is to work on developing a 'counting cadence' in your mind when you swing. Most often they use a 2 count and 3 at the most. Immediately at the start of the takeaway, begin your count cadence to the top of your backswing, finishing the number 'one' at the top where you will transition to the forward upswing. From there you time impact by saying 'two'. Naturally, saying two will happen way faster than your backswing count.
Lastly, I have written numerous articles about all aspects of alignment. One time I wrote one article that ended up being an 8 part series. At the top of the page for every daily article and the website is a box directly under the picture of DJ and Me that says 'SEARCH THIS WEBSITE.' This is a search engine for the site. Enter the word alignment and click go or hit enter and it will retrieve articles that relate to your search word or words.
The Surge!