Well, we’re finally here, WAX Nation – the new “Basics Of The MCS Golf Swing” video is now available for download!
I was able to cut and slash the instructional material to within a half hour’s length – it is very short but very concise, with everything you need laid out in basic instructional form. It is, in essence, whatever I would have presented in another era, but without all of the extraneous side-bars and repetition.
The video from Golf Digest is called The Science Behind Gordon Sargent’s Insane Swing Speed, but I’ll just call it what it is – A Recipe For Disaster.
I’ve already (long ago) pointed out that any real science that looks at the X Factor notion of Jim McLean infamy concludes that it is physically unsound and puts golfers at a higher risk of back injury, but why quibble?
I have said for years that there were two different mechanically-correct pivot actions – the traditional Classic Golf Swing with the rotary hip turn and lifting leading heel, and the second, what I am now calling the “Shift & Post” based upon having called it that when talking about Mike Dunaway.
Now that I have isolated and can replicate and explain the “Shift & Post” pivot action, I am wondering where we go from here.
I am solving some of my previous “mysteries” regarding the golf swing and pivoting now that I’ve been able to identify, isolate and deliberately perform the “Shift & Post” action which I had previously performed without knowing it.
Going all the way back to 2007, nearly 20 years ago – I have a whole VHS videotape cassette in my bedroom closet, and an old VCR that is missing a remote control, which contains golf swings of mine from 2006 going through 2008.
You’ll remember I participated in a podcast interview last October with Josh Karp, who coincidentally is also going to be taking over the Golf Smarter podcast from a retiring Fred Green – I was on the Golf Smarter podcast back in 2019.
I heard from Josh last week, who advised me that he has compiled 20 podcast episodes, one of which is the one we did for The Golfer’s Journal, and he hopes to have a date soon for the airing.
I’ve been thinking that the “Late Hogan” pivot action needs a better name and, after investigating the similarities between that pivot and Mike Dunaway’s, I can confirm that the proper pivot action is a “Shift & Post” pivot.
You may think, “they don’t look anything alike,” and you’d be correct – they look different at a glance because of the differences between Ben Hogan’s and Mike Dunaway’s setups, and also their overall swing actions.
The main reason I didn’t choose Ben Hogan’s swing for the MCS model is that he was a feel swinger who practiced endlessly, and so his setup would vary almost day to day – he would get the feel of how he was swinging on a particular day and go with it.
That’s not going to breed consistency – Hogan could do so because he hit balls every day, every single day, when he wasn’t actually playing. Most of us can’t do that, and even if we could, we can simply avoid having to by building a consistent and repeatable setup over the ball.
You’ll all remember my saying that Jack Knapp was “so close” to having a perfect swing?
Well, I haven’t looked at his swing in a year, and it was before I noticed that I had swung with the same pivot as the one Ben Hogan used late in his career, and something made me go back to what I’d posted about him and how easy he generated power.
First note – thanks to all WAX Nation members who have supported the cause by downloading the video!
I didn’t state this in the video “The Basics Of The MCS Golf Swing,” but I have experienced this situation in the past when discussing swing mechanics with people who have watched my MCS videos – you want to watch any instructional video multiple times.
There is simply no way you can watch a video with technical content only once and hope to retain everything.
Something I noticed instantly when I began to make practice back pivots, now that my shoulder is improving enough to do so, was the much flatter plane I have at the top compared to my previous, more typically Classic pivot style.
I began to look into it, wondering why I didn’t have much higher hands at the top the way I used to, a la Jack Nicklaus, but the flatter plane is actually a feature of the “Late Hogan” pivot action.
Earlier today, I posted about how I view the optimal swing to consist of the Jack Nicklaus setup with Ben Hogan’s pivot, and I mentioned Mike Dunaway as well.
I couldn’t remember exactly what I had named this gif., so I had to go searching for it month by month in my media archives, remembering that I had made it when I was producing the “MCS – Drop The Hammer” video in early 2017.
Now, the thing to remember with all of my waxing poetic about Ben Hogan’s pivot actions, especially what I call the “Late Hogan Pivot,” which is the one he used in 1953 (when he won 3 of 3 majors played), you simply can not exclude Jack Nicklaus from the conversation on swinging.
This is because the optimal setup closely mirrors the exact same setup that Jack Nicklaus recommended in his book “Golf My Way.”
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