I like to share uplifting stories, and you’ll remember WAX Nation that I mentioned to Fred Greene during our interview for his “Golfsmarter” podcast that when people tell me that I’ve helped them keep playing or begin playing golf again after back issues or other, it makes it all worth while.
I’ve corresponded for a time with a PGA of America instructor out in Arizona, and earlier in the week he emailed me with a great story about the MCS Golf Swing.
If you have been looking at repeat NCAA Div 1 Champion Matt Wolff’s swing, you’re sure to be distracted by his funky-looking back swing and top position, but when you look at the part that really matters, it’s pretty darned good.
I’ll show you his down swing after the club has reached the plane of a more orthodox-looking swing, and you can see an excellent “3 O’Clock” position (other than the high trailing heel, but that’s an optimal matter, not a mechanically-unsound one), and a pretty good impact:
That sounds very counter-intuitive, I know, and it’s a little like the conundrum of the chicken versus the egg, but it’s been my experience.
Do you want to know why so few people understand or even get Ben Hogan’s pivot action?
I can tell that I’m getting closer because my down swing plane is shallowing out even more, and I can show some visual proof in the form of one of my better swings last year vs the last time I was at the range.
I went from a very steep plane that appeared at some point in my swing research years, to a fairly neutral plane, to one that is actually getting “under” the plane that is my shaft angle at impact.
Update: The podcast episode is now out, you can find it here!
Hey, WAX Nation, I told you there would be things happening this year that were a little different, and here’s the first part!
I want to thank WAXGolf reader Paul Cervantes (who is himself a writer and golf enthusiast) for referring me to Fred Greene of the the “GolfSmarter” podcast (the highest rated and longest-running golf podcast, by the way, so Fred is a true pioneer of the modern era), and of course Fred for granting me an interview on his show.
On this PGA Championship moving day, I thought I’d look back at a particular golf swing of a player currently T4 going into Round 3..
With all of my personal angst regarding finding and building an “optimal” golf swing, I would like to stress in this posting that “optimal” simply means to me, the best possible swing action you can make with regards to efficiency, speed production and accuracy/consistency.
That doesn’t mean that a swing that isn’t “optimal” is bad – when I say a swing is mechanically-sound, but not optimal, I mean that I fully endorse a swing action like that but that it could be even better.
I was able to get out to the range today to see how the adjustments to my setup worked out, and I was quite pleased with the results.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to get a much better impact position than I did today with regards to the footwork, but while I continue to look at video, you can have a look at a drive that I absolutely slammed.
We recently had some convo in the comments section regarding my frustration with how the optimal MCS Golf Swing model has a flat-to-very-low trailing heel at impact (for leveraging and “using the ground”purposes).
Once again, my failure to execute the swing to achieve this stems from my not following my own dictates with the model.
I am pleased and more than a little humbled to say that the WAX Golf blog has officially passed 1 million views as of today.
Thanks to WAX Nation, and the nearly 10,000 comments that you’ve all contributed to the discussion on mechanically-correct golf swing principles.
I have so many swings on file in my archives, it is always a treat to go back to a particular month or year to look at what I was doing in my swing research.
I would also break my research progress down into at least 2, if not 3 separate phases.
