Lagpressure,

I suppose I am just making the assumption(rightly or wrongly) that no matter how strong the wrist is,it will always be the bottleneck as far as strength is concerned.The strength of your pivot will always overpower the wrist regardless of how hard you try to lock it out.I am referring to a full on swing,not a chip or pitch.

I guess my point is that good lag angle and rentention has always been a common factor in all good ballstrikers with very few exceptions.Even so called sweep releasers such as Tom Watson has more lag angle and rentention(late hit) than most hackers will ever dream of.I would focus on improving this area of the average golfer before anything else.

Your point about Hogan pulling on the way down and pushing on the way through is excellent.I don’t see how you could do it any other way.You can ony push(hit) on something if you are behind it.How do you “push” the club from the top of the backswing assuming you have reasonably full backswing?Perhaps the only difference between a hitter and swinger is that the hitter just feels like he pushes more at and beyond impact?Just a thought…..

Dap,

I would say that no matter how fast I rotate my body, given relatively moderate strength, I would always be able to resist with the wrists, the compression of the shaft towards the body, or the inward centripetal force that would naturally occur with the change in direction.

In other words, my wrists of course, would give somewhat, but not to a fully cocked position UNLESS I allowed that… with a suppleness and oily flexibility. ( I do, do this, and I like the feel of the soft wrists in my own swing and I allow the full compression)

Pull it down and push it though… that is what the golf swing feels like to me.

I know that I have to be able to push it faster through, than I pull it down or I will lose the flex in the shaft pre impact.

My personal goal is to strengthen and increase my post impact speed so that I can then increase my downswing speed… and get it to a point that no matter how fast I start down, I’ll still have the ability to be faster after impact.. I have been doing drills daily and I can feel it paying off. I am playing with a 43 inch driver, persimmon at 14 ounces and swinging D5 and no one has been able to drive it past me yet with their new gear. I’ve been just bombing it lately.

Force = mass times velocity …. so increasing the mass with a heavier club is ok to a point as long as it doesn’t slow down my torso’s rotational speed. I am aware and like the look of my shots with heavier irons, and I can feel the tendency for more erratic shots with lighter irons. The set of 59 Dynapowers I have are a great heavy set, swing weight E3, compared to the MT split soles that swing weight in at C9. The five iron is 17 1/2 ounces, and the split sole is under 16.

I believe 80% of the golf swing is about what happens after impact rather than before.

The clubheads path to Both Arms Straight post impact really does tell the story of what came before.

DAP,

I think you are thinking along the right lines here to with the hitter vs swinger thing..

The difference I see is that the swinger HAS to have the wrists free and oily on the downswing to allow the longitudinal release, where as the hitter can use a stiff wristed application of the hands in that he resists the longitudinal acceleration in favor of a radial..

The big question is, can you swing it down and then hit post impact?
I am no scientist, only the test subject, but I would favor on the side that this can be done. This is what it looks like Hogan does.. maybe this is why he was the best striker ever?

Regardless of the answer, it is a noble cause to attempt such a thing,
certainly would fall into the realm of highly advanced ball striking.

I’m in…!

My personal goal is to strengthen and increase my post impact speed so that I can then increase my downswing speed… and get it to a point that no matter how fast I start down, I'll still have the ability to be faster after impact.. I have been doing drills daily and I can feel it paying off.

What kind of drills have you been using?
I’ve been doing things backwards by starting down quickly when hitting and starting down slow when swinging. My quick start down is throwaway city.

Hi Jazz,

Yes you have been doing things backwards…
Just to define, starting down quickly or slowly must always be pivot first then arms, then hands, (hitting or swinging) although you could in theory start straightening the right arm out on the downswing before a big move with the pivot in a hitting protocol. This is a difficult move to master, but can be effective in keeping the shaft on or below plane if you are going to use a flat shoulder rotation through the downswing.
(this is good stuff). If the right arm straightens quickly enough on the downswing, you can feel as if you are covering the ball with the right shoulder, or even feel as if you are coming right over the top of the shot, but the hands will actually move down toward the right hip pocket keeping the shaft on plane or even under plane. It’s feels really weird to do this, but it can be mastered with some work.

As far as drills, it’s kind of hard to prescribe drills without seeing your swing, kind of like going to the doctor. Doc should run a few tests, check some things then prescribe. If I were to prescribe a hitter’s acceleration drill, and a swinger were to use that drill, it could be disaster to the golfer. I also need to know where you are at parallel 3 if we are to talk about a drill that focuses on parallel 4. Hope that makes sense.

I am working on compiling a systematic approach addressing a lot of these TGM concepts that I am sure will condense, simplify, and weed through a lot of the impractical stuff that can be confusing to people. One guide for hitting, the other for swinging. The drills are different, the feel is different.. and things need to really be clearly defined.

I feel like most of the worlds instructors have little idea what they are talking about, even some of the famous guys, they can’t play well themselves, and they don’t know what these things need to feel like in the body.. and that’s what is most important. The big thing that most instructors miss, is that some things in the swing are based on static positions, but other more important things are based upon the dynamics of movement, in other words these positions can only be passed through on the way to somewhere else… and must be based upon a dynamic movement, not a static position… and to get to a lot of golf’s classic positions, you have to have a lot of other things working towards that to make it happen. The muscles in the body must be trained properly, and the correct application of swing drills can really speed up the process. The hands must be educated, and there are different ways to do this as well.

I so agree with lagpressure on the instructors…and I will need to preorder his book too!

Lag
This could be opening Pandora’s box, but obviously you need to see our swings prior to suggesting drills to improve them. How do you propose to accomplish this?
I am chafing at the bit for you to do this for me, and I am more than happy to pay you/Dart/Guru for this video analysis ( I live in Melbourne ,so I can’t do it in person for Guru/Dart and would want your input anyway).

Cheers
Golfur

No two golf swings are the same, and everyone will have a swing that will work best for them. But I do believe strongly that if the focus is on
impact dynamics first, then the rest of the swing is more about preferences, working with different body types, strength requirements,
flexibility issues, and so forth. There are of course universal things that could help all golfers at any level, in all of these above mentioned areas. Flexibility is extremely important, but only in the right areas.. for instance I would much rather learn to increase the rotational angle of my shoulders in relation to my hips than learn to touch my toes or put my palms on the ground.. or some other advanced yoga pose. You can always work on strengthening your forearms, but why not do it while you have a golf club in your hand too and do some educated hand drills while your at it? Forget the gym, the swing is your gym. Strong legs are great, but I don’t think running for instance is working the best muscles for a golf swing. Look at all these great athletes that proclaim they are going to make golf their next thing? Micheal Jordan said he was going to try for the PGA Tour years ago.. great athlete,
Wayne Gretzky another golf nut. Golf is just not like other sports. Typical athletic abilities in a traditional sense just don’t transfer over because this is not jumping, running, kicking, dodging, tackling, sliding..
none of that. Golf is an athletic sport, but a very very different kind of sport. We are dealing with a spinning, rotating body, a piece of steel on the end of a stick, and we are a striking a very small ball a very large distance and also a very small distance all in the same game. The largest playing field with the smallest target, a 4 1/4 inch hole. We are totally exposed to the elements of nature, and our playing field is different all the time. Different courses, different grasses, so many variables to deal with. One thing we can do is build ourselves a great golf swing to deal with all the adversity.

Golfur66,

The swing is like a series of “Y’s ” in the road that all lead us somewhere. I have been down many of these roads, and I hope I can save people some time and frustration, and explain, that if you go this route, you’ll have to be aware of these potential pitfalls. I will be able to explain that if you then go this route, you’ll have to deal with this, and from there you’ll have to make additional choices and these will then be your options.

Golf is a journey of self discovery, but although TGM may confirm that many of the options are scientifically correct, not all options will lead to the Emerald City.

We all want to be as good as we can be, for us, and only you can decide how far you want to take it, how good you want to play and how low you need or want to shoot.

So to answer your question, I will write a detailed book, I think a series of DVD’s to lend visual support of the concepts and show the drills and exercises that must be done to achieve proper impact alignments, and If that goes well, then maybe some kind of website or interactive interface, where we can really dig into an individuals swing, and sew up any loose ends or other questions that might still be confusing to the student. Maybe we can keep that all here right on ISG. There is just so much bad instruction out there that it is exciting to think that such a place can exist where the mystery is gone and we can really get people to strike the ball better.

It will be a huge project, but a fun one too…

I’m very open to ideas, so feel free to give some input on what you might like to see..

You can always work on strengthening your forearms, but why not do it while you have a golf club in your hand too and do some educated hand drills while your at it? Forget the gym, the swing is your gym.

I think that’s an extremely good point. Gym work will strengthen muscles, but not in the balance required for a golf swing. Even with a weighted club, different muscles take over and learn a new firing sequence. It’s interesting to read that many long drive guys extensively using weighted training aids such as the momentus and Kobu bars are finding their swings becoming unsuitable for a normal driver.

It’s such a lengthy process to program feel into the computer that I feel training aids, even drills, should be kept to the minimum necessary. That’s what I love about Basic Motion → Acquired Motion → Total Motion – it’s all on the same train track.

Look at all these great athletes that proclaim they are going to make golf their next thing? Micheal Jordan said he was going to try for the PGA Tour years ago.. great athlete,
Wayne Gretzky another golf nut. Golf is just not like other sports. Typical athletic abilities in a traditional sense just don't transfer over because this is not jumping, running, kicking, dodging, tackling, sliding..
none of that. Golf is an athletic sport, but a very very different kind of sport.

I think Charles Barkley says this in one video

on the other hand a lot of pro athletes do get to scratch or close. saying they dont make the pga so they dont have an advantage is a bit much

you dont see elite soccer players getting to the top of rugby either

all sports involve kinetic energy chains and weight/body awareness. elite athletes have these inbuilt advantages to other people, and then add they are strong and flexible. then you add in that their brains have already learnt how to form incredibly precise action plans, and their bodies are trained enough to achieve it

and then add in their considerable sport psychology ability, which is probably paramount

golf is not that different from other sports at all, and running will help you play golf. running will help you do anything, except protect your knees

General fitness is important for any sport including golf. Tiger is a fitness nut who jogs as part of his routine (exacerbated his left leg injury during a run), so is VJ. KJ Choi started out as a weightlifter and in a golf magazine, Mike Weir stated he can perform a one rep max squat of 250 lbs!! I know Lorena Ochoa runs 40 minutes at the end of every day and Annika Sorenstam lifts weights. And a final mention to Camilla Villegas, who just won his first tournament, who is super strong. I’ve seen him in a commercial where he is lifting very heavy dumbbells in a lateral raise.

Personally, I’ve lost a lot of weight and increased my strength with cardio and weightlifting the past two years. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I can drive the ball farther. Though I do agree that improving rotation requires other avenues. There are times when I’m practicing when I chirp to myself, why can’t I rotate better even though I’m in better shape. I still need to lose another 20 pounds of fat.

My point really is that for most golfers, their limited time might be better spent doing golf drills or exercises that cross train the various aspects of the swing, educating their hands, working the leg muscles that actually pertain to the golf swing and so forth. My personal work out is extremely cardio doing a variety of daily swing drills, every bit as exhausting as running a bunch of miles would be.

The tour pros today are really splitting hairs trying for any sort of fractional advantage, so gym work may help, and it doesn’t hurt to be in good athletic condition especially on a day you might have to play 36.

On the contrary, having spent many years on tour myself, I have seen some really fantastic golf played by guys that would not in anyway shape or form fit into the fitness model of what golfers today are supposed to be.

I have seen pot bellied overweight blobs, who smoke and drink, eat horrible diets, stay out all night and show up on the course and just beat you to death, not just today, but all week, all month, and all season. Here’s one example of a guy exactly like this I played against for several years:

How does 70 63 70 69 sound? How about 65 70 66 69 the very next week? Persimmon and blades to boot.

How about leading money winner for the season? Never missed a cut. Yep, I was there, I saw it, saw it win, and wipe out everyone.

You can run 5 miles a day, work out, be a vegetarian, whatever, but you won’t beat a guy with a great swing who hit’s it with force and can putt the lights out of em… unless you have equal abilities, then the added fitness could make a difference for sure.

I was a runner out there too, and did weights in the off season, diet stuff, all that, but really it comes down to other things.

I also was there when Chris Patton who weighed in at a lovely 300 pounds won the Manitoba Open in Winnipeg I think it was 1992
shooting 34 under if I remember right, and I believe it was an all time record for the lowest professional 72 hole competitive four rounds in the history of golf. The course was not a cake walk either.

It’s just not imperative to look like David Duval to shoot great golf.

i think another important point is that, at the end of the day, even if you cant compete with the fat virtuoso, you will live longer and be playing golf 20 years after he died, and 30 years after he quit golf

SoulmanZ

Your absolutely right there..
The best motivation for staying in shape should be to enhance the quality of your life, and hopefully to extend the enjoyment of life into the later years.. so you can keep playing good golf!

A lot of the guys I played against on tour don’t play anymore, and haven’t for years. I think that is a shame. The pro version of the game can really take the enjoyment out of it if you’re not careful. It can really start becoming too much about the money, and the neurotic quest for extreme perfection. It happened to me, but I’ll never make those mistakes again.

I’m finding a lot of enjoyment these days from just being out there on a windy day, shaping shots around the course, playing all kinds of classic old sets, keeping the game fresh and interesting every round. I played a set of 1935 Bobby Jones irons yesterday. Great set, all original with those super long leather grips with the little holes in them. They just feel great in the hands and you don’t have to wear a glove. The course I play was build in the 1800’s and I couldn’t help but think that at one time they were selling this very set right in the little pro shop on top the hill that is still there. Over 70 years ago people were playing this same irons right here on this course and I am bringing them back out for a another go all these years later.

I shot 71 and the guy I played with had all the latest stuff and shot 87.

LP, why did you stop playing – you are pure talent!

I would love a game with you and I wouldn’t care less if with your old sets you kicked my ass all over the golf course, I would just love the experience of seeing real talent in action followed by (quite) a few beers in the beautiful californian weather.

Styles,

I sense you are just burning to hear my whole story!

Let’s try to make a point of getting together, I would love to get over to Ireland at some point, or if you ever come out to California I’m sure we can talk golf into the wee hours, maybe even fill a schooner full of tears and heartache ! lol

I’m sure Guru with get an earful when I see him next month!

There’s something about playing golf for the pure enjoyment of the game, shaping shots, designing your round, figuring out a golf course
hole by hole, strategy, really connecting with the game on a different level. My time off was a wonderful incubation period, can’t you tell?

I have learned more about golf by not playing than I ever did playing 6 days a week and feeling a bit robotic at times.

Tomorrow I’m on the Hogan PC’s with those crazy Vector shafts. The ones with the bubble in them just below the grip. Of my Hogan sets I like the 68 Bounce Soles best, but I have to do a bit of work on them before they see the course again. I’ll be making a 50 year jump in equipment tomorrow! 1935 to 1985.

Looking forward to the trip. Not long now.

Maybe we should get back on topic, it’s been a while since we have talked about the golf swing.. that’s why we are here right?

Anyone making any breakthroughs? New discoveries? Light bulbs going off?

Any confusion or questions mounting?

Lag’ have a look at Jeffman’s post in Hitting and Angle of Approach.

Hitting Swinging and Angle of Attack or Arc of Approach.

I can only speculate how confused everyone is on this one.

The first thing we have to remember is that visually we stand above the plane looking down from a birds eye view. Either way, hit or swing, we see the path of the clubhead moving in some kind of arc or circle as we look down upon the plane. This perspective when understood can aid us in our attempt to strike a golf ball, or can hinder us greatly if we don’t “get it”.

The hands MUST appear to move toward the inside quadrant of the ball. I like to think of 4:30 on the ball. Whether we swing or hit, the hands rotate the #3 accumulator (from open hands to square) into the impact area. So if the hands aim at 4:30 the clubhead will swing around and smack the back of the ball at 3:00..
If you aim the hands at 3:00 you will be OTT and the clubhead will smack the ball at 1:30 leaving you with a pull or slice. If you want to
draw the ball you might have to get those hands aiming at 5:00 so the clubhead hits at 3:30 so the ball can start a bit right of the target line. (I’m slightly simplifying this to avoid the initial impact and closing allowed for separation tolerances, for you die hards, add .15 minutes to all my clock calculations)

Let’s put our focus on hitting a straight golf shot..

A hitter typically will see a wider or bigger circle come into impact.
An advance hitter will bring a smaller or tighter circle into impact visually. Much like a swinger..

A swinger typically would bring a smaller tighter circle into impact.
This tighter circle is the result of a swinger’s attempt to sustain a big lag angle on the downswing so centrifugal force can take over and automatically release the shaft and clubhead into impact. Again the hitter can do this too, and have the same visual arc, with a tight circle, but it requires an active ripping of the hands at the last split second, deliberate, not a free loose wrist gravity feel release. The hitter needs to have strong fast hands, and a flatter torso rotation, with quick hips to boot after impact.

Now let’s get back to these visual lines..

A hitter is going to see the clubhead appear visually to come from the inside hit the ball then visually come right back inside the plane line. You could think of a wider arc that gets tighter after impact.
However, the more advanced the hitter, the tighter the arc would appear both before and after impact.

The swinger would typically be the opposite, a smaller arc that gets bigger after impact, with the visual arc often moving outside of the “on the ground” target line. It’s really easy to understand because the swinger’s post impact arc is going to be bigger, because the arms come off the body, and there is no resistance from the player to keep the arms pinned to the body. The hands will naturally roll over and the arc expands and should feel bigger.

This is all spelled out with much detail in chapter 2 of the yellow book. If the wonderful diagrams seem confusing, then you can just
think of it this way.

Hope this helps..

There always has to be someone with a chip on their shoulder around here!

Nah, Glennbo, it’s just the same bloke. Sad for him.

I can understand where he is.

A lot of we old golfers finish up alcoholics or religious nut cases.

It is something to do with the height and depths that golf can take us.
The psychologically frail are made or broken by the unearthly experiences. Don’t think too badly of him. He is basically a talented man.

lagpressure:
one point of serious confusion for me has always been elbow position for swinging. At the delivery position, most Tour players look like their right elbow is at their right side, not in front of their right hip.

When I had my lesson, the AI kept chirping at me that my elbow was in a punch position and needed to be in front of my right hip. It would have been nice if he showed me how it was done instead of berating me for not doing it. I honestly do not see how it was possible to have my right elbow in front of my right hip the way he wanted it. Or else I owuld come from outside in to allow room for my right elbow.

The only golfer I can think of at this moment, that has their right elbow in front of their right hip at delivery is Lorena Ochoa. Again ,it appears to me that Tour players have their right elbow partially in front of their right hip, but mostly to the side.

Maybe I’ll just learn hitting and stick with it and forget swinging.

See I told you Tai just cannot keep his brain form spewing crap. It is a compulsion that he needs help with. He doth seem to believe that teaching ability and playing at a tour level go hand in hand. Rubbish in most cases. Keep taking the pills.

Now back to our normal programming.

Lag,

In your response to Jazz about things being backwards,(9/9/08) you said “you can feel as if you are covering the ball w/ the right shoulder….like your coming over the top” and “the hands move down toward the hip pocket” this is exactly what Jim Hardy’ tells his students should do/feel w/ his one plane downswing.(plus he uses a right arm throw/hit)

Are you familiar w/ Hardy’s and do you feel this pattern is easier to learn than a 2 plane swing for a late bloomer like myself?

I have tried it on several occasions w/ mixed results.

Thanks

Colt,

I’m not familiar with Hardy or really anybodies teaching other than TGM and all the bad articles, the real smoke and mirrors stuff in Golf Magazines.

The flat shoulders, level from the top right through the downswing can really work well if the right arm straightens quickly on the way down.

This is not a one plane swing though.. the straightening of the right arm moves the shaft from a higher plane back down to a lower one.
Usually shoulder plane to elbow plane.

Personally I don’t relate to the right arm “throw” concept for hitters,
because as the right arm straightens it tends to close the clubface or promote a roll of the hands, and this is not what a hitter wants to feel. If you look at Hogan, you’ll see that his right arm is still slightly bent after impact, and only at the 4th parallel does it achieve a fully straightened position. The hitters best option is an angled hinge action which should feel like a no roll hinge. Hogan would save the right arm and unleash it’s last bit of effort after impact to keep the clubhead accelerating, then rip it back up the plane into a high finish to continue the efforts to keep hands ahead of the clubhead.

The purpose of the right arm for the hitter is to actively straighten on the downswing, from the top to parallel 3, leaving about a 120 degree angle (forearm-bicep) then it’s all body or torso rotation with accumulators #2 and #3 slashing into impact in unison with the spinning torso, keeping the right forearm angle frozen and on plane past impact. It can be a tough move to master, but well worth it, and you can put an end to OTT and if you can learn to save the right arm with some bend through impact you’ll eliminate the left shot as well.
This is another one of Hogan’s many secrets.

To do this in practice, try taking a full backswing, then once you are at the top, drop the hands down into the right hip pocket without turning your hips or torso, then once they are down (hands) just spin the body quickly over to P 4. It’s one of the most uncomfortable sensations you could ever have swinging a golf club, but you’ll get a feel for it after a week or two of hitting a hundred balls a day like that. Once you can actually make decent contact with the ball and get your lines straight, just go ahead and swing normal and see if any of it actually retained into your motion. Hopefully enough to make a difference. This is a big Mac O Grady move. It’s a very noble move if you can get over hitting two feet behind the ball when you first try it!

Jazz,

Your dead on with the right elbow position. Most tour players are hitters, and for good reason, reliability, repeatability, and a swing that can travel well from airports, to hotels, to rental car drop off spots.

You’ll see the hitters right arm a bit more on the side than down in front as a true swinger would have it.

Don’t give up on the swinging if that’s what you have been working on.
Are you standing too close to the ball? Bending over more from the waist can help make room for the tucked swingers right arm, and also encourage steeper shoulders through impact to help with the down and out dragging motion.

Keep that arm tucked in, pull the hands into the back of the ball at 4:30, make sure the wrists are free, oily and flexible and just let physics do it’s thing…. let the hands roll over but still feel as if they are keeping ahead of the clubhead, and feel that flat left wrist.
Keep that club moving down down down and out out out…
as good swingers should!

Oh good, I though I was crazy…or maybe both of us are? :-)

I wonder if I should be aiming the arms and hands vertically, straight down from the top, and let the throwout action and rotation of the pivot aim the hands at the inside corner of the ball. I think when I aim at the plane line or ball, the throwout action and rotation of the pivot( what there is of it) takes my hands even further away from my body and my hands end up too high and I release prematurely to hang on.

You are right about being too close to the ball and too upright. Staying in my posture is difficult and I am overdoing my backswing. Need to break the habit. I experimented today indoors by trying my best to stay in my crouch,using a chest high back swing, and I could feel the freewheeling and the strong thud of the clubhead against the carpet. I’ll experiment tomorrow morning with balls at the range, trying an acquired swinging motion, keeping my right elbow in front of my right hip, and not have it get behind me on the abbreviated back swing.

Golf is a game of self discovery for certain…
I hope some of these things we have talked about can be worked into some kind of feel that can be useful and be geometrically correct.

All these lines and motions, acceleration, centripetal, centrifugal, radial, longitudinal and so forth have a feeling that is real and tangible to us to experience within our bodies and with the right direction we can use these feelings to strike a golf ball.

There is no harm in being TGM book smart and relating to these things on an intellectual level, but it is even better to be able to really understand what these concepts actually feel like within the body.
As a fairly high level practitioner, I hope I can communicate the realities of how things things work or don’t work so well, so we can all save time
and play better golf sooner than later.

Lag,

In your response to Jazz about things being backwards,(9/9/08) you said ’Äúyou can feel as if you are covering the ball w/ the right shoulder….like your coming over the top” and ’Äúthe hands move down toward the hip pocket” this is exactly what Jim Hardy' tells his students should do/feel w/ his one plane downswing.(plus he uses a right arm throw/hit)

Are you familiar w/ Hardy's and do you feel this pattern is easier to learn than a 2 plane swing for a late bloomer like myself?

I have tried it on several occasions w/ mixed results.

Thanks

(Keep in mind I am just a 3 year player)

I’ve read both of Hardy’s books and have read the artical’s and DVD’s from www.theoneplanegolfswing.com I believe that Hardy’s one plane description is simply what TGM/Lagpressure is calling a hitter.

I have hit 10’s of thousands of balls both as a one-planer (hitter) and as a two planer. I hit both equally well it seems. The better my understanding of the swing in general, the better my performance for both swings. So, my dilemma, like yours, was I could not find better performance one way or the other but I wanted to settle in on one methodology. The hitting method did produce better ball contact at times but my overall form would break down after a short while and I would start to get more erratic. Could be that I didn’t fully understand the form for a hitter, but, that was just my experience. Swinging on the other hand was just a more difficult concept to get the feel of. In fact, with the help of this site, I think I am finally ironing out some of my last questions with it. But, my ball striking has always been more consistent throughout the day as a swinger. And, even though it has still been a work in progress, I personally chose to be a swinger and here’s why(my personal reasons and they may not apply to you):

- I tended to hit a bit fat – nice shots but a bit fat – as a hitter. This impact would make my right arm go a bit numb on long days of practice which I would do. On the contrary, my swinging motion produced ball contact that had very little impact to my body, especially on tight and/or hard surfaces. So, from a personal longevity standpoint, it seems the low-impact method would be helpful. Hardy did point out in his books that the one plane method requires more athleticism. I don’t know if its true, but, he is considered one of the guru’s for that type of swing and it seemed to line up with my experience.

- As I get tired throughout a round of golf, I tend to get too fast in the transition and too dominant with my right hand. The hitting method just seemed to play into that. Swinging, which put the right arm in a passive role, seems to eliminate that tendency for me. It’s easier for me to keep my same rhythm as the day grows long on the course.

- My experience has been that the longer clubs are easier to hit as you become a better swinger. Again, this is my personal experience but the long slow sweeping motion of a swing allows me to easily hit a 3 or 4 hybrid or 5 wood off the fairway. Being a middle aged amateur, I find that I am looking for ‘center of the fairway’ from my tee offs rather than super distance. I am happy with modest distance straight down middle. But, being able to hit a nice relaxed hybrid or 5 wood as my second shot I find is key to making the day enjoyable.

Notice in all of this, I didn’t mention accuracy? For me, both methods produced very good results. It boiled down to a choice of how I preferred to ‘power’ my shots. If you’re interest, I find that Know Your Swing by Glenn Monday is a very good presentation of the swinging fundamentals. However, this site has been incredibly helpful in filling in some of the gaps of ‘why?’ certain things work.

a mate of mine is an authorised Golfing Machine Instructor, he is working with Boo Weekley, Heath Slocum and Robert Karlsson.

When he started coaching Boo he was playing on the Nationwide tour, Heath was outside the top 100 in the world and Robert was certainly not leading majors as he has done this year.

Meltdownz,

Quick observation. It is too soon in your study to demand swing or hit categorization absolutely. Stick with the general components until you are really sure of the loading principles. You may wish to use them in tandem at a latter stage.

Secondly most meltdowns happen not because of the loading type but because you were not crisp and fresh enough with you preparations. A foggy shot plan has no chance of high success.

MGP,

Thanks for that. I have seen wonderful stuff done in the name of NLP.

I saw Rene LeBlanc (Canadian Coach of the Year 1996) in action. He worked what I thought were miracles almost instantly. I still use the principles I could understand.

Dart, do you feel that NLP fits in well with TGM?

Dart, do you feel that NLP fits in well with TGM?

Its better to stay silent and look a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt

Mark Twain

“Eons of manhours are lost trying to substitute effort for technique and trying to eliminate effect instead of cause.”

Homer Kelley

Styles,

I am ignorant of NLP except for a thin book and watching LeBlanc.

I take it to mean you give the pupil a simple picture of what is required using their best channel, audio, visio or kinesthetic – wait, wait wait ‘till they get it in their own way, then give them the biggest acknowledgement possible. They call that anchoring the win. It was poison to say good shot before they looked for the OK.

If that is what it is it has to be compatible with anything. I though it was just good manners. Anything else would be showing off or crushing the pupils creative powers, which I was doing according to LeBlanc.

I relished the lesson.

Meltdownz,

Quick observation. It is too soon in your study to demand swing or hit categorization absolutely. Stick with the general components until you are really sure of the loading principles. You may wish to use them in tandem at a latter stage.

Secondly most meltdowns happen not because of the loading type but because you were not crisp and fresh enough with you preparations. A foggy shot plan has no chance of high success.

Dart – a question for you…

From what I can tell (and I am no expert I know), one must either make a swing or a hit. Setting up for the shot, you must have it clear in your mind that you will be performing hit mechanics or swing mechanics. It seems unworkable to me to step up to the ball thinking that I’m going to make a shot and I will determin if it’s a swing or hit somewhere near the transition. After reading much of the info available on this site and going out to practice, I found that my best swing action happened when I let my right arm be totally passive and the centrigul/centripetal forces were strong. Any attempt to add some right hand as a hit just reduced the effectiveness of my swing action. So, based on this, it seems virtually impossible to me to not mentally declare one way or the other and then ingrain that method into your muscle memory. So, are you saying that there is a place for a right hand hit action within a swingers action?

(I ask this with all due respect as I know you have much more experience than I do)

Lag, Good stuff man. I will incubate on this.

I may see a guy named Ted Fort this fall in Atalanta. He is a TGM instructor that teaches both hitting and swinging, but prefers to hit himself.

Thanks

Meltdownz,

There is no place in a swing for right hand hitting. I am glad you are so clear on your swing pattern.

My point is that most people I see attempting golf have a very dirty loading system. They start off by releasing from the top then loading at the bottom instead of loading then releasing. The next trick is to load from the top and steer at the bottom, then progress to load and quit at the bottom.

Only the par shooters load from the top or downswing and sustain that load to the finish while releasing all the angles.

That is why I say learn some more.

If your loading is good the rest must be good because physics is 90% of the golf swing. And as Homer says you can almost ignore geometry but for some ball control.

Correct loading will produce it’s natural hinge motion making it easy to find an on line plane line.

Having said that, there is nothing you cannot master, including clubhead throw away. You pay a price for every transgression.

MeltDownZ

With that question we might just start this whole thread over from page #1 (30 pages and 764 posts ago!)

For most of us average humans, we are only going to be able to do one or the other within any one swing.

I really believe people get way too concerned with the function of the right arm in this matter.

The more we understand the difference between longitudinal vs. radial acceleration, the clearer the picture gets whether or not we are or should be swinging or hitting.

The swinger wants to stress the noodle in a big way at the transition from backswing to downswing via the outward to inward force (centripetal) which translates into a feeling of the shaft compressing into our body or towards us.

The hitter is in no hurry to stress the shaft at the top and would prefer to wait it out, and gradually build speed on the downswing so that the shaft gets stressed ‘backwards’ down at the bottom of the swing as it approaches impact. This is the hitters objective, to hold the flex of the shaft or to bring a pre stressed shaft into impact.

The swinger on the other hand is quite content to take a big flex from the top, and pull that down into impact seeking a straightening of the shaft lengthwise or longitudinally dumping all that stored energy into the ball and down and out into the ground.

The right arm participation is different between swinging and hitting,
but anyone that thinks you can be a hitter with just a shoving of the right arm without a pivot is not seeing the whole picture. Any good player who hits is still taking a good turn with the pivot, torso, hips..

let me try to make this clear…

The hitter straightens the right arm early on the downswing to SAVE the pivot for later in the swing, so the body can actively rotate through the hitting area, and the right arm (which still has some bend) can then stay frozen at about 120 degrees from P-3 down into and ideally past impact. The frozen right arm through impact is also key in keeping a no roll policy in order, or the ‘angled hinge’ because when the right arm straightens it wants to close the clubface and produce a roll, and the hitter does not want this. The hitter’s right wrist turns but doesn’t uncock, and this is what gives the stiff wristed feel of the hitters hands as they slash through the ball. The wrist wants to uncock, but the hitter resists this… and in doing so, this puts a tremendous amount of pressure and feel in the hitter’s hands.

The swinger on the other hand, takes the 90 degree elbow bend, and uses the torso to delivery that 90 degree bend all the way down to P-3 in a passive way… the right arm straightens as the inertia of the club takes over, and then centrifugal force just does it’s thing.
The swingers right arm should feel supple, free and oily.

Both hitters and swingers can and should use some extensor action.
That being the right arm tugging on the left to keep the left arm straight.

The hitter’s right arm is not a pistoning action before and through impact, this is absolute disaster for the hitter. Instead, the hitter might feel that type of sensation after impact from about 4:30 to 3:00 post impact or as the right arm straightens into the 4rth parallel.

Watch the great Ben Hogan to get schooled on this move.

Sorry folks, I tried to upload some classic Hogan sequence photos from behind that really show what I was describing above, but something is going haywire here..

Here’s the pic of Hogan…....

Hogan’s move

thanks, this one should be bigger..

hogan’s move = poetry in motion

Is this the hand motion of the hands for a swinger?

I think I have this correct. On the downswing, the palm of the hands remain on the face of the inclined plane until the last moment, past the line of sight to the ball, when there is an instantaneous roll to square the clubface. Until very late in the downswing, the back of the left hand faces away from the golfer, and the palm of the left hand faces the golfer.

I learned a bastardized anti-slicing motion where the hands rotate very early in the downswing so the face faces the ball asap (a hitting hand motion?). I think that was contributing to the reverse or no roll feel and quitting and throwaway and rotation of the pivot too early so my pivot stopped or reversed rotated when I most needed to continue rotating. By doing it this way, my hips slid diagonally. By doing what I described above, my hips slide to the left.

Jazz,

Guru just posted a great description of a swingers hand action via the flying wedges. I think you are right there…

Ben Hogan on the other hand would demonstrate a hitters action, with a no roll preference, where the clubface and hands stay at right angles to the rotation of the torso. The hands cut left after impact, the clubface closes in relation to the plane line via the rotation, but the face stays square in relation to the turning shoulders.

Very different protocols.

Both can work if done correctly.

Lagpressure,

I have just looked at your swing sequence and you have one of the,if not the most extreme early wrist set that I have seen.Has this always been the case or have you incorporated this into your swing by design?What is your philosophy behind this move?

I know Nick Faldo believes in an early wrist set,whereby the wrist cock is fully set and the club on plane before the hands reach waist high,which you have demonstrated to perfection.You emphasise this move even more than he does.

I have tried this move but I don’t have quick enough hands to do it naturally.

I love setting the hands early, main reason is that there is less wobbling going on at the top. I am always fighting my swinging tendencies to load late. Loading late is ideal for swingers, but it puts to much stress on the shaft at the transition for a hitter…

I was probably really working on that after laying off the game for so many years. Late loading seems to be in my DNA.

If you set early, it forces your pivot to work harder on the way down,
and not rely upon the whippy shaft load at the top, that if not maintained, is a recipe for club shaft throwaway on the downswing.

The main reason I set early is to combat the inward centripetal force that happens naturally from the change in direction. You will always have some, and my torso loves to hurry down fast, so I get all the centripetal I can handle. I don’t need anymore from a wrist snap at the top. It would be ok if I was stronger and quicker down at the bottom, and could maintain that flex to the ball and beyond… but as a hitter, you are better to start down slow and build speed on the way down.
If you start with too much speed right away, you might not be able to sustain then increase that speed (acceleration) all the way, and that is not good if you are hitting..

Currently I am experimenting with a much flatter plane to simplify the degree of plane shift, and this is helping me load earlier with a much better sense of rhythm.

Those pics posted are the first I took after a very long layoff (15 years), so my swing is probably better now after playing 20 rounds this summer. It feels tighter and I have picked up a lot of speed from just playing golf again.

I don’t hit balls ever, just play and do drills at home. I go from the car right to the first tee.. it really tests my swing to the limit. No warm up with range balls. If I was still playing tour events, I would probably hit a few range shots to take a sneak peak at that days shot patterns.

I’ll post some new swings soon, and I have a video I took out on the course the other day, just tossed the video cam on the ground and just played a few holes. Stuck a couple of them in there close, so it’s fun. The rhythm of my swing is the glue that makes it work, and you can see that on the vid, not the pics of course…

Always reassuring to read your posts Lag. So many times I feel I’m going against what’s supposedly ‘right’ but do so because it works, and once again you lessen my guilt—this time about never visiting the range, car to first tee and drills and playing only.

Also for years I’ve tried to achieve high hands at the top of the backswing (because that seemed to be the trend), but seeing the Hogan swing sequence you posted and reading TGM now has everyone telling me how flat I am, but I love it, and boy can I snap the whip at impact now. So just a thanks for the effort you go to on ISG.

Great post there Lag – if I had read that 4 months ago I wouldn’t have understood a thing..lol

I wish to reiterate Stebboko’s words of thanks to you for your participation, time and effort on ISG.

Looking forward to seeing your vid and updated pics…

I’ve started working on my “thesis”... never written a book before, but I am quite sure I can take things down to their roots, and focus on the real realities that must be dealt with to strike good golf shots. There is just so much BS out there, with so many having a “one way” to do it attitude..

The golf swing unfortunately is not a simple motion, and trying to say it is or teach such a thing is nonsense. Simple is a nice theory, but seldom works. Even if a particular move in the swing would seem simple, the bigger question is… does it repeat with rock solid dependability?

You cannot avoid the law, and what we have to do to strike a golf ball does not change from generation to generation. I will really focus on how to hit long iron shots, because if you can do that, the rest is much easier. Driver to wedge.

I’ll be focusing on the pro’s and con’s of various theories and how they may or may not work in combination with other components and attitudes. I’ll certainly make suggestions based upon personal experience and years of observation from the tour… but there is no one way that will work for everyone.
Golf is a journey of self discovery, but I am quite sure I can demonstrate how the golf swing works so a player can figure out which route to go for their own progression, and will be able to move forward without fear, confusion or mystery.

There are certain intentions and attitudes that will have universal benefit for all.

The golf swing is more an accumulation of a lot of little things, and understanding how we learn and progress, and how our own ability to retain what we have worked on is something I don’t see people really understanding very well. What is really you? If you take time off, can you really retain last weeks or last months practice? When does it really become you?

TGM lays a wonderful foundation to work off, and I owe much of what I have learned from Homer’s work. I can’t expect to know everything he knew because I am not a scientist, but likewise it would be hard for an author such as Homer to know what it’s like to apply these things in the body of a traveling tour player.

Glad to hear some of you are making improvements..
It’s nice to hear…

likewise it would be hard for an author such as Homer to know what it's like to apply these things in the body of a traveling tour player.

Lag,
B.S is under statement, I beat my head against the wall everyday, having to deal with the perception people have on the golfswing from all the B.S out there, Lag I’m glad your writing a book

Bio,

That,s right mate. And that is just the golf swing. How much more B.S do they suffer though with the rest of there lives.

Lets get golf right first. Then we can enjoy getting on with the less important stuff.

likewise it would be hard for an author such as Homer to know what it's like to apply these things in the body of a traveling tour player.

Many thanks for taking the time to help us Lag.

It's pushed me towards learning to become a hitter.

Very much appreciated :-)

Cheers

Wilkie,

You will enjoy that shift in plan.

I've started working on my ’Äúthesis”… never written a book before,

Lag,,

Go for it. Get professional help from publishers. You have the perspective we need. At last.

For tuition in Sydney call Paul Hart (TheDart} 0412 070 820.

Terry Hill’s, St. Michael’s or Milperra Driving Range

Lagpressure
I have a question for you regarding the elbow plane etc and the angle which they are in relation to the spine through impact
For example elbow plane and perpendicular to the spine at impact wouild this be considered to be ideal for hitting? And swinging what would be the ideal position the arms higher and not perpendiclar to the spine?
What was Homer Kelley’s take on this?
also Homer kelley stated in his book that to be on the lowest plane ..elbow plane for impact it requires an earlier release? sounds like what you are doing in that the hands are releasing down and out behind you while keeping the right wrist bent and then using your delayed pivot to finish off the hit?

Most good ball strikers will have their right forearm perpendicular, more of less through impact.

I would say that it would be better for the torso to be more erect and turning flatter for hitters which might tend to put the right forearm a bit out of perpendicular. I don’t see any advantages for a hitter to be bent over at the waist more than necessary.

A more upright torso allows the left shoulder to move away from the ball after impact a greater distance, and since the left arm and clubshaft are of course connected at the left shoulder, the player can utilize this concept to increase velocity and hopefully acceleration.

A flatter lie angle with the club itself would assist in the perpendicular relationship we are speaking of, and if done correctly you would see the players hands come into impact lower, and closer to the body.
From a back view, you would see more angle being held with wrist cock at impact between the shaft in relationship to clubshaft. You really see this with Ben Hogan.

Another thing to consider here is that most golfer’s spines are somewhat hunched or curved through impact, so it is tough to get a real precise figure here as far as spine angle. The lower back is more vertical and up near the shoulders slightly more horizontal.

I think it is interesting also to note that in Tai Chi, they encourage this “hunched” position as they believe it gathers the energy fields of the body at the center or core which they claim is located two inches below the belly button and inside the abdomen. Precisely where the golf club’s swing plane passes through impact with a good ball striker.
(exeption Moe Norman-through his heart)

I find this very interesting, and swinging a stick around our bodies at great speeds has much in common with other martial arts activities.
(Did Genghis Khan travel to Scotland in 1220 and lay the foundation for modern golf?) lol..

In regard to swinging, both hitters and swingers can “look” very similar pre impact, but you would usually see a swingers forearm a bit more “up” than most hitters. But this is not always true. A hitter can be in the “pitch” position too if they have super fast and strong forearm rotation into impact (#3).. If they don’t they you’ll see that punch position.

Not sure I understood the last part of your question, but I would think that elbow impact plane would be more in line with a late or delayed release of #2 and #3 facilitated by a delayed #4 as well..

likewise it would be hard for an author such as Homer to know what it's like to apply these things in the body of a traveling tour player.

Many thanks for taking the time to help us Lag.

It's pushed me towards learning to become a hitter.

Very much appreciated :-)

Cheers

Wilkie,

You will enjoy that shift in plan.

Thanks mate :-)

It was fun to tape a few shots out on the course last week. I find it more informative to watch action shots, where targets are real, and sidehill lies and wind are part of the feeling of the shot.

Here the swing must adapt to three situations.

68 Pena Persimmon off the 1rst hit into a headwind slight fade down the right side.

Next, a 56 Dynapower 6 iron shot from an uphill lie with a right to left wind, hit low with a slight fade into the green.

Then a Dyna 8 iron shot approach is drawn into a tight pin placement , working into a left to right wind.

Hitting live shots..

Nice work Lag
On the topic of shaping your shots, I have always had a hard time mentally imaging a draw(not a wild hook though :O ).
I can easily fade, cut, slice a shot by swinging through with varying degrees a face openness.
With a draw however, I just can’t get any other image than the face being hooded and smothering it, causing a low pull way left of where intend to start the ball.
If I do start it to the right, my hands can’t seem to turn over in sync and the shot just goes straight right. It’s doing my head in.
Have you got some images to assist my mental ruin?

One thing I used to do before going TGM and might help if you’ve played much tennis, was thinking of a tennis forehand down-the-line shot – you know the one that goes outside the line and curves back in. The “4:30” that Lag often talks about critical to not pulling it right.

Golfur66,

Do you have any vids I can see somewhere?
would need to see a back view so I can get an idea
of what type of path you have, and what type of release you are using
before I could suggest a prescription..

Stebboko,
Awesome description,

Thanks for the offer Lag
I don’t have any, but I will create one and get it to you. What format would you it and where would you like to to upload it to?
You might even like to make some general observations on my swing if you don’t mind.
Thanks again for taking the time to do this.
Cheers.

Golfur66

maybe you can post it on youtube.com
I used it, and I had never posted a video before, pretty painless.

quite sure they will accept wav or mpg files… I’m sure there are others here that might have other or better suggestions.

It’s tough to analyze someone’s swing without seeing it.

front and back angles are great..

This is driver off the 9th the other day

This is driver off the 9th the other day

Saw this somewhere else – Go Styles!!

Styles,

It’s nice to see a player who still rotates their hips from impact to P-4.
I see less and less of that with the modern swing. Good work, like a duck on the water, looks smooth and gracious but working hard, paddling under the water.

That camera is something else. Everyone should have one of those.

Looks like some cold weather there. Not sure I could swing a club with that much gear on! lol

I look forward to hearing more about how the sessions with Guru are going and what prescription you have been given.

Keep up the good work mate! Looking good!

It’s been fun to read about Guru’s visit to see Styles, great photos,
thanks for sharing guys!

Guru will be visiting me here in San Francisco area within a week.

Although we don’t have any stone castles for clubhouses, My home track is the oldest course in the western USA. Established 1892.

Sure we’ll have a lot to talk about and maybe get in a few holes…

Hey Lag, yep getting closer. In Nashville with Dr Mumford right now exercising the grey matter. Looking forward to the San Fran couple of days and I am sure Evie will arrange the food trough meeting place v soon with you:)

Is that Dr Mumford who wrote that book about analysers versus feelers and two others I can’t remember? Or someone completely different?

I must say it’s been very hard reading the build-up to Cuscowilla, many times tempted to buy a last minute ticket. Have fun!

Its the same Carey Mumford.

Its the same Carey Mumford.

Yeah, that’s him – wow.

Careys hospitality was just tremendous. A great fan of ISG and he encourages you guys to ask more mental game questions as he is really keen to help you all get your heads right.

He is also keen on paying us a visit down under if enough of you guys are wanting to pay attention! Gosh, Lag and Dr M with the ISG squad could be a major happening in the wings for 2010.

Typical – I just ordered Pia’s book yesterday and now I find out Carey’s got articles on here!

Get his book and get your learning profile done in the price:) It will blow your mind…..your wife will ask how long you have been having an affair with this “carey”.

Careys work is deep. You have to think a little rather like TGM when you read it. No play pen stuff to be had.

Pia’s book is still useful but having had my profile done by Carey and spoken to him in person, its scary how much he knows about you just by studying your answers

Yes i agree but a snapshot 2 years ago does not reflect me today and i think Guru would agree i am not the same person as i was then.

I’m sure Carey is the best person to come in and explain his work and I’ll drop him a line so that he does.

However, I know that he would say that you have certain traits that are characteristic to you, that you were born with and will never change. His profile is designed to determine your main trait and then advise you how to practice and play most effectively given that trait.

possibly is but i can say positively that nothing is permanent to a person who seeks improvement continuosly …2 years ago is just that now is a totally different time in my life and priorities have changed …personality traits have a place but you need to realise people are not static and as they grow what was once important is but a flicker now.

possibly is but i can say positively that nothing is permanent to a person who seeks improvement continuosly …2 years ago is just that now is a totally different time in my life and priorities have changed …personality traits have a place but you need to realise people are not static and as they grow what was once important is but a flicker now.

If someone tells you you are a swinger and then proceeds to try and make you a hitter … run Quickly…

Hi Craig:
Having heard from both Guru and Styles this a.m., I thought t’would be a good idea to slide in here for a bit. (I’m guessing that you are likely “the Craig,” whose profile was completed in ‘06?)

You are quite right in what you say and so is Styles. However, it is much more complex than short notes can convey, but I’ll try to compress here, subject to questions and needed clarifcations.

There have been persistent (not necessarily consistent) beliefs, studies, impressions, notions in the “Nature Vs. Nurture” issue as long as I can remember and I took my first clinical training in 1950. That discussion (sometimes boiling unnecessarily into argument) has more recently started to lean more toward a balance between the two, since both are in play all the time, unless we take appropriate steps otherwise.

Styles is correct, at least according to more recent research and the 40,000+ profiles, studies and research I have done myself, that we all start with a set of traits that stay with us for life and through which we express ourselves for a lifetime.

Craig is right in that we do alter the way we respond to our environments and appear to others (sometimes also to ourselves, depending on how sharp a grasp we had on self image to begin with). We do have two dimensions going in that respect.

When we profile, the left side of the chart shows, as nearly as possible, based on how well a person knows him/herself, the style traits one brought along from birth (which is the “style” issue that Styles is talking about). The right side shows a fairly current picture of what has happened to the external appearance of those style traits over time and experience (the “change” issue that CraigW refers to, which is cast in what we refer to as “personality.”) Add to that the confusion in a lot of conversation and literature that regularly distorts the meaning of both style and personality.

So there are always two concerns “in play” – Style and Personality. Style is the mainframe through which we actually carry out all sorts of performances. Personality is the face we put forth in order to gain the endorsement of other people. Styke is the engine and personality is ther smoke that comes out of a fired up stack.

Studies all show that we have four dimensions going. 1.There are things about “me” that I know and you don’t. 2. There are things about “me” that you know and I don’t. 3. There are things about “me” that both of us can see. 4.There are things about “me” that neither of us can see.

Profiling will, inevitably it appears, bring about an expansion of all four of those dimensions over time, accounting for what may cause us to sense that we are “different” today from what we were yesterday, and that would not be incorrect, though highly variable among people. What I have seen over the past 50 years or so is that the traits do not change, but the life-expression coming through them may change – for some, more or less than others.

Having been on the clincial staff of a children’s hospital many years ago, and observed many youngsters, I can now detect with reliability, the natural styles they bring with them from birth, as early as four or five days after birth, simply by hearing them cry. Each style has a rather distinctive sound, and later continued observation confirmed that. I doubt it’s necessary to make the point which says that is much too soon for “personality” to be formed, but certainly not too soon to indicate genetically influenced “style.”

The bottom line for golfers is simple. Personality can not bring what we need for the game, since it tends to be either an over-extension or a restriction of our styles, each of which carries negative consequencs in the game (i.e., over-extension tends to show up in over-swinging, coming up on the teos, swaying, loss of balance, chilly-dipping and the like. Restriction tends to come along in things like deceleration in swinging and putting, unfiinished back and forward swings, and excessive tension in body rotation).

Golf needs all that style delivers, since that frees up our naturally given tendencies, for learning, practicing and playing. That reality is what led to the process with the clear key core, that delivers three prominent benefits simultaneously – it opens the door to nothing but style and habit performance, keeps the personality, “over and under,” temporarilty out of the picture and defends against anxiety signals, thus freeing the player to be in his/her most reliable and essential position for each shot. And that only requires a maximum (usually less than) of about 12-13 seconds for each shot transaction.

So, as far as I have been able to see it, we need more nature in the game and be able to subdue (temporarily) the nurture for learning (habit development), practicing (matching style issues using the 32 ball drill method) and shot-making (execution).

Save the Personality for the pub, a few pints and “tales” of the game.

Cheers,
Carey

Thanks for posting Carey. It’s a fascinating topic and it would be nice in thread all by itself.

It’s a pity that psychologists are someone people only visit if something is ‘wrong’. At least sports appear to be easing that somewhat.

I have no ‘sickness’, yet see one every month purely to ‘see’ the traits others know about me that I aren’t aware of. I’ve simply seen too many traits of my parents that they are unaware of cause internal and external friction.

I feel I’ve permanently changed certain undesirable behaviour, but only through one trait overpowering another. A thirst for information trait (eg nutritional) has led me to constrain a desire for bad foods. But the understanding took time to build to an overpowering level, so the resulting change in diet was delayed. Family and friends would say I’ve changed, and my diet did, but I wouldn’t say I changed—I was just reacting to my traits.

Stebboko:
The conventional word out there is that when we reach adolescence, we “rebel” and go our own way. (That’s perhaps an oversimplification, but enough for the point). What I have found is that those choldren whose styles find coopperation especially from parents as they are going through their developmental stages (see Erik Erikson), don’t really “rebel.” They simply make a transition from one stage to another. Those whose parents, usually unwittingly, try to get children to behave the way they want (the parents want, that is) wind up in adolesence, in effect, screaming inwardly, if not outwardly, “Leave me be and let me go back to the way I came in.” In other words, they are not rebelling, but calling for permission to be who they really are. So when the go from being bent out of shape by their environmental circumstances, to being “who they really are,” it appears that they chnage, when they only restore the original. (Where do you suppose Microsoft got the idea foir a “restore” function in the PC world?)

The profiling we do for golf deals primarily with the natural, normal continuum, but we omit, intentionally, the wider elements of the continuum that go from very sub-normal to abnormal in the sense of mentally ill. We leave out the lows and highs, since there is little or no way to deal with that for golf, and it is unnecsssary anyway. Further, if a player applies the automatic principle, even if he is very sick, he could still function with a club in his hand.

You used the expression “reacting to my traits.” I would like to suggest that it sounds more like you simply “responded” to your traits.

Yes – ‘responded’, careless there.

Would you agree that the sick person indeed more easily resorts to automatic, their health distracting their personality? Woods grimacing in pain at this year’s Open, or even Harrington at the British? I can’t count the times I’ve played my best golf when injured, or mentally stressed – should I purchase a whip like Silas in the Da Vinci Code?

I’ll give your site a read and get a profile done and your book soon. Do you do gift certificates? My brother needs it bad :-)

Steb: Can you fire up a new thread for the mental game questions otherwise Lags thread will get a little distracted from its topic. As you said it will be a good thread on its own and more people should be interested in the ultimate self learning experience.

Done – new thread: Player Profiling

We’ll the computer is in fact part of the machine… and quite an important part.

All these things work together, sometimes in strange ways.

During my years on tour I had a mental training coach, who’s background came more from eastern mysticism I suppose rather than western psychology school. He had never played golf but understood the mental side of the game better than any player I had ever talked to.

I remember him teaching me how to play golf without clubs. He took me out to the course at the crack of dawn one morning, then told me to leave my clubs in the car. I played 18 holes without a club as he caddied. I played every shot. I can say I learned more in that round than I did probably in a 100 rounds using clubs.

He taught me how to apply TM principles to my golf game and explained to me my faults, even better yet, how to fix them. A lot of it was just good training for life in general.

By being more aware and in the moment I was better able to see the sign posts that would lead me to better golf. I made some equipment changes that just literally presented themselves to me without any conscious thought involved.

A man whom I believe to be the greatest putting instructor found his way into my life, again seemingly by chance, yet what he told me in Vancouver changed my approach to putting forever. Several months later, I had a run of shooting 37 under par in competition within 10 rounds. A lot of putts were going in. I’ve never really putted “bad” since.

I tend to believe that the mental principles of golf are as concrete in their function as the laws of physics are to striking the ball itself. Once you understand how it all works, it becomes mysteriously clear, simple and understandable.

great post John.

Are you naming names or keeping a few secrets back?

Excuse my ignorance – what are TM principles Lag? Transcendental meditation?

I think the mental side of golf gets a bad rap because of an abundance of shallow articles repeating things like ‘play one shot a time’, ‘don’t dwell on the past bad shot’ etc…

I don’t do either of those, but my bogies (and worse) generally will always be grouped together on the card (so often get told those). I feel it’s generally due to the forgetting of a essential swing key that takes a couple of holes to work out what I’ve forgotten, and the swing is off. But of course that is mental as I’m still incubating and forgetting is still possible.

In fact I stumbled into a ‘aha’ moment last evening. I was really concentrating on sustaining the lag for 1/2 wedges, something that I hadn’t evolved to yet and definitely wasn’t doing. Distance control came back, but that wasn’t the ‘aha’ – I went to the green still glowing with that ‘feeling’, and I too focused on keeping the lag in my putts for the first time ever. And then I purposely tried chipping with the same feeling, and again distance control felt effortless, subconscious. It was keeping that lag feeling going on every shot that didn’t give it a chance to be forgotten, simulating like it had been programmed into the computer.

Oh, not keeping secrets!
just that both my mental trainer spent more time teaching Tai Chi and Kria Yoga than working with golfers..and my putting lesson was a one time lesson. The greatest lesson I ever had, and we never even went to a putting green. It was a philosophical eye opener that was scheduled but very informal and took place in a coffee shop at the golf course. He never even watched me putt. I just listened like a hawk and tried to remember everything he said. I knew he was speaking truth because I could see it in his eyes. Both Moe Norman and Bob Panisak referred me to Alvie Thompson, so that was good enough for me. Alvie was a great player in his day and won the Canadian PGA back in the 60’s and played on the PGA Tour back then as well. He was known to those guys as a putting guru back then. I don’t know that he ever published a book, don’t think he did.. his theories were very radical, but like all good things golf, very TGM if you know what you’re looking for.

Stebboko, spot on with the TM! I still practice regularly.

Alvie Thompson

I love this photo…

Guys,

There’s some good quality footage in here of a guy called Jimmy Bruen having a few swings – I think it’s an amazing action to watch.

It’s also interesting that there’s some different swings in the footage – including a nicely, rhythmic half-swing-wedge at the start; wouldn’t look out of place at a modern Tour event – as with the old guys you often only see drivers etc.

In Golf Machine terms, I’d love to know what people think of it – what’s he doing? why is it working? how is it working?

There’s also has good shots of his putter stroke, and some really close up shots of his grip – make sure to check out the wear spot glove at the end.

(This vid was in a thread called ‘Jim Furyk’ thread already, but may not have been seen by many – would it be a good idea to start taking a look at some different individual actions within this Golfing Machine thread???)

Beez,

thanks for that great post on Mr Bruen..
great stuff…

People are so quick to disregard these kind of bizarre looking swings,
but I would not be one of them..

The only thing really out of the ordinary is his position at the top,
his address, downswing, impact, finish are all pretty classic and dynamic in all the right ways.. I think his swing looks great, I can see why he was an excellent player.

The first thing that came to mind was his fantastic knee action.
Maximum hip slant in both directions via a straight right knee on the backswing and he really fires his left on the way through. His swing plane from P3 to P4 is spot on, and that is the only time swing plane actually matters. Everyone worrying about if the clubhead passes through the hands on the backswing from a back camera angle is only concerned with cosmetics. There is nothing wrong with a nice on plane backswing, but it has little to do with what happens on the way down.

Bruen’s is a classic float loader, loading on the way down, and I can see his intent to maximize and jump start the action with the high crossed over action, it’s kinda like taking a running start if you were to jump over a creek. Hogan did the same thing with his little lay off move on the start down, which really is just adding an extra kick to his #3 accumulator. It’s advanced ball striking stuff, and quite textbook as far as I’m concerned.

Loops are good if they are done in the right way..

Another thing to clear up is that OTT means the player crossed over his INTENDED plane line…

A player who pulls it back much to the inside on the backswing might appear to be OTT if the hands come over from the backswing path, but that does not in anyway mean for certain that the player is OTT as far as the plane line.

Bobby Jones, Ray Floyd, Craig Parry all pull it inside then come down on plane, not OTT.. Even Moe Norman has a slight in to out path that some might call OTT.. It is NOT OTT…

Loops can be great for keeping the swing flowing, non static, and rhythmic also. Loops that come down off plane are bad either way, in or out.

A proper golf swing has to have some looping action because of the presence of centripetal (inward compression of the shaft toward the body on the downswing that is not happening on the backswing) force.

One other thought is that back in the early days, shafts were much looser, and the swings that developed from those noodles are going to be diffferent looking that the modern world of X shafts…

I have two sets of irons from the 30’s and 40’s that are in my rotation
and my swing has to compensate for the looser shafts on the days I play those things. I can immediately feel my swing wanting to get slower and longer than when I am playing x shaft that feel more appropriate for tight and quick.

On last thought on Bruen, I would guess he was extremely long for his time, and would be today. His length gave him a huge advantage because he also apparently had a great short game to go with it.. I might surmise that he was not the greatest iron player as the amount of redirection back to on plane was very large, but it’s hard to say for sure, sometimes people have a great ability to repeat such large loops, and you can’t underestimate the importance of REPEAT. Nicklaus had quite a lift, up and over and back down on plane too, and he was pretty good! lol I think it repeated quite easily for him too!

Loops can be great for keeping the swing flowing, non static, and rhythmic also. Loops that come down off plane are bad either way, in or out.

A proper golf swing has to have some looping action because of the presence of centripetal (inward compression of the shaft toward the body on the downswing that is not happening on the backswing) force.

The evolution of the tennis stroke is also interesting. Classically it was taught straight back, straight through. Now for the same reasons of keeping the swing flowing and keeping momentum up, loops are taught, with many leading players having huge loops.

I’m not big on static set ups, frozen backswings, and statue finishes..

I like the guys who waggle it once or twice, aim and fire.. I am sure in another month or two I’ll have that worked back into my motion..

I like to think the swing starts when you pull the club from the bag and ends when you toss it back to your caddy.

Newcomer to the ISG forum and this thread – great read! I have only managed upto p14 (will try to manage the rest later today) but couldn’t resist asking LP what about his experiences of working with Mac O, and what his views are on MORAD, Stack and Tilt and how they relate to his own personal journey via G.O.L.F. Also it sounds as if your views on the impact of technology on the game may be similar to Mac’s, though I certainly don’t speak from first hand knowledge on that!

Apologies if these have been addressed at all between p14 and p33!

Thanks, AA

Lag – thanks for your fantastic commentary on the Bruen swing – he sure looked like a guy who knew how to enjoy a game of golf!

When it comes to the book – if your still working in that direction – I’d love to see you include plenty of your thoughts on the great swings – and the evolution of the swing.

Back on topic, I’ve been thinking about loops – something you’ve talked about a few times.

Are ‘good’ loops/plane shifts normally caused by body motion rather than a highly conscious hand manipulation?

A swing I’ve been looking closely at lately is Lee Trevino’s, and it seems as though his body action – rather than a conscious hand manipulation – was the key to his plane shift from an upright backswing to a flat through swing.

AddingtonArnie,

welcome to the site,
I’ll get to that question shortly,

Guru is in the house, and we did our first clinic together at the Sonoma Golf Club Just north of San Francisco today. which will be hosting the upcoming Schwab Cup on the PGA Tour.

We had a great time and we’ll have some vids and stuff posted here soon.

Beez,

The book is coming along great, and I have already written quite a bit about such evolution, and a bit on how the modern swings have de-evolved because the new equipment acts more as a crutch, and is now hindering the development of the golf swing.

Guru is here one more day, so I’ll get back to your excellent questions on the swing loops after we finish up.

Which planet I am on at this point of the trip is the question:) Had a blast yesterday with the lads and we will organise some photos and vids to fire up in a separate thread. Was great to meet Loren and hit a few balls on the Sonoma course in such great nick.

Thanks LP – have read all 34 pages now – some really interesting stuff in there. Looking forward to your thougts on Mac/S&T and how it all relates to TGM.

Excited to hear the book is progressing well. Hope you and Guru have a great end of trip.

Cheers AA

Today we went out to Lags favourite golf course with the old sticks in the bag. Mare Island should be on everyones must play golf course and even more so with old woods and irons. Challenging to say the least. What a blast.

Shame to leave but it is time to go home. Any of you coming to San Fran must give Lag a yell as he has been such a great host.

Stay tuned for a Classic Clubs tourney.

Guru, gets it “on plane” on the 9th tee at Mare Island with a 1935 Bobby Jones 2 iron blade. A day neither of us will forget anytime soon!

Beez, you are right on about Trevino, one of my favorite swings. If you look at Trevino, Hogan, Moe Norman, you see great torso work, and quick tempos both back and forth.

A quick change in direction compresses the shaft into the body via the centripetal force, but just as important is a quick backswing doesn’t allow for a lot of crazy backswing action. Backswings that are highly manipulated are forced to be slow…. while a quicker one tends to want to get inline with itself.

Trevino’s short quick backswing is then re routed by the body via a big right shoulder drop that gets the shoulders really steep. But the trick to his swing is that he aims left of target, and basically rotates his plane line out to the right, which is now on target. In doing this, it appears that his ball position is back in his stance more than most good players, but this is really just an illusion. The rotated plane line, (out to the right)
changes the low point of his swing from his address position, (which looking straight on would appear to be back too far)....to the new position which is right where it should be for the new plane line (correctly on his armpit just prior to low point)

Like Moe Norman, Trevino took bacon strip divots, not pork chops.

I suspect the open set up helped him visually get lined up quickly.
The loop kept the motion flowing and he used it as a great rhythm device.

The finish only appears to be flat because of the rotated plane line.
He hit a fade, but could work it either way when needed. The greats could always work the ball either way when the shot called for it.

I am a big fan of the shorter, quicker, minimum hand travel swings, without a lot of plane shifting. The big upright manipulated backswings usually take a bit more maintenance in the ball beating department. Guys on tour have all day to practice and work on some really crazy stuff, so you do see all kinds of moves out there both today and in the past. Other guys the club just goes a variety of places, based upon muscle and flexibility issues. The thing you want on the backswing is something that repeats and puts you in a familiar place so you can start the quest for the p3 p4 on plane protocol. That’s where it counts.

AddingtonArnie,

Mac O Grady had made a huge impact on the golf swings of the 90’s.

I love Mac because he is a guy who never settled upon a swing he thought would be inferior to anything ever created. He worked very hard to get to where he was at, and to see him get his PGA Tour card after 16 tries, then go out and beat all those great short game wizards for two wins, almost exclusively on ball striking abilities alone is just the stuff of legend.

I’m no expert on stack and tilt, nor will I ever be. From what I have seen it’s just the way we used to hit short irons and wedges, but now players can use the new gear as enough of a crutch to play good golf without a proper swing that would be capable of hitting a blade style long iron… which of course has always been the acid test of the swing.

I don’t know if Mac is in favor of the new gear or not, but I would guess not. It certainly isn’t something he would need, and certainly not play into his advantage. I see the tour today as a place for great putters, and guys with 5 wedges that have a canon blasting uncontrolled driver swing. I thought the game was much more dramatic when tour players had to pull long irons (1- 2-3-4) 6 times a round out of their bags.

I don’t believe that these par five’s that guys hit driver 5 iron into are actually making birdies. These holes are playing like the par fours of the past and should be scored that way. With the ball and space age drivers going 20% longer, the 6900 yard monsters of the past need to clock in around 8300 for me to consider any comparisons between Hogan, Jones, Snead, Nicklaus, Watson, Player, Palmer, and so on with anyone playing todays game. You can say it’s the same for everyone, but not the same between generations.

I had access to some of the MORAD stuff back in the 80’s.. early 90’s, and it’s an impressive body of work. I hope it comes out someday, but I suspect it might surface only as Mac’s legacy much later in time.

I also suspect Mac believes there is a “best way” for golfers to swing a club based upon human anatomy, and both his approach to the game and his teaching would indicate such a belief. I personally have just seen too many different ways of doing it, with sufficient enough precision, to play some outstanding golf over the years to fully agree. People really gravitate to what they know and what works for them. Homer’s work I think is quite unique in that he really believed that there are many many ways to swing the club that would all be geometrically correct with only a handful of essentials and imperatives. However it seems to rarely be taught that way.

The intention of my body of work will be to examine the various options we have available to us that would most likely be both functional and practical, their pros and cons, what might work, what might not as well, but most importantly, how these things really feel in the body, and how you can achieve the kind of swing you desire through simple, yet effective training of the body with the minimum amount of counter productive behavior and wasted time.

Hi LP,

Thanks so much for then thoughts on Mac O’Grady, fascinating stuff. In tems of his view on technology, a brief insight here if you cur and post the link ionto your browser, though you have to take the stuff about Tiger with a pinch of salt and get to the real issue:

http://www.geoffshackelford...

I liked the stuff on Trevino too – here is a clip of him talking round his action:

http://www.youtube.com/watc...;feature=related

Really looking forward to the book and thanks for your continuing insights.

Cheers AA

P.S Not sure of how to post links here so an experiment below:

Mac O on Technology

Trevino on his action

We are putting on a tournament in Las Vegas next month that limits equipment to 1979 and prior, and will be playing by a different set of rules that eliminate a lot of the nonsense and put the power of the rules officiating back into the players themselves. More on this later.

Interesting is that I was told by the tournament director that Mr. O Grady will be playing in the event along with a whole bunch of active and former PGA Tour members.

Las Vegas Classic Club Open

I agree with Mac for the most part. I am still a persimmon and blade player. But rather than complain about it, I prefer to actively contribute to the causes I believe are consistent with my own beliefs, and although I have little interest in competing, I will play in the Las Vegas Open to show my support for a roll back on tech. I also support the efforts of the TRGATraditional Rules of Golf which encourages simplicity, fairness, but also a roll back on equipment mainly to preserve the relevance of the great courses of the past. 6600 yards used to host US Opens.

I have heard Tiger saying he would love to see golf played old way. He played persimmon as a youth. Not sure what year he switched over. If Tiger really believes in what he says, we would welcome him with open arms to come out and compete on the new persimmon tour we are proposing. I’m sure Mac will love to play in Vegas and I hope he comes through. He could do a lot for us to promote it, and prove his arguments.

I am most grateful to have played the game in the persimmon age, and all my awards and accomplishments can be measured with relevance against the players of the past before me. I like knowing that some of the course records I have shot are fairly matched against all those that came before. I couldn’t feel that way playing the new stuff.

A tour player would be foolish to use archaic gear and put themselves at a huge disadvantage. I’ll be one of those fools though when I tee it up in US Open qualifying next year with persimmons.
I think it would be a blast to sneak through. It would be a great story and a great chance to speak to the world about a new persimmon tour and such. I’ll do it for that reason only.

If you choose to play competitive golf as a pro without the aid of a handicap, you have to use what is legal. The question is not the players using the equipment, but the rules makers allowing it.

In our national game over here, baseball, they still use wooden bats.
I suppose they could legalize a titanium bat, 4 times the size in depth, lighter and introduce a polypropylene ball that goes out of the park by just making casual contact. Shortstops could be hitting 100 homers a year and all the old records could be broken. They could make the ball parks bigger, and tear down all the existing ones. Higher scoring games might put more people in the seats, and the bigger stadiums would allow for more VIP boxes to sell.

That is basically what has happened it golf. It’s a bit silly. Nobody gained anything in a relative way except the club makers. Cory Pavin is still the shortest driver on tour, and percentage wise he is even farther behind. Hackers who hit it 200 now hit it 240. But the guys who hit it 240 before, now hit it 288 if you add 20%. The short hitter has actually lost 8 yards to the guy that was longer in the first place. Most people don’t think about these things though. It’s really the short hitters who have lost out the most.

As far as this staying somewhat on topic here, I think less and less people are turning to things like TGM to get better, more and more just spend more money on equipment that they hope will solve their problems.

It’s a big wake up call for people when they watch someone like myself have a go at old man par with the old stuff.

All you on this forum of course a a bit smarter than your average golfer. Cheers!

What a great idea – be interesting to see if TV take an interest. Let see if anyone can challenge Arnold Palmers 1967 course record of 63 which apparently stood for 27 years! Good luck LP!

I love rule 9p in the TRGA -

“A putter shall not exceed 38 inches in length.” – my biggest gripe with the current rules.

The rest of the rules are nice too and I think in your arena where people are putting love for the game ahead of doing whatever it takes to win, they should work well. Unfortunately the rest of the the golf world will do whatever it takes to win and a hefty rules book is required.

Well I hope the tour really takes off and it’s not crippled by people/players/sponsors not wanting to piss off current equipment manufacturers.

We have a great brain trust working on the TRGA stuff, I support it.

Quite a few people are playing by TRGA rules now, feel free to download a copy of the rules and go have a go at it. It would be interesting to get some feedback from players in this forum.

As far as equipment, there are still a lot of manufactures that are making conforming clubs even persimmon.

How about these guys?

The only thing that I find a bit saddening about golf in general is the slow degradation of the golf swing over time.

I would never want to give up the sensation of dead flushing a persimmon driver off the screws, or flushing a small blade 2 or 1 iron
into the wind with an 8 yard draw that lands on the green and feathers into the pin. Not everyone will or can have such an experience, I hold that dearly.

Mac O Grady is absolutely correct that there are a lot of players who would not be where they are if they had to go back and play the older stuff. I know this for a fact because I have competed against a lot of them, grown up with them… people don’t change that much.

Just because a guy has 5 million in the bank doesn’t mean he can take out a set of blades and persimmons and easily take me out.

Guru watched me play two rounds here in the SF Bay Area, one of the courses is set up for the PGA Tour next week, and I found it to be a cake walk (71 with 1968 Hogan bounce soles) compared to my home track at Mare Island (70 with the 59 Dynapowers) which is 500 yards less off the tips. You need a lot more game to play the Mare than a PGA Tour course with flawless greens and homogenized rough and perfect fairways. I have never preferred that kind of golf. I loved those more rustic tracks in Australia. There are more than a few PGA Tour players who remind me of Spinal Tap.

Those persimmons apparently aren’t available to the U.S.
Not among the “select country” listing.
Whadya think of Louisville Golf? Looks good.

Lag may have been away from the pointy end of the game for a few years but his ability to make it look easier to score par than make a bogie was great to watch. Even cooler was watching old TV coverage of the Aust Open with him in the group ahead of Norman and company within real striking distance of the guys who won. Not bad for a lad who was jet lagged.

Dart, this guy puts just like you do too!

Lag at Somona Golf Club taking no pity on a defenseless ball.

Lag at Somona Golf Club taking no pity on a defenseless ball.

Great photo ..looks perfect..guru you got one from dtl right at impact?

I have high speeder video if it all that needs editing etc to come. This next one is out of a sequence burst.

Note the wooden wood in use.

Sonoma Golf Club rouges gallery. Hidden on the far left is ISGs one and only Loren.

An all afternoon bash only interupted by the moon telling us to get off the course.

Beer O’clock

Right Forearm on Plane. Weight firmly left foot, head over the ball.

Notice the ball has left the face yet the divot is still to be taken. It is being made as per the photo a few posts prior.

Sonoma Golf Club rouges gallery. Hidden on the far left is ISGs one and only Loren.

An all afternoon bash only interupted by the moon telling us to get off the course.

NICE photos !!

Is Lag the Handsome bloke in the middle w the Moustache without the hat ?

Yep. Note the retro shoes!

Classic !!

I think bringing back the persimmon is a great idea….. I would surely love to see ….the top players playing with them

but must admit …the newer technology (for us…average duffers) has revolutionalised the game…certainly more user friendly….
n very very hard to give up or roll back for good

maybe having a fun whack with the old sticks is a different matter though…

My old set is a mixture of blades and woods from I think around the 50’s or 60’s, its making me want to go for a hit with them.
The putter is a steel shaft covered in plastic and a wound grip that goes about half way down the shaft

let’s get these all on one page here…

Guru’s camera is just incredible.. Def on my Christmas list..
Santa, I have been good!

Zero swing thoughts going on here..
I think on course shots are really what counts,

This shot was a 6 iron started at the right center of the green and shaped for a slight draw to a back center pin placement.

It’s the 14th hole so the swing is loose and working quite well at this point in the day.

Feel free to ask questions about anything you see or are curious of.
I still remember what this swing felt like, not sure I will a month from now!

Those shots are taken off the 300fps video function. Pretty clear for a compression compromise in the capture process.

Lags game is at a level where the mechanical motions are habitualised so all he has to do is the course management decision as to which shot to play. Then the routine is a practice waggle and off he goes on automatic pilot to make the shot.

Lag how many practice balls do you hit at a range now and what constitutes your daily practice sessions?

The clinic we did was the first time I have been on a range in 14 years.
It felt quite strange looking into a wide open driving range, rather than the anorexic fairways of The Mare Island Golf Club.

I don’t hit balls anymore on ranges unless I am doing an exhibition such as the one we did at Sonoma.

I can’t say I haven’t spent my fair share of time pounding balls on a driving range in my day, but I would really question the full benefits of that at this point in my life, knowing what I know about the swing and having a few years to incubate on the game of golf in general.

Playing shots on the course is what I enjoy now, the sculpting, shaping, visualizing, planning, feeling the shot in the body before it’s executed, then doing just that.. playing different clubs each round, feeling all those great heads and shafts.. the persimmons, and just being out there with all that weather on such a great golf course as Mare Island.
That’s what I love.

I treat golf as my great teacher of life. I may have left the game for quite a while but golf never left me. I respect the game and it’s traditions. I admire the great persimmon players and respect their abilities. I love playing true masterpiece golf courses, not the by- product of a real estate developers latest row of cookie cutters.

As like many golfers, I prefer hitting the ball well, so I do my best to prepare my body for a game of golf. I am big on both strength and flexibility. I have a series of stretches that are catered to body and the golf swing that I do slowly most mornings even on days I don’t play.

Being a stickler for technique, I understand that the ball will only do what I deliver to it, so I have a series of drills that strengthen and tone the swing, oil the hinges, and create a sense of rhythm and fluidity that will prepare my body for the golf swing. I break the swing into four parts that focus on the transitions. The transitions are the key for my rehearsal. None of my drills are position oriented or stagnant in any way.
If I see that something is out of line with my swing, I will work on changing one of the transitions.

The four transitions are:

1. Address to takeaway initiation.
2. Transition from backswing to downswing
3. Transition from pre impact to impact
4. Transition from impact to… wishing I was still feeling impact. (finish)

As grooved as my swing might be, it feels different everyday… and in reality, it is. My drills represent my swings highest ideals. Where am I ultimately trying to go with it?

I do about 25 reps through each transitional station so to speak.
It’s tough work, very tough, and I am out of breath as my body works very hard in it’s attempt to maximize efficiency. It’s a muscular work out and cardio as well. I don’t need to go to…. or join a gym.

If I go out for round of golf, all that technical stuff goes out the window as it should. I’ve done my homework so to speak. It’s now time to have fun and play. I go from the car right to the first tee.

1. Strategize the shot, selecting distance, shape and trajectory.
2. Address the ball and start trying to assimilate those feelings in the body that will produce that custom shot. (waggle, maybe a practice swing of some sort.
3 Execute, once I can clearly feel the shot at hand in the body, there is no time to waste, off she goes..
4. Live with the results, which are usually good, but nevertheless, it’s all about commitment. Once I learned to commit to the feeling of striking the ball in accordance with my intuition and instinct, that is all I can ask of myself…. and no more.

Plan-aim-fire-live with it.

Lag,
love reading your posts and feel your joy at golf as part of life. I also echo your comments ref the dumming (sp?) down of golf with the new equipment.
My question though, is all new equipment not in keeping with traditional golf? I play Mizuno MP37 (blade) irons with DG S300 steel shafts. I don’t think DG’s have changed much in a while and the 37’s certainly seem to be a traditional blade iron that requires (and rewards) good ball striking. Some of the better ball strikers on tour prefer and play this form of equipment as well. I guess the game changer really is the ball!

Sorry to take this tread somewhat off topic.

Regards,

The Pilot

p.s. Thanks for the email guru. I haven’t been playing much (or visiting Perth) as I am converting to a new aircraft type at the moment!

hi pete. Good to hear you are still alive:)

Sonoma Golf Club rogues gallery. Hidden on the far left is ISG’s one and only Loren.

An all afternoon bash only interrupted by the moon telling us to get off the course.

We had a wonderful time. Priceless.
What’s Dennis standing on back there? Is he that tall?

Thanks to Kristen Moe of the KrisMoe Golf Schools for providing the superb venue. He’s the man in red next to me. Then lagpressure, then Jim Perko “jimper” my A-player in two-man competition, and the guru of course. Dennis Mitchell is the tall man in the back, one of Kris’ instructors who also works with Alex Murray in Burlingame, CA. They teach the GE method. jimper is a student of Alex Murray’s.
Kris and Dennis have videos up on YouTube.

All were suitably impressed with guru’s spiel, roughly the first two or three articles in the Golf School here, clubmaking 101, fitting the machine to the tool, plus hinge actions, impact point/low-point, the two-ball drill, etc. Fundamentals.
lagpressure did some demonstrations.

petethepilot,

As far as our event, in Las Vegas, it is only 1979 and earlier gear, a true classic club event. The rules stuff for TRGA that I have been contributing to will allow a lot of new clubs, all the blade irons, wedges up to 56 degrees, most putters. You can look at the specs pages at the bottom of Rules page 9-D
through 9-P.

Other than the courses playing so much shorter, ironically the short hitter has lost even more distance to the long hitter because the COR
takes a club moving over 110 MPH to kick in, so the long hitters gain more from the new clubs than the shorter hitters. Also if you think about it just in percentages, if the club and ball are going 20% farther, the short hitter who used to drive it 220 is now 264. The super long persimmon guy who used to blast it 270 is now 324. He’s picked up 54 yards while the short hitter only picked up 44 yards. The short guy is now another 10 yards farther back from his friend even though he picked up all this yardage. That’s not taking COR into it either.

The bottom line is we are not going to change the golf world, just give a home for the players who liked golf the old way. We’ll have tournaments, and online competitions with money and prizes, and hopefully it will grow and we might have some new players who come over from the space age side and find enjoyment in the subtle and traditional ways of the old game. I spoke with the President of Louisville Golf today and they are jumping on board, so it’s really exciting stuff.

The key is to offer some motivation for golfers to play persimmon and blades. How about a free trip to work with Guru or myself or a new set of custom persimmons to play right from the factory?

A lot of fun things can be done a every level.

Lag,
Thanks for the reply. Do you think the new forged blades play different to the classic era clubs? BTW, I’m on side with you. I have two persimmon woods I take out from time to time. A Cleveland Classic driver and a Palmer Peerless 3 wood (beautiful shaped clubs!). Good luck with the concept.

Regards,

Pete

Every blade plays a little different, all the sets I play from the past are all a bit different, the bounce, heel toe weight ratio, different center of gravities, look, shaft flex, different grips..

There are a lot of new blades that look really good.

I love the Clevelands and the Peerless are great persimmon blocks.

When I returned to golf, I really didn’t know what to expect. I just wanted to get out and play, even alone is fine. Peaceful, relaxing, I found an excellent shotmakers course and am grateful for that.

As I have been looking up old friends from tour days, and suggesting a game of persimmon here and there, the response has been unanimous so far. Golf was a lot more interesting and challenging than it is now. It’s not just my opinion. So we decided to have an event in Las Vegas and bring back the old stuff. Once we started looking at the equipment protocol, it made sense to also look at the other rules. So with a lot of great input from some experienced players , old timers, even a couple active rules officials, we think we have an excellent revised rules draft that is grounded in fairness, simplicity, practicality, and interesting enough, referenced by rules from the past. Kind of like a greatest hits of games rule book.

We are not out to take over the world, just put a fresh yet familiar face back on the game, for a brave few who dare to go against the current tides. If we can put up some decent money and prizes, it might be enough to motivate a few to wander over to a game that was more about technique, the swing, and the players abilities than looking for answers outside oneself (at the golf superstore).

Most of the guys feel the new gear was just forced upon us. No one had any say. You just can’t give up 40 yards off the tee. If you’re still playing, you just had to go high tech. Not that long ago, you had guys from the 80’s hitting persimmon from the 50’s. I thought that was really great. Seve, Norman, Nicklaus, all those guys played stuff from another era that had a timeless vibe. Just like the game itself. Augusta was basically the same course for the last 50 years until tech took over. I never saw anything wrong with that, and apparently I’m not alone in my views.

People in a forum like this are in the right place if they want to improve. I still beat everyone I play with, using the old stuff, but I wouldn’t kid myself if I thought I could show up at Q school next week with a set of 1935 Topflite irons and play my way onto the PGA Tour. “Tin Cup” anyone?

I do think I could get through US Open Qualifying next June if I played well with some persimmons. It would be an amazing story and I am open to being the one to do it. We’ll see. I might tap into some magical force lifted up upon the ghosts of the past. They can have me!

What a story entering the US Open Quals it would be rocking up with the Persimmons. Press would be all over it.

Let’s get back on the golf swing…

US Open is still a ways off..!

Hey Lag. If you need a caddie, I’ll come!

Sounds great…

A sports psychologist could come in handy too..

Mary, Mary, Mary!

I was thinking about how golfers practice, and what amount of that practice is truly retained. Meaning, how much do you really need to practice to where your efforts really become part of you, say making a swing change. Can you take off a week, a month, or longer and it is still there?

Getting the conscious into the automatic zone can take time. I have heard things like 24 days to make a habit, although I am quite sure there are varying studies and opinions.

Sometimes a swing change can just seem correct “right away” while other times it seems it never will come to something that feels natural no matter how much time passes or sweat labor is involved, even if you believe it to be the right thing.

thoughts?

I really don’t believe one can put a timeframe on it—too many factors involved. Undoing feel with other activities in life or slipping technique especially detrimental. I definitely believe one must become their own instructor though to limit slip when away from professional guidance.

I can’t say I’m a fan of Bob Toski’s but I’ve just started reading “How to Feel a Real Golf Swing”, the book he co-authored with Davis Love Jr, with exactly the same curiosity.

So far they seem to talking about feeling positions and swinging in slow motion. I don’t like where that’s heading because I know as long as I can feel pressure, not positions, I can’t go too wrong. And slow motion completely changes pressures.

Alignment golf swamps Position golf. Alignments in motion produce feel. As Stebboko says, changing the alignments in only their speed changes the pressure and so the feel is the same, just more or less of the feelings.

Good stuff.

Hey Lag. If you need a caddie, I'll come!

clearkeygolf.com

Sounds great…

A sports psychologist could come in handy too..

Mary, Mary, Mary!

Lag Pressure throwaway is the root of all golf’s evils

Now, now LP!!! Remember who has first dibs on carrying your bag in the US Open!!!

John,

I’ve found a seemingly decent shop on ebay doing used forged sets.

Do you know anything about “First flight” clubs?

There is also a nice looking set from the 60s. HB Accu-lite Bobby Nicolls. Do you know if they are any good?

Is there any particular set you would recommend me to look out for?

Stebboko,

Interesting stuff…

I agree, quicker tempos put more feel and pressure in the hands.
I grew up with a lot of the Ben Doyle slow and heavy approach, and found it hard to really feel that day in and day out. It really took a lot of practice to keep that feeling functional.

It seemed to me through my observations that the guys that had the quick tempos could really get it going and shoot low. When that feel is “on” it can just be spot on stuff.

I think there is some stuff over on the flat vs upright thread about plane and tempo.

Big upright swings with a lot of plane shifting don’t work well with quicker tempos. It takes time to get that shift done.

Trevino kinda figured out how to get a little of both with the out to in loop, and still maintain a quick tempo.

Tom Watson had a quick tempo with an upright swing, and used a sweep release to make that work. You don’t see a lot of that. It’s a fascinating golf swing.

It’s interesting you mentioned Davis, I remember when I played against him in Amateur golf, he was always taking these slow motion swings. Long swings and slow motion seem to go hand in hand.

I can’t imagine Moe Norman practicing slow motion swings…

Styles,

There are so many great blades out there..
Any of the Classic Dynapowers are great playable clubs, and easy to hit really. I love the 69 Bullet Backs, and the 59’s are great if you like a heavier iron. You feel so much force and mass going through the ball with a heavy iron. My 59 dynapower 5 iron is 16.5 onces and swing weights around E-2. I love the feel of all that collective momentum powering through the shot.

Guru chose the 1935 Bobby Jones irons… I love that set for it’s unique qualities. The heads are thin like a butter knife, they give you so much feel. If you are swinging good, the sensations are just so alive and vivid. If you are off, your hands will be stinging by the end of the round.

One of the reasons I play a different set each round, is that it teaches us adaptability. Golf is all about having to adapt. Every round is fresh, new different, just like the course, pin placements, green speeds, wind, temp.. it forces me to play more on “essence”.

I imagine there are a lot of sets over there made by British Companies back in the 50’s and 60’s that made some great blades I am not as familiar with. Slazenger maybe?

The classic blades vs the new stuff might be like the difference between driving a Porsche and a Rolls. One is all about feeling the road giving the driver the most feeback possible with great handling and control. The Rolls Royce is all about insulating you from the road so you don’t feel anything. The Porsche is putting the emphasis upon the driver, while the Rolls is more about the car and ease of use.

Styles,

Did you want to come over and caddy for the US Open qualifier? or should I try to find my way over for a shot at the British Open in July?
or maybe the Irish Open?

I miss playing the ground game… It get some of that at my course, which is great..

I have never been a fan of having to drop every shot in from the sky and a parachute like they push over here in the states with all the new courses. Some of that is fine, but not all day everyday.. kinda boring.

The US Open qualifier sounds fun. Depending on how much insurance I sell between now and then it could be a go.

The Irish open is at Adare Manor for the next few years. Its a Trent Jones Senior course so wouldn’t be as much fun as if it was at Portmarnock or Royal Dublin (where it was held throughout the 1980s when anyone and everyone flocked to play in it and it was highly regarded on the european tour. In actual fact just checking on Wiki and it was played at Portmarnock from 76 to 82, then went to Royal Dublin until 85 before returning to Portmarnock until 1990.

During that period it was won by:

Ben Crenshaw
Mark James (2)
Sam Torrance
Seve (3)
Langer (2)
Woosnam (2)
Olazabal

amongst others!

My Dad regularly volunteered as a Steward and I remember seeing Greg Norman teeing it up as well as all the European greats. At that time Faldo was my hero and I got his autograph. man he seemed about ten feet tall! I still have the autograph to this day!

The only other thing I could tell you was that Irish sectional qualifying for The Open last year was at Royal Dublin. Just checked the web and it is hosting qualifying again in 2009. If you were up for it I can easily caddy for you if you want to try qualifying in Dublin for the Open. Not being funny but your odds will be higher there using Persimmon than anywhere else.

I can email you more if you’re interested in looking into this.

During that period it was won by:

Ben Crenshaw
Mark James (2)
Sam Torrance
Seve (3)
Langer (2)
Woosnam (2)
Olazabal

amongst others!

Impressive list!

At that time Faldo was my hero and I got his autograph. man he seemed about ten feet tall! I still have the autograph to this day!

I recall thinking the same thing – Faldo was my long-time idol – I remember driving 13 hours to follow him at the ‘97 Johnnie Walker.

Let's get back on the golf swing…

US Open is still a ways off..!

Lag Pressure throwaway is the root of all golf’s evils

First I have to say that I really love this action. The video was excellent. And since no one is asking any questions, then let me be the first to ask Lag about his previous posts.

The four transitions are:

1. Address to takeaway initiation.—what are you feeling here? What initiates the backswing for you? Is it coming from the core or are your arms swinging the club back or do you feel it from the feet? I would also like to ask what do you see as the club moves back.
2. Transition from backswing to downswing- is this where your Mac O’Grady move comes into the picture, the one where you said you feel the hands drop straight into the right hip? Is the downswing sensation coming from the top with the arms dropping or from the bottom with the feet and hips pulling?
3. Transition from pre impact to impact- are you thinking of turning hard left here assuming that you’ve already transferred to your left side? Does the club feel that it goes down towards the target or being pulled hard left?
4. Transition from impact to… wishing I was still feeling impact. (finish)You’ve talked about maintaining the shaft flex after impact. So what again is the sensation at this point? Rotate hard left with the left hip? I also sense that you like to keep your right heel a bit low up to the follow through. Any comments on that?

Maybe you can match up the comments with the photos you just posted and let us know what are the sensations you feel as you swing.

Thanks in advance for your comment. I always look forward to what you have to say.

NickT,

Wow, those are a lot of wonderful questions, I really welcome and encourage all to put forth such topics of consideration. Those four questions really just about cover the entire golf swing!

I’m in the process of writing a book explaining the golf swing and how it feels based upon being a guinea pig test subject of early golf machine methodology. I expect the book to be 300 pages of ranting, diagrams, photos, and inside the ropes observations! I hope that I can fit those four questions mentioned above into such an undertaking! lol

For example, last night I spent 3 hours writing about the function of the feet in the golf swing. For real, there is that much to think about and write just about the feet.

I really want to clear out all the BS, and hope that when I am done, the reader will really have a clear understanding of the golf swing, what needs to happen, why there are so many different swings that work and hit the ball correctly. Most importantly, how a golfer can utilize the concepts put forth, and start to improve their own game based upon clarity, and personal self evaluation, that will lead to achieving one’s own personal goals with regard to the fine art of ball striking.

I am not writing a “golf my way” book. For instance, with the first question about the initial takeaway I could probably write for 20 pages about all the various options I have seen used and seen work.
But since your question is directed at me, and my own feelings I can answer that much more concisely.

Question #1

what initiates Lag’s personal takeaway?

The first thing I have to have before I can take the club back is intent.
I absolutely have to know what kind of shot I am going to execute.
Once I have that intent clearly in mind, I have to match a motion within the body that will be consistent with that intent. Every cell in the body needs instructions sent before the swing begins. This doesn’t have to take long, I’m sure everyone is thinking of Jack Nicklaus standing over the ball for an eternity, but this is not the case.

For me, the less time I think about it the better. It’s more like, see it, feel it, hit it. The less time I take, usually the better. In other words, as soon as I feel the shot, I fire off the ball before the feeling goes away, or starts to wonder into the world of doubt or questioning. If I stand over the ball too long, it’s easy to start second guessing my intent.
“Hmmm, maybe I should draw this rather than fade it”.... or any such change in intentions. This is the kind of thing that can really lead to the “train wreck” swing.

I realized a long time ago that great commitment to less than perfect intent is much better than feeling indecisive about the right way, or what someone else might proclaim to be the proper way to play this hole. For instance I have hurt myself in the past listening to my caddy. Or asking my caddy advice which only further confused my intent.

I clearly don’t have the mind of a Nicklaus, I tried to play that way as a youngster, and I found it draining, taxing, and counterproductive… for me.

The reason I am getting into this here is that I can’t even begin to think about starting the backswing until I know exactly what I am going to do.

Now assuming I have my ducks lined up, what starts the swing for me is the feeling of “what this swing is going to feel like” right at the completion of that split second feeling, the club starts back. I do sense a slight forward press, but nothing really noticeable. Maybe a quarter of an inch and very quickly at that. When I am playing my best, I really feel my core start the swing, exactly what martial arts describes as the chi center (an area somewhere below the navel and inside the body)

I also create a strong cohesive body tension throughout the body, so that if anything moves, everything moves slightly with it. Getting this feeling to really become reality can take a life’s work. To get this inner gutty feeling that “initiates” to feel connected to the cocking of the wrists and the folding of the right arm is not easy stuff.

My own struggles with the takeaway since becoming a hitter have been to overcome my tendency to load the hands late (snap loading) if not extremely late or even on the way down (float loading)

I believe the late load is more compatible with swingers and their intent to flex the shaft in a strong way early in the downswing.

With a early set of the hands, there is less wobbling going on at the top of the backswing, and with the clubhead staying in closer to the body on the backswing, I feel a greater sense of control of “exactly where it is” so the transition at the top is much more in control and passive feeling than trying to stress the big noodle at the top.

This is because as I have said here countless times, I want the stress of the shaft to be loaded at impact, not at the top.
(hitting vs swinging 101)

So getting back to the initiation, getting the core to start back, having that feeling radiate through the torso, shoulders, down through the arms, and into the hands, and this cohesive body tension allows for all these fibers to work in unison is what I try to feel. There is no doubt that the days that I really really feel this, I really really hit the ball well. If I feel a disconnect going on, for whatever reason, it’s going to be a day of less than perfect golf shots and lots of short game practice.

Brilliant.

Yes brilliant.

So the core moves the distal body parts and then the club follows. Is that correct? You talk about getting your wrists to set early but after watching your swings in YouTube (the ones where you are playing), I sense that there is a little bit of cub head lagging in the takeaway before your wrists actually do set. Do you have this sensation?

As the club is propelled into motion with your core, do you sense that it is traveling up a certain path or plane? From the players perspective, the only time you have visual contact with the club is during the first quarter of the swing. I would like to know what you see here from your peripheral vision.

Thanks again for your inputs.

yes, I like the core to feel as if it does all the work. I always practice setting the hand early, as I tend not to do that. The early set gives me the feeling of clubhead control I seek, and a feeling of more simplicity in the swing, particularly at the top’s transition. Lab photos of me doing drills or swings off the deck will tend to show my purest intentions.

How much of that is actually retained when striking golf shots out on the course is out of my control. I don’t allow individual swing thoughts to enter into my playing protocol. Swing thoughts are for lab work not golfing the ball on the course.

The shorter my backswing, the easier it is to load my hands quickly and naturally, but I tend to not turn my torso fully with a very short backswing. I like the idea of maximum torso rotation with minimum hand travel. I see this great quality in Ben Hogan and Moe Norman.

Maximum torso rotation with minimal hand travel allows for a float loading of the 4 pressure point. It allows a split second of extra time for the delivery paths to line up, if something isn’t quite right, a good set of educated hands can sometimes make a last, split second correction to make sure on plane is really “on plane”.

The pressure point float load also gives the golfer a sense of building the pressure. Another reason why I prefer hitting over swinging. Building the pressure with the feeling of it just continuing to build to and beyond impact….. feels simpler to me than build it, deliver it, then dump in down and out as per the swinger.

Getting to the clubhead lagging at takeaway, I do feel this, and I do like this sensation, particularly around the greens. As much as I like that lagging feeling, I don’t like the tendency for me not to load the wrists up during the backswing, and end up feeling a lot of whipping action at the top of the backswing. Thats a power move for sure, but not consistent with my desire to gain a truer sensory control over the club, face angle and it’s absolute whereabouts. The late load whipping around up top is a great velocity generator, but a tough way to keep acceleration on the shaft. Easy to start down too fast and not be able to keep the power chain ahead of things, usually end up chasing from behind and you have clubshaft throwaway.

Visually, it always appears to be loopy, from out to in.. even if I take the clubhead away slightly inside, it always appears to come back more towards the inside quadrant. The more draggy the takeaway and the later the hands load the bigger this loop will appear to be.
But this is of course an illusion of sorts, because we are above the swing plane looking down. If our eyes were inline with the plane of the shaft we would see the clubhead moving back and forth in a straight line, not even the presence of a circle would be detectable.
But since we don’t swing on an “eye plane” we do see the club moving in a circle, back, around and behind us. The centripetal force created by the change in direction also has a compressing effect upon the shaft inward towards the body. The more of this there is, the more the hands will be aiming at 4:30 on the ball, and maybe even deeper (towards 5:00) In a putting stroke where you have none if this, the hands are nowhere near 4:30.. maybe 3:05

There really is no magical formula for aiming the hands on the downswing, you just have to get a feel for it over time… and with some patience you will…

There is perfect logic and reasoning behind the guys that pull the club way inside on the way back. They are just tracing their downswing delivery line the best they can. It only becomes a problem if they end up too flat without the proper torso rotation to accommodate. If you ever want to flatten out the swing plane, you have to increase the rotational angle of the shoulders or you will be leaving a lot on the table in terms of power loss.

just when you think this thread cannot get any better!

That last para is a major mental trick. Learning what the real plane lines are. Many players who have learned the low and slow take away are doomed vs the above reality of where the plane line is and what the clubhead visually covers.

2. Transition from backswing to downswing- is this where your Mac O'Grady move comes into the picture, the one where you said you feel the hands drop straight into the right hip? Is the downswing sensation coming from the top with the arms dropping or from the bottom with the feet and hips pulling?

Everything needs to feel a rock solid connection from Driver to putter. Easier said than done. (Felt a bit disconnected with the putter today!) The feet, knees and hips still need to feel a connection with the hands at every point in the swing.

When things get disconnected, we lose the proper sequencing needed to keep all the power accumulators firing in the correct order for our personal choosen pattern. When this happens we enter the “Dead Zone” where we lose the prestressed shaft for hitters or inverted (wrong way) shaft flex for swingers. If our hands can’t feel lag pressure on the three pressure points in our hands, we essentially have no real reliable feel as we approach impact. The dreaded Dead Zone. The black hole of feel.. where did it go?

I was reminded of this today in my own game on the greens.
It’s a lot easier to feel pressure when the club is accelerating to and beyond 100 MPH. Tougher to feel on a soft breaking 6 foot putt, but no less important. Practice can raise awareness, or you can choose not to practice and just pay attention to the task at hand.

I have always believed in many ways, that it’s easier to strike a golf ball proficiently day in and day out, than to putt with the same level of proficiency day to day. The extreme forces on the full swing, acceleration, centripetal, and centrifugal, can’t easily go unnoticed.

Putting takes a greater awareness and precision to execute. Any slightest deceleration creates a dead zone or loss of feel. Even the slightest bit can be the difference between hearing the “rattlesnake in the cup”...... or a day of almosts and lip burning. If you have ever wondered why “something feels different today with the flatstick” this is why. Pressure loss.

Getting back to the swing,

The hand drop is vital to the hitter using a level or flat shoulder rotation. The longer the backswing, the more upright, the more that drop has to happen to get back on plane.

The shorter the backswing, the less plane shifting.

Moe Norman pretty much eliminated the need for any hand dropping by swinging on a “turned shoulder plane” This is great stuff to experiment with, but you have to give up the 5th accumulator to some degree in that there is no where for lifting (finish) to go. This is why Moe was smart to go for straightest ever, but certainly not longest ever. I think Hogan had a little better awareness of this and played a little more of a power game than Moe. I might suspect that Hogans swing took a bit more maintaining than Moe’s. Moe’s simplicity is unmatched for any accomplished player I have ever seen or studied.

Thanks for the posts Lag. I know this thread started as “lets talk Golf Machine” but unfortunately the only TGM knowledge I have comes from reading this thread and some posts in other parts of this iseek site.

Now if you don’t mind, let me go back a post or two just for clarification.

You said, “Visually, it always appears to be loopy, from out to in.. even if I take the clubhead away slightly inside, it always appears to come back more towards the inside quadrant. The more draggy the takeaway and the later the hands load the bigger this loop will appear to be.

So let me get this right. From your viewpoint you sense that the clubhead returns to the golf ball on the downswing on a path that is inside the takeaway? Like a reverse figure 8 like Lee Trevino? I suppose it doesn’t have to be this exaggerated but is that what is happening in your swing? Kindly clarify.

Now back to your downswing.

I think I understand when you say that the connection of the feet-knees-hips to the hands need to be maintained. I interpret this as not allowing any “slack” into your swing. By slack I mean the sensation of trying to hit a golf ball if you were to pose at the top of the swing and starting the downswing from a dead stop. If I start a swing from a half way back position I can hit a ball just as far as a regular swing because no “slack” gets in. I assume this is the feet-knees-hips to hands connection that you speak.

So now assuming that connection is maintained, you state:

The hand drop is vital to the hitter using a level or flat shoulder rotation. The longer the backswing, the more upright, the more that drop has to happen to get back on plane.

What plane are we supposed to get back on here? The plane where the club started? So is the sensation a straight vertical drop of the hands until you sense that the club is on this plane? You mentioned in earlier posts that you feel that your shoulders feel like they turn flat (perpendicular to spine tilt?) while your hands drop down.

I personally suffer from a downswing plane that comes in too steep with the club returning on an a lie angle steeper than where it started so I’m thinking your move may help me.

Thanks again and I hope you can elaborate more on this and whether I am interpreting this correctly.

NickT: Nearly all the info in the Golf School is based on TGM as is the majority of the input in the Golf School forum in as visual a means as possible in words painting pictures.

Glad this thread has grabbed your interest as Lag’s use of all the work within TGM that he made a living from is open to great questions like you have posted.

NickT,

Yes, it always both looks and feels out to inside. It’s one of the strange secrets of the game… Think of it this way, for me the club takes off at 3:00 then returns at 4:30 on the ball…. for more or less half swings to full shots.

Let me clarify, if my hands are 4 inches from being inline with the ball (right before impact) the shaft visually appears to be laid off and pointing at 4:30. This is because I am above the plane looking down.
In that last 4 inches of travel (hands) the wrists fire with all their might
(#3 accumulator) rotating from this extremely loaded position and square the clubhead into the back of the ball… 3:00. Let me also note that the clubface is extremely wide open at P-3 (the parallel before impact)

It’s one of those light bulb moments. This is an active hands approach but only active a split second right before impact. It took a while to get it when I was working it into my motion, but once I got it, it’s very addictive. The change in ball flight was significant. There was a new zip on the ball that was never there before. It was like going through a golden door into a new world of playability. I could never go back to the “dead hands forever” thing. The idea of actively using the hands without the risk of “throwaway” was beyond a breath of fresh air.

On the connection issue, I’m really talking about a stiffness in the body, a cohesive tension in the body that keeps everything together.
Again, this can be tricky stuff to learn. Kind of like if you move your left pinky finger, that will move your right toe. This gets into a martial arts stuff. You might get a better explanation down at the Kung Fu or Tai Chi studio. Nonetheless, the golf swing is not much different than swinging a couple of death sticks around your head or smashing a stack of bricks and mortar with your bare hands. The concept and intent is virtually the same. I am anything but relaxed over the golf ball. There is a firmness and a tension that is implemented right from setup and goes all the way to the finish.

Now dealing with the flat or level shoulders, the reason to do this is quite simple. All the action of the pivot is connected at the 4rth pressure point on the left arm shoulder socket. The faster the left shoulder moves away from the ball after impact, the more speed is transfered into the arm,shaft and clubhead. What does this mean?
Acceleration. The potential for acceleration here is immense. If you go with steep shoulders, you are taking the obvious path to avoid OTT…. but you are really leaving a lot of potential acceleration on the table.

Most hackers or beginners actually turn with very flat shoulders.
Getting the right arm to straighten on the downswing is the trick. This is tough stuff for those who have not tried. It’s a bizarre feeling, as if the body is going one way and the hands are going another.

Once you get it, it’s like unleashing cryptonite onto the ball.. and OTT suddenly becomes a thing of the past.

NickT, one thing you mentioned at the end… what degree do you have your irons set at? Are they upright? Or are you taking toe heavy divots with the ball going right?

Thanks again for the insights. Although I rarely hit balls in the range, I decided to experiment on some stuff three weeks ago. One thought process was to feel the face of the club wide open on the downswing and I hit some rockets unlike any other I’ve hit before. And its not like I can’t hit the ball, but these shots were different. So now your posts are starting to make sense and I shall take the idea of a shaft pointing at 4:30 a few inches before impact.

As for the flat shoulder turn and right arm straightening at the same time, I’m going to put in the hours to learn this. I’ve been plagued with OTT for easily the last fifteen years but can still manage to strike the ball respectably well to casual onlookers. Internally I know that my action needs much improvement.

As for your question about my irons (thanks to you and this thread), I put back an old set of Mizuno blades. I even threw out the hybrids and brought the old 2 and 3 irons into the bag! The lies are normal but I can tell you that I come in a bit to the toe with the natural tendency of the ball to fall to the right. Because of the OTT, I always have to hang on my right side to save the shot. Tilt to the right and come in with the handle higher than where it started. Not the best move in the world and the worst for getting a consistent trajectory. Because of the steep shaft I get what can be called “buckshot” ball flight. Its not easy to hit the shot that goes through the same window each time.

Thanks again Lag. Its all starting to make sense.

I am starting to feel serene.

Nick,

Can you please forward me a link to the video you are referring to?

I for some reason cannot find it on the TGM thread.

Thanks in advance

Lag’s stuff vids..

I hope to get a whole round up, tee to green at least, sometime in the next few months.. It might be helpful to examine the shot, how it should be approached, shaped, and so forth, and then show how that shot will be executed.

In the “on course” reality, every shot is different if not radically different.
Therefore each swing looks very different in many ways depending upon what the golf shot calls for.

Lag, what sort of grip pressure do you use? Tight, loose, different for different shots?

This can be a very confusing concept for golfers, grip pressure.

Loose grip usually means loose wrists. Tight grip means tight wrists.

You can learn to have a tight grip with loose wrists. This is a very vital concept in my swing. I grip the club very tight. I don’t want the club twisting in my hands on off center hits at all.

There are a series of exercises you can do to master this tight grip – loose oily wrists.

The best reason for me to grip the club tight, is that under pressure, I tend to tighten up. Also, cold weather, not being warmed up, all lead to a tighter grip. By training myself to be familiar with a tight grip, pressure, weather, have little if any affect on changing my grip pressure. I am very keen on having a constant grip pressure throughout my swing. If I start loose, then tighten at some point in the swing, that adds another timing element I don’t need. The less moving parts, changing feels the better. Through a lot of hard work and training, my swing is about as simple as it could ever be.

If I am feeling pressure, and tighten up, I already know this feeling so I am suddenly not having to deal with any kind of unfamiliarity. I just continue to hit good shots with a tight grip. My swing may appear to look relaxed but I can assure, there is not much relaxing going on. My entire body has a very firm tension running through it from my feet, legs, armpits, arms and grip. Nothing flopping around haphazardly. Everything has purpose and intent. Trained in the conscious, executed by the subconscious.

LAg,

Thank you sir. In just horsing ariund w/ my limited knowledge of hitting, I really love the more simplistic motion and compression.

I would really love to see you come out w/ a book or video. Ive tried swinging (Manzella/Doyle) and when Im on its great, but its just so fleeting.

I played hockey for 25 years and Im just so inclined to want to swing a club like a hockey stick. (hitting motion) The whole reason I was going w/ a swinging pattern was to not lose distance as I got older, as I always heard that would be the case (see Tomasello video series where he talks about Arnie and Lee Buck losing distance w/ age as hitters)

Do think this is a concern, or do think if you work out and maintain your physical condtioning you would be ok hitting into your later years?

Thanks again for video link!

Why not aim to keep both in your arsenal Coltsfan? It was quite eye-opening to see Dart come out the other day killing the course with a backup motion when his preferential motion just hadn’t kicked in yet.

There is no doubt that swinging teaches you many great things..
A sense of passive hands, learning to have pivot controlled hands, the deliberate attitude of holding the club, moving the club and so forth.

For me, as I approached the higher levels of the game, I found swinging to be tragically flawed. Certainly not in principle, but in practicality.

If you’re playing the game for a living, the distance thing is an issue of course. But if you are an amateur and love playing, I see distance having little to to with a players enjoyment if any at all. Handicap goes up, and now you are a tough 15 as compared with a weaker 7 or 8.

You could play a shorter course, and still enjoy the game as ever.

The new equipment does zero good unless you are the only one that has it. Now everyone hits it farther… if they made the hole bigger would that make it easier for just me? of course not.

The new gear actually just widens the gap between the short and long hitter… and even worse, now the long hitters hit it straighter with the new ball and correcting clubs.

Staying in good shape is nothing but good regardless of hitting or swinging. You should do your best in that area even if you don’t play golf at all.

I don’t know what kind of studies if any have been done about the affects of aging upon the swing regarding hitters or swingers. I think swingers could lose distance too. The torso still has to rotate, and if that slows down you lose either way.

I think as I get older, I would tend to play a different or shorter course, and avoid the really long tracks.. I am a very long hitter now in the persimmon world and still bomb it by most people who use the new gear anyway, but I find myself avoiding courses over 7000 yards. I’d rather play a short gamey tricky tight course and just beat everyone with strategy and a tight short game.

The quality of a golf course has very little to do with it’s length.
Just moving the tees back? big deal really, you just need a lawn mower and a couple corn cobs for tee markers. There is so much in designing a great golf course, I couldn’t begin to go into that here..
Anyone want to start that thread?

Lag,

Thanks for your response, your points are well taken and make so much sense its not even funny.

One last quesiton, are you familiar with a guy named Ted Fort? He posts at Lynn Blakes site and is supposed to be one the best teacher in the states for those who want ot learn to hit.

I’d vist Dart but that would be a full blown vacation down under, which one of these days I would like to do, just not able to do it in the near future.

Steb,

I guess because I dont feel i have the talent level to switch mid round from one to another. Im just trying to find something repeatable as a 12 that will get me down to single digits.

I understand where your coming from because I have switched patterns mid round before, and saved a decent round doing it, but I’d really like to learn one pattern well first.

Lag,

You have a pitch elbow for full swings correct? I always thought hitters used more of a punch elbow (behind the right hip at impact)

I want to learn what you are doing, whatever it is :)

ColtsFan,

Swing like a ColtsFan.

ColtsFan,

Pitch or Punch, really has to do with how much “lag angle” you are bringing to the launch pad (p-3 or the release position right before impact)

The thing I try to stress is that you just can’t put more on the launching pad that your body, strength and so forth can handle.

My pitch position is deceiving because like Ben Hogan it is very deceptive in a way. Hogan was a flat out hitter, yet he was very much in pitch. His active and deliberate rotation of #3 (left wrist rotation into impact) was fierce. The active ripping of the hands into impact is a hitting protocol. Swingers use a dead hands approach, that’s why you see such a different release “post impact” hinging action. The swingers full roll is natural with no manipulation. The hitter’s release should feel heavily manipulated and contrived to “Fight” the feeling of the endless down and out start pulling the club what would “feel” as left after impact instead of the hands and arms freely moving away from the body. I’ll never forget the day I first felt this. What a lightbulb! I was already into a pro playing career before I had that enlightened moment of clarity. I wish I had learned this
when I was 13 not 25.

Pitch typically doesn’t work for hitters unless they really have strong powerful hands and forearms. Although I am not a big strong looking guy, I have very strong forearms, quite disproportionate from my body really. I trained my body to be strong in the right areas.
There are many advantages to pitch for hitters if one can do it, and I don’t mean just putting yourself there, it’s all dependent upon what happens long after. Pitch can be the secret to the last minute acceleration or, the death of it.

Pitch creates more angle or range of motion between the left forearm and the clubshaft, so in effect, it really loads up the potential for #3. It takes very fast hands to activate and fire to keep stress on the shaft. If you don’t quite make it, you end up being a poor hitter or a manipulated swinger. You could think of it as jumping from one rooftop to another. It’s all good if you make it. If you build the strength to make it from pitch, it’s easy and not a worry. If you don’t you will have problems, and would be better to go back to punch or like the roof analogy, just try leaping a shorter distance.

Colt,

The purpose of the right arm for the hitter is to actively straighten on the downswing, from the top to parallel 3, leaving about a 120 degree angle (forearm-bicep) then it's all body or torso rotation with accumulators #2 and #3 slashing into impact in unison with the spinning torso, keeping the right forearm angle frozen and on plane past impact. It can be a tough move to master, but well worth it, and you can put an end to OTT and if you can learn to save the right arm with some bend through impact you'll eliminate the left shot as well.
This is another one of Hogan's many secrets.

To do this in practice, try taking a full backswing, then once you are at the top, drop the hands down into the right hip pocket without turning your hips or torso, then once they are down (hands) just spin the body quickly over to P 4. It's one of the most uncomfortable sensations you could ever have swinging a golf club, but you'll get a feel for it after a week or two of hitting a hundred balls a day like that. Once you can actually make decent contact with the ball and get your lines straight, just go ahead and swing normal and see if any of it actually retained into your motion. Hopefully enough to make a difference. This is a big Mac O Grady move. It's a very noble move if you can get over hitting two feet behind the ball when you first try it!

Lag Pressure throwaway is the root of all golf’s evils

I’ve waded thru all 37 pages of this thread and what a motherlode of TGM info!!!! Many thanks to Lag and the TGM guys for all the insight, and to everyone who kept this thing going.

I’ve worked on both swinging and hitting procedures since starting the TGM journey back in 2003 (actually my journey “officially” started in 85 when I bought the book but shelved it quickly when I didn’t put any effort into trying to understand it).

Although I’ve had some success with hitting I always seem to be drawn back to a swinging procedure. I’ve gotten much better at allowing CF to “do all the work” and have been on a stretch of good ball-striking of late with several under par rounds.

I like the option of being able to “hit”, but haven’t worked on it much so I’m reluctant to use it in actual play. I must say that Lag’s postings have pointed out some mis-conceptions I had about it, primarily in the area of the pivot. The beauty of hitting and the angled hinge (to me anyway) is how accurate you can get with it. I had great results almost immediately when I tried it but for some reason I never felt consistent enough. That could be tied to a lousy pivot which I was executing more as a sliding motion. I’m anxious to employ some of Lag’s insight and see where it leads.

Thanks again to all who are contributing to this thread.

Robbo

Robbo,

Glad to hear you are finding some gems of enlightenment here… I can assure you there are plenty. I’ll be feeling a lot better about things when I can get it all into a book with photos, diagrams and such that will make things much more understandable than just text writing. I think some DVD’s might follow. There is just so much bad instruction out there in the bigger golf world. Those that are here, are in the right place. I really believe all the new gear is not helping either, just confusing and masking the problems. The golf swing is an art form.
When executed properly, it is a thing of power and beauty, and to feel these sensations moving through the body with force and precision is better than anything money can buy at the pro shop. Anyone reading threads like these are thinking in the right direction. Be assured you are doing the right thing by looking into improving technique as your first and best option for better ball striking.

Lag,

Looking forward to your work. The Yellow Book is not for the “faint of heart” and those who are used to being spoon-fed their golf instruction will be (and usually are) quite disappointed with it, and as a result it get’s a bad reputation. The more I study and understand it, the more I see why it’s structured the way it is.

The impracticality of all golfers having the time to really study TGM and/or see an Authorized Instructor is what makes these forums (and others like Blake’s) and the supplemental materials (such as the things you’re developing) so important. Doyle’s original video really helped me start solidifying my understanding and more good TGM-based instructional material is now available (but it’s not enough). You bring a unique perspective of “application at the highest level of the game” that I find very interesting. Clampett’s book was good, but I thought he “dumbed it down” too much (although I understand why).

I’m anxious to get working on “hitting” again with the info you’ve posted. The reasons why you gravitated to it really make sense and I’d like to have enough proficiency to able to confidently use it when needed.

Thanks,

Robbo

Lag,

I think the Vegas event is a GREAT idea. My usual “non-tournament” game consists of 10 to 20 guys who range in hdcp from +2 to 8 and we’ve been contemplating a “retro day” for a year now. It’s a great bunch of guys who love their golf and I’m sure we’ll get it done soon.

No tournaments this weekend and you’ve inspired me to “go persimmon”. I dug thru my old clubs and pulled a couple of drivers out….. a Cleveland Classic “Tour Action” and a Macgregor “M33T Eye-O-Matic” (both need regripping but the heads are perfect). Forget trying to get a loft number …. they both just say “1” on the bottom. ;)

As far as the irons go… I’ll have to find my Yamaha SX-25’s and start practicing with them. These were pure muscle backs and the last set of “pinned” heads I owned. I’m using Cleveland CG2 cavity backs now (a compact head but still a cb). The idea of using pure mb irons is interesting and makes some sense.

Robbo

JEFF

ˆ¢’Ǩ‰ìGreg McHatton once asked me why I would want to pull the club out of orbit with the angled hinge. Could you please expand on this point about pulling the club out of orbit with angled hinging?

Ok,

If you were to let go of the club at impact the club would of course bounce off the ground move away from you.. say towards 10 or 11 o clock. Aiming the hands at the inside quadrant of the ball.

Now if you go with that momentum you can use a full roll of the wrists and let the arms move away from the body after dumping all the force on the ball and then into the ground. This is the Doyle, McHatton approach, and it works well. I know. I can swing that way and have won tournaments with that kind of swing.

Now if you fight that expanding circle action, you have to use an angle hinge, no wrist roll and the club is released by the rotation of the body. If you stand behind a golfer with this motion, the hands will quickly disappear around the body after impact… kind of like cutting it left. This is more the Mac O Grady motion. Hogan was all about this too. By pulling the club out of it's natural longitudinal orbit,
you create a massive amount of pressure in your hands, on all three pressure points. This pressure in your hands is FEEL! and this is the feel that you can learn to utilize to control the ball exactly how you want to…. a three yard draw, a five yard fade, low, high, it's all yours if you can learn to do it. Warning! You have to have strong arms and hands if you are planning on rotating fast and hitting it far!

On top of that, you have to learn what I believe to be the most difficult swing move in all of golf. Straightening the right arm out quickly on the downswing…while the torso turns flat or at right angles to the spine or axis. It's a great move to master though, because if you can do it, you can't ever get over the top of the shot and pull it.
For those who are still confused, it feels like you are coming right over the top to hit a big pull shot, but instead, that hands move straight down, as if they are going to land in your right hip pocket, but your shoulders are turning as flat a a 15th century spanish globe.

I have seen that move win a lot of money and tournaments.

Lag Pressure throwaway is the root of all golf’s evils

Hi Lag,

Early on in the thread you talk about the straightening the right arm move early in the downswing, often associated with Mac O’Grady, that you believe is difficult to master but has merit – see above for those who want to trace back.

Would this link (see particularly 2.20 onwards) show a good example of this move: right arm move?

Who from your time on tour would you have associated with the early straightening of the right arm move?

Many Thanks AA

P.S. Whats your ETA on finishing the book? I’m sure I am not the only one looking forward to it.

As a motion taken as a whole it shows zero idea of a finish swivel and would be a great way to steer your way to an X on your card fast.

You need to be straightening your right arm through, not before the ball. Its like holding onto the ball too long when you are throwing it, all that would be left is pivot speed.

Thanks Guru. I thought the particular action that Lag was describing erred on the side of straightening of the right arm as the first action on the downswing (into the right hip pocket then hit with your pivot) rather than the normal piston action of a hitter through the ball.

Unless you are adding wrist cock on the downswing (ala Sergio types look) of a Float Loading motion the right arm is always straightening on the way back to the ball.

The opposite extreme is a fully straightened right arm all the way fro the top which is a big casting look. Most of us will take the right elbow still bent PAST the right hip, close in, to preserve as much biff in the bottom part of the swing rather than at the top.

If you think about this a little deeper, the more bend in the right arm the more wrist cock is still there to be unwound.

Well as far as the 5th accumulator goes, if anyone has ever actually built a plane to swing on, you find out quickly that the club does not ride on a perfect flat plane like in Hogan's book. It would be pretty flat… and if you believe as I do that the true objective of the swing is to have the clubhead traveling faster after impact than before, (true pre stressed shaft flex to the ball and beyond) you are going to have to be applying some serious forces upon that shaft long after impact..

This is where that final plane shift from elbow plane to shoulder plane
takes place. I believe the secret lies here…

I have one word.. Peter Senior… I saw it.. I was there, in the late 80's in Australia, no one hit it better than Peter Senior..not Norman, not Faldo, not O Grady….. and I believe Hogan did the same.

So after Accumulator #4 is spent, the body rotation, the left hip cleared, the right arm is extended, wrist rotation and uncocking spent, what is left to keep accelerating?

Think on these things..

Lag Pressure throwaway is the root of all golf’s evils

Lag,

Do you believe Annika Sorenstam uses the “5th accumulator”?

Robbo

AddingtonArnie,

The first guy that comes to mind with the right arm straightening early is Hal Sutton. I remember seeing that move back in the early 80’s and thinking, what the hell is going on? Sutton looked like he was coming right over the top, yet he hit is straight. I don’t know who taught him that, or if Mac saw that too and that peaked his interest.

Both Nick Price and Faldo had a lot of that going on later. Mac really took it to an extreme and made it a power move. Mac was one of the Tours longest hitters, and impressively straight, although I would see him hit some pulls on occasion, but not often. No one is perfect (Moe Norman maybe)

My book, I would hope to have the text done by spring. (March, April)
I write everyday, it’s a big project, but I want it to be the practical book on the golf swing ever written! Seriously!

Lag,

I gotcha man. Thanks for answering my questions….

robbo65

good observation on Annika,

That’s a nice example of the 5th accumulator!

thanks for sharing!

Hi Lag,

Sorry to threadjack but just wondered if you or the rest of the guys could give me some indication of when perimeter weighting etc was introduced with iron technology. I noticed that the classic tourney you mentioned states no clubs post-1980. If i wanted to pick up some older blades for fun what would suggest as a cut off point?

Thanks, AA

Ping I believe to be the first to start the ball rolling with training wheel golf clubs back in the 70’s.

It’s too bad no one in the right position of power didn’t stop it right there. They should have stayed at best as training devices for beginners.

Ping also sued the USGA in the late 80’s demanding that golf be made easier by allowing square grooves on clubs so balls can be stopped from the rough. (What is the point of having rough then?) To make matters worse, they won the lawsuit in Federal Court, so this now allowed the equipment makers to determine the rules of the game. Can I say it?

INSANE!

I think I’ll make a giant bowling ball that will knock all the pins down so I can finally bowl 300. Then I’ll sell them to everyone so that everyone can be a better bowler. Then when I get flack from the ISBA I’ll sue them because they are taking away my right as an American to make millions of dollars.

INSANE!

That’s how we lost the game of golf. Next up….Golf History Chapter 19 (The end of the persimmon age)

AddingtonArnie:

Thank you for putting a smile on my face today!
1974 Dynapowers This is a great set and you can learn more about History of the Dynapowers. Here is a set of 1967 Dynas that look great. If you drop a set of S300’s in these babys you are ready to rock! The dynas are the classic muscle backs that actually put the weight behind the sweetspot where you are supposed to hit it.. what a concept! Revolutionary! Can you imagine that a golfer might actually plan on hitting it good? That’s positive thinking!

All the MacGregor stuff from the 50’s and 60’s is a no brainer.

Don’t be afraid to put in new shafts. Steel is steel, it’s not much different now than 80 years ago. Stay away from aluminum shafts though.. too much torquing, and graphite will dilute your feel too much.

Bio has a set of some classic Billy Dunk blades.. those sound exciting.

Great stuff Lag….I’m based in the UK but I am going to go hunting!

I have started a new a new thread in the Golf equipment section called Classic/Vintage/Retro. Already have some questions so please take a look over there if you are interested.

Cheers, AA

Hal Sutton is a long-time student of Jimmy Ballard’s – although he started working with him when he was already a PGA Tour pro.

I think he went from having a sort of Nicklaus copy action to the simple-but-effective ‘fire the right side’ thing he does to this day at some point in his career.

Here is a classic post impact result of the two different intents of
Hitting vs Swinging..

Hogan – Radial

Armour – Longitudinal

Sorry Lag – some questions waiting for you over at the Classic/Vintage/Retro section.

gotcha..

Impact bag workout from isggolfguru on Vimeo.

Lag has been talking about impact bags, so thought he would not mind showing how hard he hits them for all to see in slow mo.
I felt sorry for the bag.

I’ll remember this drill next time I go camping:

Lol.. what a great pic!

I haven’t looked inside my bag in a while!

The bag drill is a tricky thing. It’s very tempting to over accelerate into it.

In this exercise, the key is not to stress the shaft at the top. I start the downswing by just gliding the hands down with very little body rotation.
The right arm gets straightened down to P-3, hips and shoulders are saved, still quite closed, then from P-3 it’s just “all out” with the rotation of the pivot, hands get super active and that shaft gets nowhere near releasing, just continues to load pressure into it, stressing and flexing back all the way down to the bag, and the bag take a hard tough hit, just like the ball should. This is radial acceleration, the hitter lifeblood.

Paul, just looking at Lag’s right elbow at address, its tucked in real close to the right side. Is the right forearm in plane in that position?

If you watch the hips from P-3 or parallel before impact, you’ll see the hips pick up speed very quickly right into impact.

It’s not just hitting the bag, it’s how you hit the bag..

This is what Moe Norman taught me in 1987.

Jack: Yes it is:)

So its OK if I keep my right elbow in nice and tight like Lag’s is?

Remember you are going to throw (learning hitting) so you need it to be in a position to do so. You will grasp this quickly as we get to a pitch and then punch level of a backswing. Elbow positions are all about keeping the right forearm flying wedge in line with the shaft so that all of the power and speed are supported or pushing efficiently.

Lol.. what a great pic!

I haven't looked inside my bag in a while!

Lag Pressure throwaway is the root of all golf’s evils

Gosh these guys get everywhere for inside info!

The positioning of the right arm on the downswing has more to do with your swing plane than just about anything. Where it is at address is not nearly as important.

Here is Peter Senior from just last week. One of my favorite swings of all time. He just does everything right. He’s still beating up on all the young guys at 50? There is a reason why. He holds the flex of the shaft, and he has one of the best pure shoulder rotations ever.

In these pictures notice how he straightens the right arm on the downswing, look how much the right arm has straightened from frames 2 to 3, yet the shoulders have not really started to rotate hard yet.

If you look at frames 3 to 4, his hands have not traveled very far, but his torso has really moved a lot. From 4 to 5 it’s great rotation, and he finishes nice and level, no back problems for Peter.

I love the bent left wrist at the top and starting down just like Hogan.
Opens the clubface for the maximum #3 accumulator and he closes the face of the club with the rotation of his body, not a rolling of his hands. Much easier to repeat day in and day out. That’s why you see him still competitive after all these years..

Puzzles me does Pete Senior.. A Dead set poster boy for the Edwin right sided swing model now.. in fact..in one of the Edwin vids you can get from the GE website you can hear him talking about how Edwins’ philosophies/teaching kept him in the game and wanting to still play competitive golf..

Edwins site does have a great deal of footage of PS before and after his Edwin workover, and to say the least, a lot has changed with his swing. He is a dead set hitter for sure, especially nowdays, he was far more ‘roundhouse swing/hit’ pre edwin.

What doesn’t puzzle me however is his ability to do what the pro game is all about, and that’s make plenty of CASH with what he’s got..

The basics of what Peter does look the same from what I remember when I was down there playing 20 years ago. I couldn’t find any link showing any before and afters.. would love to see it..

Edwin has him well illustrated – pre and current – with edwins teaching lines al over the place, but all the vids of this are in Edwins member vault, and I’m not all that keen on spending another 39 bucks for the privelege having seen them already. I’d flick you a link if i could but my user ID is now unfinancial there…

Hi everyone,

Just a quick update on the Las Vegas Classic Open.
I’m in the leader group tomorrow with a 2 stroke lead. Should be fun.
As any pro tournament, you have to go out and play good golf the last day, it will be a challenge for sure.

After a 7 hour car ride to LA to see family, then another 5 over to Vegas, and some car trouble to boot, it has been challenging to just deal with all the off the course stuff. My body has been the biggest challenge, since I usually only play on the days I feel good, and in the afternoons. I prefer the wind in the afternoon just for the shot making aspect. The early tee times this week have been quite an adjustment as I am finding out my body doesn’t feel as oily at sunrise as it does at noon time.

I hit the 1968 Hogan bounce soles today, and shot 73. The course is very long at 6800 with persimmon, and a 70 compression tournament ball. 250 yards is about all any of us can drive it. The greens are burmuda, and very very fast, and they have a lot of grain as burmuda does.

The course played very tough, and the pins placements were fair but very tricky to get too. We didn’t see many birdies on the course anywhere from anyone.

All in all it’s been fun, and of course it was nice to play well today, but after 14 years without competing, I must say I’m not so sure I miss it.
There is just so much off the course stuff to deal with to get into tournament mode. I reason for being here is really for a bigger cause, that being the support of traditional gear, playing golf courses in a way that there were designed and intended, and supporting our efforts to bring back the more pure aspects of the game.

Everyone seemed to enjoy playing off the TRGA rulebook. It really kept play moving along nicely, and being able to putt with the pin in and tap down spike marks put a smile of everyone’s face. The universal dropping procedure for lost ball, OB, unplayable and hazard seemed to be simple enough for everyone without any problems.

I got a couple nice interviews on the cam about the event, some great old clubs, and opinions on new vs old, how the game has changed and so forth, so I’ll get some of that up on you tube in the weeks to come.

Ok, off to bed here soon, I have some golf to play tomorrow!

Great to hear the TRGA rules are making headwind.

Have a heap of fun out there. When you get a chance to speak, don’t forget to say hello to the Iseekers and to aim people here for a chat!!

Great to hear the TRGA rules are making headwind.

Have a heap of fun out there. When you get a chance to speak, don't forget to say hello to the Iseekers and to aim people here for a chat!!

TRGA????

Hi Brownman,

TRGA = Traditional Rules of Golf Association

Lag – great to hear that your doing so well! Good luck for today and looking forward to hearing all about it on your return.

Cheers, AA

good luck John!

Knock some pins out!

Today I played a very good round of golf, very US Open style, just stayed patient, kept hitting fairways and greens, on the rug 15 times, one birdie, very fast hard greens, pins were just very hard to get to.
Even if you were close, the putts were very fast coming down the slopes, it was a real test of the nerves for sure.

Another 73 left the field in the dust, won by 7.

I’ll have some stuff up about the event, it really went off well, the course, the event were very professionally put together, and we gained a lot of ground on both the classic club front and a good reception from playing off the new TRGA rule book. It really helped keep play moving along.

All in all, I suspected I would be tough, but really didn’t expect to perform as well as I did considering I haven’t played a pro event in 14 years. I’m a bit surprised to be in the winners circle so quickly.

There were a lot of people that seemed quite happy to be playing the persimmons again..

Ok, back to the golf swing soon, just an update from Las Vegas for those who had an interest!

Time to go party!

Hot Dog you’re a Winner!

That’s about as uplifting as some of your posts!!!

Great, great, great!!!

Thanks Lagpressure man!

Today I played a very good round of golf, very US Open style, just stayed patient, kept hitting fairways and greens, on the rug 15 times, one birdie, very fast hard greens, pins were just very hard to get to.
Even if you were close, the putts were very fast coming down the slopes, it was a real test of the nerves for sure.

Another 73 left the field in the dust, won by 7.

I'll have some stuff up about the event, it really went off well, the course, the event were very professionally put together, and we gained a lot of ground on both the classic club front and a good reception from playing off the new TRGA rule book. It really helped keep play moving along.

All in all, I suspected I would be tough, but really didn't expect to perform as well as I did considering I haven't played a pro event in 14 years. I'm a bit surprised to be in the winners circle so quickly.

There were a lot of people that seemed quite happy to be playing the persimmons again..

Ok, back to the golf swing soon, just an update from Las Vegas for those who had an interest!

Time to go party!

Lag Pressure throwaway is the root of all golf’s evils

Lag thats fantastic – I’m sure everyone here was pulling for you -congrats! Looking forward to a full debrief and further thoughts on the golf swing. But for now hopw you havew a great night!

Cheers, AA

Tin Cup!

Well done John.

Congratultations Lagpressure.

What’s next – US Open qualifiers!?

On the traditional equirment front:, this article in today’s paper seems to say the golf ball could soon be getting even longer.

What ball did you play for your tournament win?

Congratz Lag,

Your love for the game is an inspiration for any of us to follow, regardless of skill.

It would be nice to hear that winning, or perhaps the overall experience will have you chomping a bit to take it to the young guns out there once in a while.

Hello and help. I am a newbie, and totally lost. No, have not read the book yet, and don’t know that I am accomplished enough, and yet at age 60 have read many books, seen many videos and taken many lessons. I tried TGM methodology as taught once, in person, and got the terrible shanks. I recently decided to give some aspects another try, particularly the lagging and not bending the left wrist, while thrusting with the right forearm. Anyway, I played horribly yesterday. I shanked several shots, and with the irons, I often, in an attempt to keep the club leaning forward and the wrists bent back, dug the leading edge into the ground, hitting fat, the ball going no where much. I feel no release, and think? I am completely using upper body movement to brink the club down and prevent the release of the club. When I tried the left arm roll, I hit the ball thin and had an early release. No oomph all day. Any suggestions would be appreciated. I just hope I now how to get back to this particular forum. Confused by it all.

cagolfer

Start with the Golf School articles here, oldest first. Read the Interview with Lynn Blake in there.
Shanking is a path problem.
Fat/thin shots are a release sequencing problem, including body.
The latter causes the former.
When you understand the geometry and physics you can start diagnosing yourself.
I’m also in California, the Bay area, if that’s what your “handle” means.
We are blessed with at least two TGM instructors here, the (in)famous Ben Doyle and Joey Pickavance, and some Gary Edwin guys also, and the Inpractis crew.

Like everyone, I initially struggled with TGM.

For me, this helped:

Do not to forget your hips and pivot, and make 100% sure to get your balance right.

Are you on your toes? Or is your weight on the front of your heels at setup (as it ought to be). TGM is highly unforgiving if it is not.

Lift your toes in your golf shoes to find out.

Today I played a very good round of golf, very US Open style, just stayed patient, kept hitting fairways and greens, on the rug 15 times, one birdie, very fast hard greens, pins were just very hard to get to.
Even if you were close, the putts were very fast coming down the slopes, it was a real test of the nerves for sure.

Another 73 left the field in the dust, won by 7.

I'll have some stuff up about the event, it really went off well, the course, the event were very professionally put together, and we gained a lot of ground on both the classic club front and a good reception from playing off the new TRGA rule book. It really helped keep play moving along.

All in all, I suspected I would be tough, but really didn't expect to perform as well as I did considering I haven't played a pro event in 14 years. I'm a bit surprised to be in the winners circle so quickly.

There were a lot of people that seemed quite happy to be playing the persimmons again..

Ok, back to the golf swing soon, just an update from Las Vegas for those who had an interest!

Time to go party!

Lag Pressure throwaway is the root of all golf’s evils

Lag,

First…. congratulations on the win! The whole idea of a “classics” tournament series is “cutting edge” and may really get some traction. I truly believe there are silent masses in golfdom who want to see this sort of venue catch on and eventually affect the PGA tour in some manner. It’s no shock to me that you won….. I’m sure you had a leg up on the field with your experience with the more traditional equipment coupled with your TGM background.

Secondly…. I wanted to thank you for “your take” on hitting in this forum. It’s slightly different than my understanding of it which has always been much more “right-arm-thrust-with-minimal-pivot” oriented. I’ve primarily been a swinger (though I’ve fiddled with hitting) and yesterday I had one of those days where the body didn’t feel quite “right” and I was hitting shots that I could hardly believe, including 4 smother-hooks that I simply NEVER hit. That round put me at 57 consecutive holes without a birdie (all on my home course no less!). Now bear in mind I’m a +1 hdcp… so you can imagine my disbelief in this birdie-less streak that I’m riding.

I left the course totally disgusted and declared that I was converting to “hitting” from that point forward…... for some of the reasons you’ve talked about. I re-read some of your posts related to hitting before I left for the course this morning and only had a chance to hit about 5 balls before playing. The result was 13 of 14 fairways hit and 17 of 18 greens. Although I missed several good opportunities on the front side, my birdie drought ended with 4 in the last 9 holes.

I always had good results with a “hitting” type action (the angled hinging is so accurate) but I would inevitably encounter some right elbow pain after a while and have to go back to swinging.

Following your approach to it is much easier on the right elbow with the same accuracy benefits. I saw little decrease in power partly because center-face contact is so much more predictable.

Again…. Congrats and Thanks!

Robbo

Swinger or Hitter the right arm is always driving down plane.

Knowing how to hit makes life much more interesting.

Beez,

One of the rules of the event was that everyone had to play the same ball. Each player was given a dozen balls, “Srixon 70 compression soft feel” was the name of the ball. It was the best Vic could come up with for the event. It certainly didn’t fly as far as most of the other modern balls I have played, the pro v, or the nike, calaway, and so forth.

There was a lot of talk about the ball and equipment buzzing around the event. I heard more than one person talking about how difficult it was to work the ball left and right. I found the same thing to be true.

The pin placement were very difficult, tucked behind bunkers. We had an event issued yardage book and pin placement sheets. With the old balatas I could really curve and shape my shots into greens, and I found with this ball, if I was trying to draw a shot into a left pin placement, the ball would start to draw, then it would seem to lose its arc, and start flattening out it’s shape as it would fall. This made it very tough to angle the ball into these tucked pin placements. You couldn’t just drop the ball in from the sky because with the old gear, we were hitting a lot of long irons into greens, and with small grooves, no one was able to spin the ball well. The balata balls of the past had much higher spin rates, and this could be useful to a good player who could harness that spin for shaping shots. Of course your miss hits were much worse with the higher spin rates.

Personally I would love to go back and play balatas. This ball made the course play tougher because of the lack or workability. It was just really hard to get the ball close to the hole, so I just sat back and focused on hitting lots of greens and fairways. The last day I hit 15 greens, with four of those being long iron shots. You were forced to shoot for the center of the greens most of the time. In the old days you had a better chance of curving a shot into the pin, and getting it close. Square grooves were not allowed at this event.

As far as distance, we found our drives ending up where the architect intended. The course was very well bunkered, usually three fairway bunkers, and you had to drive the ball in between the three bunkers. Vic Wilk, who recently shot a course record 61 at TPC where they now play the LV Invitational, told me that when he plays here with the modern driver, he can take it right over all the fairway bunkers. It was pretty unanimously agreed that the new balls and drivers add 40 yards to players drives.

I didn’t use the yardage book much, but I would look at the pin sheet to see how much room I had over a trap or from the left or right edge, or back of the green. You had to be below the hole. No one was making birdies out there. At The Mare where I play I never use yardages, and play only on intuition. I pretty much did the same thing here. I must say I think it gave me much confidence in my ability to just look and gage the distance with my eyes, and it really kept my mind more involved in the shot by just feeling what I had to do in advance, rather than playing any kind of robotic golf with yardages. My wedges were spot on with distance control. I never once took a yardage inside 150.

It’s interesting because as a younger player, I based everything on yardages. If I was 148 to the pin, slightly uphill, I would add 10, slight breeze from my back deduct 10, slight flier lie, deduct 10, that sort of thing. I found that by just looking at the shot, I would focus on how to shape the shot, and it was actually easier to trust my instinct than a yardage, because thats how I play golf now. I don’t really use yardages. I don’t think I made any tragic errors all week in the club selection department. I can remember many times hitting a shot in my days on tour knowing the perfect yardage, and being a full club off, or worse with the final result, then looking at my caddie with a raised eyebrow, shaking my head, and wondering if the yardage was wrong, or my caddie was off, and so forth… of course it was never MY FAULT! LOL

I think yardages are good information to have, but I use that info now with a grain of salt. There are so many other factors. The most important thing is to know in your heart that you are holding the right club, and that you are confident in the way you are going to hit the shot, so that you can really commit to that swing without doubt or hesitation.

Prot,

It was so enjoyable to be around other players who were hitting persimmon. To hear the sound of everyone striking the ball, the look and shape of the shots, I think that is what I have missed the most. The fact we all had to actually “play the real golf course” and no one could hit the ball 300 yards, we actually had to play the game more as if it were a chess match. We all had to hit lots of long and mid irons, and it wasn’t a bomb it and wedge it contest.

Distance off the tee was still crucial, but you had to drive it straight, and position the ball between the fairway bunkers.

As far as wanting to go play against the young kids, I have zero interest. I welcome any of them to come out and play this style of game in a similar event though…

One of the guys I played with in the final round, a local tour player, who has been bouncing around the various mini tours and such, shot 84 the last day. I’m sure he would have done much better with modern gear, if he was hitting wedges into greens… rather than mid and long iron shots from fairway bunkers.

The tour life or the “all golf life” is not all that exciting a thought. There are just too many other things I like to do. This week reminded me of those days of living, breathing, eat, sleep and dreaming golf. I used to live in Las Vegas, and I missed seeing a lot of my friends, I saw none, because I was there to play an event.

This week felt like an all golf week, and it was.. Going to bed early, forcing myself to sleep so I would feel fully rested at the sunrise, waking up 3 hours before my tee time to give my body a chance to loosen up, eat, properly digest food, stretching, doing my swing drills in the morning before I play, battling rush hour traffic on the way to the course, getting mentally prepared for the event, all that kind of thing.

I really don’t miss competing. My head is in such a different place now than when I was a twenty something with an ax to grind. I just don’t feel any desire to “beat people”. I was much more interested in just talking to people about persimmon or the equipment, or the new TRGA Rules we played by, that sort of thing. I was also involved in throwing the event, so there were added responsibilities there as well. I just don’t feel l have to go out and prove anything.

I won the event because I played the golf course better than other people played the golf course.

I play the course and not other people. I’m used to the old gear, so I didn’t have to make any big adjustments.

My swing is designed to be precise, and not “just” a velocity machine. It’s also designed to be bullet proof under pressure.
It’s always fun to win, don’t get me wrong, but I have no desire to go play another event next week. Maybe 4 events a year would be fine for me.

If you have a good golf swing, the ball will react to that. Good golf shots happen from good golf swings. This was my first tournament since 1993, so apparently I don’t need to be out playing tournaments every week to be competitive.

The tour life is such a different vibe, than going out in the afternoon at my home course, teeing off a shot out toward the SF Bay with the water glistening, shaping shots in the wind, feeling the persimmon, hearing the echos of a drive cracked down through the fairways, trying to beat old man par with no one else around. I actually prefer that kind of golf. Just me and the course is fine! I’m looking forward to getting home in a few days!

It sounds like an event I would love to have seen… I really wish I had played golf in my youth, but never touched a club. It almost seems like you stepped into a time machine there for a few days.

I’m just so surprised that they would choose such a LOW spin ball for this event, but you said it was all they could come up with. Just a weird choice.

I agree with you about living, eating, breathing golf though. Although I’m not competitive, I am very competitive with myself. I love early morning golf, and its sights and sounds. It’s probably one of the most peaceful things I ever do. It’s good to hear you still get something like that out of the game for yourself. (the range is almost like therapy for myself- I’ve never, ever left the range with something about work still stuck on my mind)

It does however make me cringe to imagine those permissions and blades. I bet I couldn’t shoot 110 with that gear….LOL.

Sure you could. Shoot 110, I mean, if you tried, sand-bagger.

Okay… maybe 115? Which way would the wind be blowing? :)

Prot,

My swing is designed to be precise, and not ’Äújust” a velocity machine. It's also designed to be bullet proof under pressure.

Lag Pressure throwaway is the root of all golf’s evils

Lag
Congratulations for your win.
As far as we are in a TGM thread what would be your 24 components pattern?
Thanking you for all your great posts
Phil

Phil,

I’ll be back home after the holiday week, and I’ll take a look at my “24”.
Need to have my book in front of me, I’ve made a few swing changes since my return to golf, maybe some good ones? lol

I’ll have all kinds of stuff up from the event, some great interviews and insights into the game, new vs old… rule changes, golf swings, great pics and vids..

It does however make me cringe to imagine those permissions and blades.

Those ‘permissions’?

:)

Now you know why I wear a bullet-proof mask.

Hi Lag,
first of all a lot of congs for ur achievement in G.O.L.F. and for ur
recent win. Winning is ALWAYS difficult,at whatever level you play.
This is my 1st post but I’ve followed this whole thread from the
beginning,and learnt a lot in spite of the fact that I’m a TGM
(fresh) authorized instructor so I understand the language you’re talking (mostly). From this thread and from my own playing trying
both,I derived the conclusion that the boundaries between swingers
and hitters are not as clear and definite as one may think just by
reading the yellow book,at the point that sometimes,after hitting
a good stroke I wouldn’t bet on which one of the two procedures
I’ve executed.Maybe I’m not yet so experienced for that.So I’d
suggest to all readers to stay with whatever they find easier to
execute,provided the Three Imperatives are satisfied.
I have a question for you (or Dart & Guru).
Compression of the ball. I know how to compress the ball with
an iron shot,but how do I compress the ball with the driver?
I mean,with irons the low point is under ground so I’ve a clear
feeling of what I must do but with the driver I can’t drive the ball
into the ground and take a divot.
So what’s the feeling for compression with the driver?
Lag ,if any,what you feel different when hitting driver versus irons?
Thanks

Welcome, liberoff.
Congratulations on your recent accomplishment, and world-class first post. Great suggestion, and two of the most common questions.

How do I know if I’m swinging or hitting?
Corollary, which should I be doing?
What do I do differently with a driver since it’s teed up?

If you don’t mind, I’ll throw something up. Lemme rephrase that.
Keep in mind I’m unauthorized, but I think Dart and guru would come up with something like the following. I could be wrong.

Most people, no doubt, are switters to some degree one way or the other, and it might help them to purify one or the other. And it’s not easy to tell just by looking. The question is more one of intent.

But to answer, as you’re a recent graduate….with a question or two.
What are the 10 suggested differences in component variations between the two patterns?
And what’s a possibly beneficial, optional, 11th difference?

Secondly, what do you differently with a driver re: compression?
An answer via another set of questions:

What does the ground have to do with compression?
What causes quality compression?
What does low-point have to do with it?

I suspect your confusing the feel of compression with the feel of a divot. You can hold the same about of flex or pressure on the shaft with a divot stroke or a clean pic. The club needs to hit the ball first, so in either case the amount of clubshaft lag I talk about could be exactly the same, but the feel of the two shots…(clean pick- divot) would feel completely different…. and the deeper the divot, the bigger impact will feel.

The greater the velocity, and acceleration you generate into the impact arena, the heavier the ball feels. The good thing about the driver is that because it is a longer, bigger club, we have a chance to really feel something at impact. The driver delivers to us the most velocity, but not necessarily the most acceleration.

I’m not sure I completely understand you question particularly when you talk about you’re knowing how to compress the ball. We all compress the ball some, even the worst shots we hit still squash the ball to some degree.

I think this conversation should head into the “how do I get the most acceleration into the zone, so I can get the most feedback from impact.

So much of golf is the anticipation of the feeling of impact. This is my argument for playing blade irons. More feedback means better
more reliable information going into our brain.

This last week I focused a lot on the feeling of impact. Keeping that feeling alive in my mind helped me drive the ball long and straight.
It was a new course for me, but that doesn’t mean I have to feel like it is. One of the tricks I used was to compare the hole in Las Vegas to one at my home track at Mare Island. If the hole called for a fade,
or a draw off the tee, my last thought before I would take the club back would be to visualize one of the holes back home, and I would just feel that shot, one that was familiar and comfortable. I would just put that out there in my mind and make the same swing I do back home for that shot… It worked quite well. The last round I hit every fairway with my driver.

My point is that by doing this, it helped me to really commit to my shot and put the same compression on the ball I do back home.

The feeling of hitting shots always feels the same, because I go for the feeling of a sameness with the amount of acceleration I put into the ball… not distance. I could take a big long swing with little acceleration, or I could take a very short swing with a ton.

I never back off a shot, trying to hit it easier. I take a shorter backswing, and sometimes a lot shorter so I can use the same acceleration to hit the ball a much shorter distance. I like to feel as if I hit an 80 yard wedge just as hard as 120. The 80 just has a shorter backswing but the same acceleration.

This keeps a sameness to the feel throughout the round.

Loren thanks for your reply.
I made a question looking for an answer,not for more questions.
I already passed my exams. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned the
term compression.
What I meant was I know where to aim my thrust with irons
(low point,underground) but I don’t have the same reference point
for the driver and still cannot make up my mind of hitting the
driver down and out the same way I do with irons(swinging).So in these terms I wanted to know how different is the feel from irons
to driver.
Swingers can and do use angled hinging without being called
switters. Actually you can hit your best draws swinging with angled hinging.More difficult for hitters to use dual horizontal hinging.

‘k

Lag,
you are right. I was referring to the feel of a divot which I have with irons but not with driver. I should have said I know how to drive
the ball into the ground,something which I can’t do with the driver.
Hence I miss that reference point of hitting the ground with the
driver.

Welcome to ISG liberoff. Where are you based?

One thing you will find out is that passing the exams (no mean feat in itself) is they are only a step to working out how to feel and execute all of the goodies Homer painstakingly put in the Yellow Book.

Also you will find that the answers are rarely spoon fed in here as the object of the forum is to make players thing as light bulbs turned on by your own thoughts (with guidance of course) will have a much deeper meaning.

So Driver vs Iron.

Feel comes from a heap of things in terms of the compressing. Club material and their make up make a driver feel very different from an iron. Drivers have less feedback, shafts more flexible and the head is not solid.

In both cases we thrust down plane. Drivers low point is probably going to be a little airborne. We still thrust down and out to reach both arms straight as hard as we can.

Apart from the lack of a divot the feel in the hands and the motion of the flying wedges is the same. Maintaining lag etc the impact is the same (apart from the side on angle of attack due to ball position between any clubs) so the only feel difference should be from the ball being teed and the material feedback characters.

One day I hit a shot where I swear to God the ball felt like it was still stuck on my driver’s clubface like bubblegum when I reached the finish.

I’ve only felt it that heavily the one time….

Yesterday, I was demonstrating the use of #3 pressure point to the guys on the team. We were discussing/practicing the importance of sustaining the lag. We took an eight iron in the right hand with the grip on the life line and #3 pressure point on the backside of the grip. We hit one handed chip shots.

You can really feel the compression when the force is smooth and constant.

That is such a good drill.

The divot or collision flexes the shaft backwards, but this is not in any way the same thing as bringing a pre stressed clubshaft into impact.

I have seen a lot of TGM swingers viciously dumping into the ground, down and out and all that, and this might be better than allowing the clubhead getting in front of the hands.. but it certainly can mask a bigger problem, that of course being over acceleration.

The longer the club, the more I feel inside quadrant, or the 4:30 on the ball… especially with the driver. I love a heavy impact feeling. I think that is why you see a lot of great ball strikers struggle on the greens.
With putting you only get to feel the weight of the ball, not the inclusive heaviness of the ground and it’s collision.

By the way, a few people have asked to see something about the Vegas event.. here is a link

By the way, a few people have asked to see something about the Vegas event.. here is a link

“Lag Erickson”... Is that by Deed Poll yet? lol…

Hi Guru,
I’m based in Italy,Venice area.

“One thing you will find out is that passing the exams (no mean feat in itself) is they are only a step to working out how to feel and execute all of the goodies Homer painstakingly put in the Yellow Book.”

You’re right . That’s why I’m here asking questions,not expecting
though spoon fed answers.Many thanks for yours.

The divot or collision flexes the shaft backwards, but this is not in any way the same thing as bringing a pre stressed clubshaft into impact.

I have seen a lot of TGM swingers viciously dumping into the ground, down and out and all that, and this might be better than allowing the clubhead getting in front of the hands.. but it certainly can mask a bigger problem, that of course being over acceleration.

The longer the club, the more I feel inside quadrant, or the 4:30 on the ball… especially with the driver. I love a heavy impact feeling. I think that is why you see a lot of great ball strikers struggle on the greens.
With putting you only get to feel the weight of the ball, not the inclusive heaviness of the ground and it's collision.

By the way, a few people have asked to see something about the Vegas event.. here is a link

Lag Pressure throwaway is the root of all golf’s evils

Thanks Lag,
I understand what you mean

liberoff: Great to have another European with us in the forum. Venice, love the place.

Drop me an e-mail to golfguruATiseekgolfDOTcom :)

Done Guru
Have you got it?