I’ve been going over the mechanics of my new model after having (hopefully) found my optimal setup for the address position.

I’ll be testing it all soon after the weekend and will answer the one question people may have about why I decided to take this route after so many years of swing research.

It’s not actually just one word, but two reasons, the first being that while most of my current readers have only known my journey in terms of modeling the swing based on studying the common characteristics of great past swingers, I initially began this endeavor the way I’m ending it.

I began by trying to figure it out for myself, but I was never going to get there because:

1. I didn’t even think about how my scoliosis would have affected my swing with regards to shoulder position at impact and swing plane until the winter of 2013-14, if you can believe it and
2. I was just an avid amateur and really had no technical knowledge about swing things (swing plane, club path, attack angle etc) which I’m learned through the years.

So, this first reason brings me to the second reason and it is the one word, “leverage,” which I don’t think is maximized with the traditional Classic Golf Swing.

In fact, taking all of my time working on this research between 2005 and now, there was actually one short period time in which I took my athletic instincts and designed a golf swing model in 2013 – those of you who remember the “New MCS” golf swing model, that was one I created after I left the Mike Austin/Dunaway school in the winter of 2012-13, so I actually have done so.

And I’ll tell you all one thing – the traditional Classic Golf Swing is a thing of beauty, as it’s the way nearly everyone swung a club until the 80’s, and the model I built taking the good from the greats and leaving the quirks – you won’t do any better than that swinging this way if you’re after the Classic Golf Swing.

But here’s the problem – aside from my early days playing golf when I could launch the ball pretty well (in the summer of 1997, after half a dozen lessons, I hit a 330 yard drive into a slight breeze on a par 5 course with my instructor’s borrowed driver), the longest I’ve ever driven the ball in my research time has been when I was doing things my own way.

My longest drives ever (from 350 to 375 yards) were in the summer/fall of 2009, before I had even begun to study specific golfers’ swings (I just grabbed everything I could record on TV and studied them in slo-mo), and you can hear some zesty commentary in the background from some fellows with whom I was playing the round:

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… which wasn’t perfect, but I had huge leverage swinging my own way.

Also in that spring and summer of 2013 when I devised my own model briefly, known as “New MCS.”

I even solved my steep and OTT downswing plane if not the outside-in impact club path with “New MCS,” incredibly!

Witness a down swing from my New MCS model and the plane:

DJ – Spring 2013

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… which, by the way looking down the line, illustrates beautifully my left-dominant action at the time, controlling that club and riding the swing plane with the left arm.

Boy, could I launch it with this model as well:

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… which is no surprise if you watch I locked it all together at the top and the leading knee, shoulder and hands all begin to move in unison on the transition.

Again, huge leverage.

So, that is why I decided to go beyond the standard Classic and just see where my athletic intuition, paired now with a decade and a half of acquired technical knowledge, would take me.

And wouldn’t you know it?

I didn’t look at either of the above swings until the moment it came time for me to embed them into this blog posting, but my setup in both was decidedly non-standard Classic, rather more to where I want my weighting and balance for a purely athletic swing.

So, I am currently of the opinion that my MCS Classic Golf Swing model, showcased in “E = MCS,” is the optimal version of the the standard model, but I believe there is a variation of the Classic model that is superior, therefore the optimal one.

I’m all about leverage, having swung baseball bats, hockey sticks, axes and sledgehammers in my youth, and I feel there is a better way to leverage the club.

So, I should know fairly soon 1) If I have a model at all and 2) if it’s superior to the standard model or just different.