One of the reasons I was able to drive a golf ball 350 yards and up back in my late 30s and early 40s even while swinging with too much leading arm (left-dominant) was because I knew where impact was.

I may have been guilty of trying to pull the club through impact with the leading arm while still trying to hit the ball with my right hand – when I didn’t do it perfectly, I would smash the ball 350 yards, but when I did do it perfectly, I snap-hooked the ball off the planet or sliced it over 2 fairways.

But what I knew was that the swing was over at impact – now, if you watch this clip of a certain instructor (and it doesn’t matter who it is, because I’m not trying to slam this particular instructor, just the concept), you can actually hear him make the biggest mistake you can make in a golf swing at the 01:05 mark:

“So you notice that the release of energy is out here toward my target…”

I don’t know about all of you, but a little thing called physics would say that the worst possible point to release your energy is after the ball has already been struck.

I’ve always said in response to this throwing meme is that nothing you do after impact affects the ball, so your energy should be releasing into the ball, not at the target – unless you’re playing some alternative golf game that involves using your club as a javelin, which would give new meaning to “sticking the green…”

I talked about the concept of a “throw release” for years when trying to decode the Mikes Austin and Dunaway, and every time someone asked me where I would throw the club, I would say that I would envision throwing it into the ground about a foot in front of the teed ball (with driver) or, if it were any other club, into the ground right at the swing bottom:

Why in front of the teed ball?

Because we have two equations for moving objects, one involving momentum (if you are struck by a bus moving at a steady velocity, you will feel some momentum, trust me) and the other involving force, which requires acceleration (F = MxA).

So, the clubhead itself traveling at a steady speed will still move a golf ball with momentum, but for the real pop, you want to be accelerating into the golf ball, which will really spice things up with the force factor.

Now, tell me again how a golf instructor whom one would assume is educated on some basic principles of physics would tell people to release their energy at the target, when the target isn’t the thing at which you’re swinging?

I mean, I swing at the ball, I don’t know about you all.

This nonsense meme simply trains people to try to accelerate their club well past the ball or swing bottom, and is one likely reason why right-handed swingers swinging righty get absolutely crossed up trying to drag the club through the impact zone with both arms, but more importantly, the leading arm.