Range Day/Zepp Sensor description
August 7th, 2016 — Day 4 — 397 days until the 2017 GTC
Range days are good days for me, and quite effective as it relates to improvement of my game. The main reason that range days have had such an impact on my overall game has been thanks to my new @ZeppLabs golf sensor.
Zepp Sensor
For years, days at the range have shown marginal improvement, at best. The reason for this has been simple. Practice doesn't make perfect, practice only makes permanent. So, as I would sit there bashing ball after ball out of my extra large bucket, I really wasn’t making any functional changes to my swing. As I would sit on the range, I would eventually figure out how to hit good looking shots with my crappy swing by making last second adjustments to force my club into a decent position at impact, but to consistently get the timing right on those last second adjustments is near impossible. So, I would walk off the range feeling good because I can hit a bunch of good shots after ingraining that timing in my swing hitting a 100 balls in an hour, but once you get to the course, you can’t sit there and hit ball after ball anymore, so that timing begins to slip and the same old mistakes come back.
Now, since I have begun using the Zepp golf sensor, my range days are way more productive. I am learning to get my swing, more consistently, on a much more straight swing path. The sensor gives you immediate feedback in both a numerical format as well as a 3D rendering of what your swing looked like. Once you see where your swing is going wrong, fixing becomes less about repetition to try and get that timing just right, and more about making the changes to your swing so that your misses are more predictable and less drastic when the timing is off. Oddly enough, I never need the large bucket anymore. I hit a shot, review how it looked, take a practice swing of two to try and correct the flaws (if needed) before I step up to hit my next shot. In the time it was taking me to hit the extra large bucket, I am not hitting just a small bucket while being more productive overall and wearing out my body less. Thus, not ingraining as much flawed movement into my swing.
In an effort to show exactly where my swing began the summer as well as describing the visual aspects of the Zepp sensor, I will display a swing from my first day with the sensor. Take a look at this swing from my fist day with the sensor on July 2nd:
This swing is not only an an excellent swing to describe how the Zepp sensor scores your swing, but also is an excellent way to help understand how, with a very poor swing, I was able to hit good shots. If you were to look solely at the numeric scores on the left this appears to be a very good swing. My club speed is high for a 7-iron, but most importantly, my club plane and hand plane are near perfect. A typical tour pro with have a club plane around -5, and a hand plane around 0. to understand what those percentages represent think of it this way; if you were a robot and brought your club straight back and straight forward, both of those numbers would read 0. A negative number represents a more inside to out swing, while a positive number represents coming over the top.
Now, if you look at the visual representation of the swing on the right, it tells a much different story and gives a great explanation for inconsistencies in my swing. Note that the dark blue line represents my club as I take it back away from the ball, while the light blue line represents my club as I move forward towards the ball. As you can see, on this swing I pull the club back very flat then make a hitchy adjustment at the top of the swing before I bring the club down. Something like a reverse Jim Furyk. Note that the swing score you receive, as relates to club plane, only measures where the club is as it is coming through the hitting path (as that is really the part that matters). As you can see on this swing, that hitch on this swing happened to bring my club right into a perfect position to come down and through on a nice inside swing path. Hence, the very high swing score. If I could swing just like this every single time, It would be great, but there are just too many moving parts in this swing to have any sort of consistency. For example; lets take a look at another swing after I hit another club and came back to the 7-iron.
This swing, you see, is much different from the last. I bring the club back flat again, but this time the hitch coming forward brings the club much higher and over the top. This creates a situation where, to get back to the ball, the club has come down on an outside-to-in swing path (pretty heavily). By the time the club head comes into the hitting zone into the hitting zone, it is coming across the ball right-to-left. This swing, undoubtedly, produced a weak fade or a pull hook, depending on the face angle at the time of impact.
Obviously, after reviewing my first day with the sensor, I now have a game plan to make my swing more consistent. I need to work on taking the club back at a steeper angle, so that the club is going straight back to where I want it at the top, rather that coming in flat and being forced to hitch at the top of the swing to get the club where I want it.
Range Day
After a small warmup with my sand wedge, I hit 39 balls today hitting my 9-iron, 8-iron, hybrid, and my driver.
Average swing score: 90
The Good
This was, for the most part how I was hitting my irons all day. This, frankly is a really good swing. In contrast to my swings a month ago, I am now coming straight back to the top. There is still a slight tendency to make my initial move over the top, but as you can see it is not much at all. I cannot, for the life of me, get myself to make my first move from the top down and to the inside, but in this case, not much to complain about. Ball flight on this ball was a nice high draw that was within 15 feet of a pin 180 yards out.
The Bad
This is still, frequently, what my Driver is looking like. As a general statement, the driver is longer and, thus, will have a more flat swing path, but this is pretty exaggerated. When I get to top, I am no where near shoulder height and I am forced to make a correction to get into a better spot coming down. This is not producing as ugly of a ball flight as you might think, but is still creating a bit of fade spin that is taking distance off of my ball, or the occasional pull-hook. I am trying to get the club up higher on the back swing and occasionally I do, but it feels pretty awkward.
The Ugly
This was my first swing of the day with the 7-iron. Same flaw always comes out when I don’t consciously think about it. The take back isn’t extremely flat, but the first move towards the ball is a move directly over the top. It took me about two swings to work this out, but this serves as a reminder that my natural swing is not yet rid of that over the top movement. It’s important that I hit a warm-up bucket before a round to work that kink out before I get on the course.
Alright, that’s all I’ve got for today. Catch you next time in the sunshine.
Birdies & Eagles,
Miller
