Warning: This is a miscellaneous mish-mash of thoughts and memories about this journey of mine, and how things I disregard as preposterous always seem to come back full circle.
So, if you’re interested in my personal journey, it’s a personal blog posting.
My first thought is, I still don’t know how I was ever able to make contact with a golf ball with any of the setups I’ve ever had, including my most recent one.
I would have to put it down to having developed extraordinary hand-eye coordination in my lifetime of sports, because other than that explanation, I have no clue.
My second thought is a memory that goes back nearly ten years, when I first slapped my forehead and remembered that I actually had scoliosis (it had been diagnosed when I was a child and I promptly forgot about it for many years) and how it was likely affecting my swing with regards to plane and club path.
It had never been a problem for me at any other time in my sporting life that I could notice, except for one thing in retrospect – I was a pretty good hockey player in my day (my team won the provincial championship my 3rd and last year playing hockey), but for the life of me, I could never generate a decent slap shot like this:
I could however and did score many goals with a sizzling wrist shot, and so perhaps this condition affected my ability to make solid contact with the stick on a slapper but, with a wrister that I could gather and sling, I was deadly.
At the time, and for years after, I was mystified but I think I’ve just solved that mystery.
So, aside from the slap shot vs wrist shot mystery, I don’t think anything was seriously affected by my deformity – until something very specific was required by golf.
I conducted a simple experiment that was sort of like this, close to ten years ago:
The experiment was, “If I set the club at the top of the back swing and simply pull it down and around, how much would I have to angle my foot line in order to come to impact with shoulders square to my target line?”
I had actually done the exact same thing back in the summer of ’08 while exploring natural leverage – but had dismissed it then because the answer was so shocking.
The same answer in the winter of ’13-’14 was again shocking, and I remember telling someone with whom I was working at the time (on marketing and trying to raise viewership on my blog) that it was ridiculous.
“If this is correct,” I said, “then I’d have to stand with my foot line nearly 45 degrees to the target line!”
His answer was, “Well, if that’s what you have to do, than do it!”
Sadly, all of his other bits of advice for my site were of little assistance, but that one piece of advice may have been the one to follow, not for marketing or increasing traffic, but for the sake of having my own personal setup, MCS-style.
This was before I had even begun to build the model that I introduced about a year later (“MCS – Ultimate Leverage” in 2015), but I was just investigating how to solve my issue, because I was already angling my foot line:
May 2015
Now, do you see that bent right arm? That was the giveaway that even this angle, which looks significant, wasn’t enough.
Remember, this is a situation unique to myself and/or someone with the precise same condition (a congenital twist in the spinal column) and not some game-changing “secret” the likes of which you see being claimed in magazines and online.
So, first in ’08, again in the winter of ’13-’14, and yesterday/today once again after my foray to Tracer Golf left me so frustrated when using natural leverage, which makes a total of 3 separate occasions where I asked a question and got the same, ludicrous answer.
Perhaps it’s not the answer that is so ludicrous but rather my refusal while relying on athletic instinct to accept the answer given to the question.
Well, 3rd time is a charm, so here is the completely MCS solution to my issue:
Take the standard model and adjust the foot line so that I can follow the fundamental requirement of a proper golf swing – shoulders naturally square to the target line at address and impact.
The model would still be the model, but just as the human body can deviate from what we consider “standard,” the model must be adjustable to suit the individual.
Here’s a quick analogy – you have an Iron Byron machine that works perfectly except that the mechanical arm was bent during a shipping mishap so that the club, when set in place, comes across the target line and the club head travels outside-in at impact rather than coming square from inside-out.
Let’s say as well that the damage is not fixable, but that the machine still functions properly in every area except where the bent arm changes the club’s path through impact.
What is the solution, if you must keep this Iron Byron, as we only have one of ourselves and cannot replace ourselves?
Well, if you simply rotated the machine in place so that the bent arm now delivered the club perfectly inside-out to square at impact, did you change machine itself (use a different model)?
No, you simply adjusted the position of the machine to account for the damaged part (or the physical deformity in my case).
The actual mechanical action would remain the same, just as after I adjust my foot line to make my machine swing squarely to the target line, I am using the exact same mechanics of the swing.
I tried something different from the proper solution without even realizing it – because I had to bend my right arm slightly in order to take the proper grip on the club, I did so.
Now, I was unknowingly having to manipulate that down swing in order to maintain the proper arc and club path and if I didn’t, really bad things happened.
Calvin Peete was an old school golfer who had a permanent bend in his left arm due an injury as a child so that he couldn’t fully straighten it, but he made adjustments and became a very accomplished Tour player and winner.
If I had had a permanent bend in that right arm, all would have worked out, but my right arm works perfectly fine and can straighten, so it would be a matter of swinging back from a bent right arm position to the top and then back down through with a perfectly working right arm, which takes some hand-eye coordination, to say the least.
So once again, my ability to use hand-eye coordination has been a mixed blessing and more of a curse, really – it sort of solved my issues when swinging deliberately and under control, but the minute I didn’t do that and simply swung using a pivot and natural leverage – disaster.
I need a proper and permanent solution to this physical issue, and it seems I have it, so I may as well employ it.
There is a silver lining to this cloud and it’s been there for ages – I just had to exhaust every other possible solution because the correct one seems and will look so odd.
However, there is only one law the ball obeys, and that is the law of impact conditions – proper path, angle of attack and on the sweet spot.
Whatever it is I have to do to accomplish this, I am now prepared to do.
And I’ll tell you all something, my friends – if and when I solve this personal setup issue, prepare for some ball-striking numbers that will blow anything I’ve done previously absolutely off the pitch.
More to come.
WAX Golf 