It’s probably not a coincidence that Jack Nicklaus was the greatest major champion of the PGA Tour’s history.

I say that because his swing model, out of all the greatest champions, was the most vertical – in fact, it was always pointed out how vertical it was, flying elbow and all.

That, in my opinion, was always his greatest strength and not a potential flaw, and I’ll explain.

Every single full golf swing you will ever see involves lifting the club and then swinging it down at the ball, either on the tee or the ground (let’s not get silly and ask about balls sitting at various heights on things, we’re talking about the standard swing).

In that regard, as I said in another post that rotation is the enemy of gravity, the more rotary your swing is, the more of a couple of problems you’ll encounter:

• First, you will encounter centrifugal force that will make the club and arms want to swing outward rather than downward and
• You will begin to have to “turn” faster the harder you wish to swing, which brings in torque forces on the lower body, particularly the leading knee.

As you watch Jack swing an iron here, you can see that most of the “turn” action in his swing is post-impact, and to really get the feel of what you’re watching, just keep an eye on his trailing foot on the down swing and through impact:

One little flaw you can pick out in this nearly flawless swing is that Jack’s leading foot was too square, leading to that little spin on the heel – it’s something I’ve seen in so many of the greats, even the greatest, that at times they had terrible footwork compared to the beauty of their overall swing.

It is obvious in the slo-mo look that Jack is nowhere near swinging “at the target” as so many instructors ridiculously have you imagine – if he had let go of his club at the moment just before impact, the club would have speared into the ground in front of him.

He is most definitely swinging “down” and not “at the target.”

I took that with me to Tracer Golf and in my latest session, I began to get more vertical, although I knew when I’d got back home that it was an improvement but not as vertical an action as I want – still, progress.

More to come.