This is actually a Part II of the previous post in which I discussed Will Zalatoris’ back surgery and other things.
I will admit something at the expense of my ego – I am far too proud and too stubborn, because I deluded myself into thinking I could swing the way everyone else swings, despite a fundamental and significant deformity in my spine.
This was why I could identify problem areas in swingers with normal-ish physiques and set them straight fairly quickly – because the golf swing really is very simple if you do it mechanically-correctly, and why I couldn’t do it to my satisfaction myself.
But not even two months after I said, “To hell with this standard Classic Golf Swing model, I’m going to build one that feels perfectly natural and athletic to me,” I am closing in on completing this model already.
The most significant thing I’ve done since that declaration was adjusting my stance so that it comports with one of the Golden Rules of proper impact with respect to the body – square shoulders to the target line.
So, at a glance, someone would say, “Sure, DJ – you say to stand square to the target line with the feet, but your stance is angled,” to which I’d respond, “I have to stand this way to perform the required mechanical action, but if I didn’t have a deformed spine, I’d be standing square to the target line and the mechanical action would be exactly the same…”
Had I taken that deformity into account (which I did between 2014-2016, for too short a time), I could have taken the Classic Golf Swing model I devised in 2014 with the angled stance and been off to the races with it.
My Swing In 2015
In a way however, I’m happy that I didn’t.
For one, I would have been using a swing model that was perfectly fine, but not optimal (in my opinion, and my new model-building is a way to prove that opinion as fact), and I might not ever have decided to build my own model as I am now doing.
I needed the years of frustration fighting this spinal deformity that made every effort to swing along standard lines doomed to failure, because that made me go over everything thousands of times with a fine-toothed comb.
They say about a theory that you can never prove it as truth, only that a proper theory cannot be proven wrong.
In that regard, no matter how hard I tried to find something wrong in the standard Classic Golf Swing from 2018-2022, because I was stubbornly refusing to admit that the issue was in my physical deformity, I couldn’t, which means that my theory on that model is pretty bang-on.
However, is it optimal?
Well, while trying to improve it using the metrics of stance, balance and weight, pivot action etc., I pretty well cemented that model as pretty much as good as it gets (my E = MCS” video model, not my demonstration of it, is the model in question), but what if I changed certain metrics to better suit athletic motion?
It would still be a Classic Golf Swing model, but if better, then that new model would be the one I’d have to try to prove isn’t optimal, wouldn’t it?
Once I establish that, I don’t intend to chase pros to listen to me and change theirs swings to save their backs.
I Tried, Jason…
My path is one I’ve contemplated before – taking my swing model and my research over the past 18 years, and submitting them for peer review in the Kinesiology field.
I am that confident in the work I’m doing, because it is not a personal thing, meaning that I’m not saying I can build the optimal swing for myself and myself only, but that the same swing model, adjusted if required by physical characteristics of the individual, will fit all.
Just as no one can run with absolute perfect mechanical action in sprinting, there is a theoretical model of perfect running mechanics and those who come closest to it do far better than those who don’t.
You wouldn’t have to match the metrics of a swing model perfectly to swing well, only strive to come as close to the theoretically optimal mechanical action of the model as possible.
And of course, the closer you get to it…
So, that’s where I’m going with this.
More to come!
WAX Golf 