"Shanking" drives left?

General Discussion
#1

Hello Gentlemen, it’s been a while since I’ve last been here and I hope you’re all doing fine.

I’ve been playing and practicing regularly for the last 3 years and my game’s been coming along slowly (although more slowly than I’d like it to). I mostly average bogey with some pars and the occasional birdie here and there.

Now, I was on a round by myself yesterday and was playing okay, when I got to the 13th tee on my home course. It’s a short Par 4 at 310 meters nothing fancy, but the tee shot has to be played over water. Ever since I’ve stood over that tee for the first time that shot has gotten squarely into my head.

So, yesterday I tee it up, my head filled with all these positive thoughts and wishes and…I hit it sideways some 10 meters to the LEFT of me OB into some knee high grass. I think alright it’s just my ususal jitters there. I tee up another, swing, and hit the exact same shot into the exact same place OB. I’m like WTF, drop another ball, exact same result. 4th ball, exact same result. My 5th ball finally goes in the fairway, I get the 6th on the green, and there’s a nice ruined next five holes for me, which I play like I’ve never seen a golf club before.

Mental things aside, can anyone explain to me what went wrong here with my driver? How’s it even possible to get that ball to the left in a 45° angle?

Here’s an image from the hole. Yellow is the drive as it should go, mine were the red ones :frowning:

2023-06-14 12_54_28-Golf-Club Schloss Elkofen e.V. - Google Maps – Mozilla Firefox
2023-06-14 12_54_28-Golf-Club Schloss Elkofen e.V. - Google Maps – Mozilla Firefox510×816 110 KB

Happy gaming y’all!

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#2

No one could tell you what happened there if they could not witness as it happened.
Did you know which part of the driver face made contact with the golf ball?
Your title said shanking to the left, how do you know it was a shank? Did you exam the driver head for marks of where the mishits were?
A shank in golf could be caused by several common fault.
One of the most usual cause of shank is the distance from the golf ball at address.
Too close to the golf golf ( crowding) or too far away from the golf ball could possibly cause a shank.
There was a few times when I stood too close to the golf ball, resulted in shanked iron shots.
With the driver, a guess is, you stood too far away. It could be cause by over length of the driver to force you stand farther away with a flatter swing plane.
Do you have a video of your driver swing? Picture of the driver face to show ball marks?

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#3

Thanks for your reply!

I only titled it “shank” because that was the most common phrase for the error that came to my mind. The mishit was just like a shank but it went left instead of right as it would when “properly” shanked.

I guess it could be because I was too far from the ball. My driver is shortened to 44" so over length of the club couldn’t be it.

My driver is a TM Stealth 2 with the red face, so you can’t really see any ball marks…

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#4

Lightly dust the driver face and hosel with baby powder, I don’t like to use the aerosol spray It contains solvent.
If you have a clean driver face, you can see the light imprint of a golf ball, even with the new driver face.
If you have a shortened driver at 44", you should be standing closer to the golf ball if nothing else is changed.
How tall are you?

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#5

That, or similar.

My guess is that you had a severely out to in path, and clipped the ball severely heel side, causing the ball to react to the left and not the right. Further guesses: ball position too far forward, tee too high; both in an attempt to hit up on it.

Do what Dewsweeper said. See where your strike is. I’d also try moving the ball back to behind your big toe line (before flaring the left foot) and lowering your tee. Swing through the ball with a sweeping feel, like you’re trying to broom through the ball towards the target. See what happens.

Or get some lessons…

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#6

Definitely a pair of experienced eyes will spot what the cause for the errant ball flight.
As I said before, there could be a dozen of causes or a combination of them which caused your low ball flight to the left.

This is why some of my buddies ask me to spot them on the driving range. some of them lack the patience and determination to make the proper changes and own it.

After my initial series of lessons, I had only gone back to refresh one additional time. Actually the at the last lesson, the instructor basically told me to practice more without going back to him.

If you’re aware of what you’re doing, you could spot the moves out of the normal ways.
With today’s smart phone camera, a tripod is not that expensive an additional.

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#7

Thank you both.

I’ll go and see my club pro next week for a lesson, he’ll sort it out.

I just thought there might be a geneal explanation to as why a drive might go severely short and left, just as there is for a shank, slice, etc.

Have a nice week(end) y’all :slight_smile:

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#8

Very tough to “S” word with a Driver. Usually you can only “El Hosel” it. Irons usually are involved the “S” Word. That said, from personal experience with that virus… it has to do with you hinging your hands and wrists too early in the backswing and that hinge, not catching up at impact…hence a wide open clubface when you strike the ball causing the ball to go sideways. They literally had to tape my wrists in practice sessions to treat that disease. That was with an iron. Opposite ball going dead left, over-compensating, clubface at impact is really hooded and at minimum you get the old DUCK-HOOK, way too much and it’s a muffled shot into the ground. I also went through 3 months of that with a Driver or 3W it’s usually (if you are right handed) the hips and shoulders are way out of sync…Dead left is usually hips have already begun to point dead left on the downswing, right shoulder is even with or higher than the left (casting) and you are over top of the ball at impact instead of behind it. Hence…DEAD LEFT! That is an easier cure than HOSELITIS with you irons. Just grab your Driver or 3W stand in front of a mirror and put some masking tape on the mirror where your head is supposed to be and where your shoulders are supposed to be and practice your swing like 20 times in super slow motion (Harvey Penick Drill in the Little Red Book…well worth the investment) over several days. Then go to the range and do the same thing using a ball, maybe hit the ball 2 yards, you’ll see and feel impact position much better, Then start to speed it up until you get to about 75% of full speed… Do that and most likely you will have cured yourself…Good Luck!

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#9

If you look at all the different golf swings on the professional level, there is no “general” explanation of a swing fault without first observing it. Most the golf swings on the Tour are not picture perfect.

Many cases through history where a successful golfer seeking a “perfect golf swing” ended up losing his original winning golf swing.

Harvey Penick would not let his two famous students (Tom Kite, Ben Crenshaw) watch each other when he gave lessons to them. Simply because he said the two had different needs.

Since you are not a beginner, no group lessons. Group lessons is okay if one is freshly starting off, just need the basic of grip, address position, posture, alignment…

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#10

I’ve never had a group lesson :slightly_smiling_face:

The only group lessons our pros are giving is to people (potential club members) who need to acquire their course allowance licence. You need this to be allowed to even play on a course here.

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#11

Never heard of this before. That is different than the testament for playability/ability through a handicap index.
I had golf at some golf courses where a minimum index is required for a guest to use the facility.
Lesson does not always equal to improvement. Perhaps the club you frequent required this as a means for the teaching pro to get subsidized income.
“course allowance license”? I’ll Have to look this up.

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#12

It’s called “Platzreife” in German. Wikipedia says:

In Germany, Austria, Switzerland and a few other countries, the course permit (abbreviation PE), also called Platzreife, is the necessary first step from an interested person to a generally recognized golfer. It is predominantly the prerequisite for playing on the club’s own golf course and receiving a membership card with handicap proof.

You need to take part in a special PE-course (4-6 weekends, and usually held in group lessons), where you learn the basics of the game, correct behaviour on the course and theory.

At the end of the course you need to pass a 3-part-test to get your PE. This includes:

  • Training on how to behave on the course is the first part of the test. The examiner and the examinees demonstrate the correct behavior on the course on the basis of practical examples (e.g. safety, speedy play, protection of the golf course). For this purpose, the examiner goes into the most important stations: Teeing off, on the course, on the green.

  • 9-hole-play. The six best of them are scored. Based on a (fictitious) handicap of -54, the player must score at least twelve Stableford net points. Based on the six holes scored, this corresponds to a club handicap of -54. The three further holes are awarded to the examinee as a bonus.

  • In the final part of the test, 30 questions are answered in 30 minutes in a multiple-choice format. There are 15 rule questions, five of which are easy/medium/difficult, twelve etiquette questions and three general questions about golf. To pass, a maximum of four mistakes may be made on the rules questions and two mistakes on all other questions. The official rule book is permitted as an aid.

Only when you pass this, you’re officially allowed to get on the course.

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#13

I am aware for the Player’s Education class in Switzerland, not knowing the Germany and Austria also employ this requirement.
It is a great idea.
We don’t have such requirement. I learned the rules and the etiquettes on the golf course with the elderly playing partners.
Kids these days don’t have the patience and most of them won’t take advice from the duffers.
I’ll be taking a few new golfers out to par3 and executive golf courses this summer. After making sure that they could advance the golf balls in the general direction.

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#14

I like the Player Education class idea and wish that it would be implemented here in the States.

As others have said, difficult to give any advice as how to correct what you did without actually seeing what you did. However, in the vein of “laughter is the best medicine,” I’ll tell a little story that I actually observed about a shot that went even more left than yours did.

Back in the early 1990s, I was on a vacation in a beach area where one of my golfing friends lived. By coincidence, two other friends were visiting the same area, both golfers as well, so we set up a foursome. My friend who lived in the area brought along his girlfriend, a non-golfer who was EXTREMELY attractive. She rode along in his cart while we played

On one of the holes, one of my two other friends, a right hander, was teeing off when he hit his tee shot. The girlfriend was in the cart parked even with the tee markers. The shot my friend hit did not go forward, it did not shank in the usual rightward direction, it did not pop up in the air. Instead, it went directly backwards between his legs and between the legs of my friend’s girlfriend.

The other visiting friend quipped, “way to keep your eye on the target. . .”

There was really no way to reconstruct what my friend had done when he hit his tee shot. None of us had ever seen him hit a shot like that before, and none of the rest of us had ever hit a shot like that before or since. As the PGA slogan goes, “this game is hard.”

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#15

…and everything else in that informative and helpful post!!

Before I say anything else - I’m not an PGA instructor and I don’t play one on TV! So as others have said you need a real professional to look at and diagnose your swing.

But … I will relate my personal experience (which may or may not apply to to or anyone else) … one of my bad tendencies is to roll the wrists “in” on the takeaway … and then snap them “over” at impact shutting the face and sending the ball left (for a RH player).

Good luck on your journey to better golf!! :+1:

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#16

That’s gold :joy: Thanks for sharing!

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#17

From my own personal experience of many swing issues, my instructor told me that with the ball teed forward for a driver many players will open their shoulders when setting up and then just come over the top (OTT) with the club.

I tend not to come OTT with shorter clubs, but it’s become fairly ingrained in my driver swing. A slight OTT with a baby fade is great, but I have been known to hit a hard pull draw with trouble left.

On a few holes with OB left I will set up with my right foot back a bit and make sure my shoulders are aligned right and I can actually hit a draw more often than not or at worst a bit of a push.

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#18

Nancy Lopez, as an extreme case.

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#19

Copy this and you will not have the OTT move even opens your posture to the target line.


My current golf posture is with open shoulders, shot trajectory is mostly straight, easier to fade then draw for sure.
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#20

According to people who knew him personally, he was a very very funny guy, full of sarcasm and dry humor. That is one of the funniest bits he ever did on the Really, Really Big Show that Sullivan hosted. “ See wasn’t that really simple, anyone can do that!” As his right shoulder comes through the ball 200 mph! I wish it were that simple Ben! He was the BEST!

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