I talked the past week about the “Power Line,” which I call that straight line you can create from the joint of the leading shoulder down through the hands to the club head, and I’ll expand a little.

For the irons and other clubs except the Driver, it’s pretty simple – get that Power Line going vertically from shoulder to club head either past impact or just at impact (say, with a 3 or 5 metal when the ball is teed up) and you’re pretty much assured to have generated maximum leverage and power into the ball.

With the Driver, it’s optimal to have that Power Line leaning slightly away from the target through impact, and I will show you all something that confirms why I’ve always been able to smash the ball, whichever way I was swinging.

Now, I have looked through my archives beginning in ’07 but the quality of camera (very slow shutter fps so the impact area is mostly blurred) and the angles the camera was set up pretty much make any attempt to capture impact impossible.

I got luck with 2010, which was incidentally the year I released my first MCS Golf Swing video, and in 2011 I purchased a camera with a higher fps speed than anything I’d had before, so we’ll start there:

DJ’s Power Lines 2010-12

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I wasn’t going to search through every day, so I picked random days and looked at the impact with the driver – ’10 and ’11 were pretty good and ’12 had too vertical a line for driver – but I still got the line through impact, which is where you get the power.

The angle of the line determines how close to optimal impact was, so I was nailing the Power Line even back then.

In ’13, I had left the Mike Austin school of swing modeling and you can see where I was in ’14, when I really got into studying Ben Hogan’s pivot action, then ’15, the first of my MCS Golf Swing videos based upon using Hogan’s pivot action.

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By 2016, I was just coming into my own with swinging the way I’d started to in ’15, and then in ’17 with the first use of an iPhone, the picture gets much clearer.

Again, nailing the Power Line:

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You’ve already seen my Power Line for 2022 in the previous post on the subject, so let’s end with the ’19 – ’21 impact pics for those particular years:

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So, you’ll see that I’ve always been able to capture that Power Line through impact, some closer to optimal than others, but the fact remains that I was using my athletic ability and intuition to get to this position because I had already played baseball in my younger days.

I instinctively knew the Power Line concept from having been in sports my entire youth, but the issue for me was the manner in which I was setting up to the ball (everything from ball position to grip), and exactly how I was pivoting to the top to begin the down swing.

In other words, I always knew the destination – my problem was from where to begin and how to get there, which has been the basis of my swing research lo these many years.

Now, I can take a glance at a swinger’s setup over the ball and pretty much tell what issues they are going to have once in motion, and whether or not they’ll be successful at achieving an impact Power Line before they’ve even moved.

And that’s because it all starts with the setup – even if you, as I did, have the knowledge of or instinct for creating that Power Line, how well you’ll be able to do it and how consistently you’ll be able to repeat that action time after time all depend on the integrity of your setup.

Modern Golf has a dual problem of having lost the free and full action of the hips and legs during the pivot, but with that, the setup has evolved to accommodate the restricted hip motion, thereby moving away from the optimal setup.

Tiger Woods is the poster child of someone knowing either by instruction or intuition the Power Line, but having a horrific setup from which to swing, because of his restricted hip Modern Golf Swing action:

Tiger Woods 2018

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Look at all of the compensations he’s had to make during the swing to get to that Power Line, which isn’t even optimal, being vertical – and how much his head has had to move from address to impact:

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You change the mechanics, you have to change the setup, and Jack Nicklaus shows why this Power Line:

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… is the optimal impact position for leverage and power production in the golf swing, especially the driver.

So, there is no mystery, magic nor any secret to the golf swing, much as the industry will have you believe.

The only magic is to be found in the optimal impact position, and get there by knowing how to create the Power Line in a consistent and repeatable swing action.