By impediments, I mean that there should be no part of a golf swing where one’s setup or mechanical action impedes the freedom of the swing itself.

In modern golf, you have the planting of the leading foot on the back pivot, which leads to every other problem you’ll find in modern swinging due to that massive flaw in the mechanics.

Even with the Classic Golf Swing, which you see virtually every long driver now using (in years past, you had a few planted-foot swingers, but they are the exceptions proving the rule), you can have impediments to a full and free motion.

Some of those would be an improper grip, a too-wide stance, bending too far over the ball, etc. that impede a full and free swing motion.

I have been looking at some old video footage of my swings over the years, and one time in 2015 in particular strikes me as a very free swing, even though I had flaws in it.

Here are a couple of swings from May 16, 2015 – one at regular speed and the other in slo-mo:

I was swinging left-dominant for one, and my grip was a little stronger than it should have been, but my short-stop slide through impact solved both of those problems.

If you are wondering how that would work, the release of the trailing foot through impact is not only a move that reduces the risk of injury (leaving the trailing foot planted would cause a Reverse-C finish, which is very hard on the lower back, or the “flying foot” syndrome you see now in golf, both tournament and long driving with the leading foot), it also helps keep the hands from turning over at impact.

Wonderful leverage here, if you don’t mind my humbly submitting, not because it was yours truly, but the top position allowed me to just transfer my weight back to the leading foot and drop my right shoulder – that ball is gone…

If you focus on my shoulders and hands on the transition from the top, and imagine the club shaft as a person’s arm, you can almost see the same leveraging action of a judo throw with the weight shift:

This swing above was probably my best motion before 2016 arrived and I spent more time working with others on their own swings than on mine.

I am currently working on regaining that freedom of motion in the lower body, away from which I’ve strayed through the years, and I’d have to say that if I had narrowed my stance in the above swings, switched from left-dominant to right and adjusted that grip (three major changes in a setup, let’s not gloss over that), I’d ideally be swinging exactly like how I envision my swing at optimal.

The past-parallel shaft would also go away as that was a result of the left arm being too steep at the top due to the left-dominant pivot.

I’ve been working on that setup and back swing pivot in the last week and I’ll be back in the lab shortly to see how it all goes down.

More to come.