No two people will ever look exactly alike swinging a golf swing, unless they are identical twins, I imagine.

However, I just decided on a whim to compare my 2015 driver setup from May of that year to Jack Nicklaus’ 1963 setup and to one of Rory McIlroy’s from the last couple of years, and the similarities are striking, especially since I had never tried to emulate either of them in my swinging.

Yes, I built the MCS Golf Swing model by studying Jack’s setup from a particular set from his instructional series:

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… but I also looked at Sam Snead’s, Ben Hogan’s, Byron Nelson’s… you get the picture:

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I of course never tried to emulate Rory’s swing as his is a largely Modern Golf Swing model, aside from the fleeting moments when he tinkered with a leading heel lift.

With the greats, I compared their setups face on and down the line, but today I wanted to simply compare the 2015 setup to Jack’s and Rory’s – you’ll remember that I wrote a while back that “Rory bombs it and his setup supports my theory.”

I’ve done this before, but let’s take another look.

First, 1963 Jack versus my setup:

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… shows some differences, such as Jack having a wider stance compared to mine, and the grip of course – it also looks as though Jack’s leaning to his left and I to my right, but when I adjust Jack’s stance width and transpose his weaker grip to my hands:

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… you would be hard-pressed to see much difference at all, aside from the hats being at slightly different angles and, because I was swinging left-dominant, a little straighter left arm than Jack’s.

Considering that I wasn’t even looking much at Jack’s setup after 2014, I pretty much had nailed his adjusted setup but for the grip.

If you want to know why I was hitting massive drives with up to 7-8 seconds of carry, just compare the two setups – what killed my consistency was the strong grip, especially when I really wanted to go after one – the hands would turn over and bam – disaster.

And lest you think that this swing is for younger people, as Jack was 23 years old at the time, I was 45 years old swinging like this:

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Moving on to a much older Jack, compared to my 2015 setup and superimposing his weaker grip to mine:

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Considering you’re looking at two different swingers (I’ve adjusted size so that we are the same height), pretty near to carbon copy except again for my straighter left arm, Jack’s slight narrower stance and his trailing foot being more squared than mine.

Now, our swings would have looked different even with nearly the same setup because I have determined that Ben Hogan’s “Perfect Pivot” action was unequaled, so I have always styled my pivot action (since 2014) after his.

Now, let’s compare a recent Rory McIlroy setup to mine from 2015, and why his setup tends to support my theory, other than the fact that my 2015 setup was so close to Jack Nicklaus’ adjusted setup:

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Give me Rory’s grip, narrow his stance a tad (his is obviously too wide for his physique, hence his lateral shifting back and forth) and move his ball position to off the left heel, and you’re pretty much in the same ballpark.

This is how close Rory is to being absolutely unbeatable – and don’t take my word for it –  if he adjusted his setup to more closely mirror Jack’s adjusted setup (narrow the stance, move the ball to where it should be), and he swung with a free hip turn and lifting leading heel… he’d have as much power if not more than what he has now, and so much more consistency that almost no one could keep up with him.

In my humble opinion, Jack’s Adjusted Setup combined with Ben Hogan’s “Perfect Pivot” action would be the optimal golf swing model, and that’s basically what I will be presenting in my upcoming MCS Golf Swing (Classic Golf Swing edition) video.