It is absolutely unbelievable to me what I was seeing on YouTube before I took that week off blogging just to keep my sanity, and I’ve wondered before if we’re all just living in a really stupid simulation.
“Let’s just take all thought, reason and intelligence out of the golf swing world and see what happens…”
It appears that Modern Golf instruction consists of nothing but straw-men that they build just to knock over.
Now, I said I would stop focusing on everything wrong with what’s online and start to just keep the eye on the ball regarding the Classic Golf Swing, but it’s pretty hard to show what to do without contrasting it with what not to do.
So, let’s go back to an absolutely ridiculous proposition that one has to keep one’s weight on the left or leading side so that one doesn’t shift away from the target:
This above, my friends, isn’t even wrong. It’s just… stupid, or an outright fraud by someone who knows better, and I apologize, but I can’t find any kinder words to use here.
Now, keep in mind that this style of swinging was apparently the brainchild of Ben Hogan, since they never shut up about him.
Let me show you what this clip is claiming will happen if you pivot over the right side:
Here’s the problem – the swinger is set up with his weight already way to his left, so of course, to pivot to the top with his head over the right side, he would have to shift.
There lies either the stupidity or outright fraud, and you tell me which one it is, because it’s one or the other:
If you set up over the right side as you should be doing, you will have no shift whatsoever in any direction, and I’ll deliberately show you a 4 iron swing from 2015 when I was hitting balls at a 225-240 yard green – that is typically the distance at my range to the far green:
That’s about as hard as I could hit a 4 iron, so let’s see if I had any shift across the right hip line going to the top:
No shift whatsoever.
And where, pray tell, is my head at the top of the back pivot?
This isn’t even what I would call a great swing – I would do better now, but I wanted to show how even a swing that isn’t perfect, performed with a proper Classic Golf Swing pivot, doesn’t involve any lateral shift.
Using a proper setup position and performing the pivot using the hips and legs, you can swing as hard as you please and never have any fear of shifting laterally off the ball.
I can show the same with a driver:
DJ Swings Driver – 2018
Head over the right side at the top, no shift across the right hip line at any point in the back pivot.
I’m pretty sure Ben Hogan could to it too. Oh, yes… whose pivot was it that I took for my MCS model?
So, tell me what’s going on, people?
Do you have instructors out there that are so absolutely clueless that they shouldn’t be anywhere near a golf instructional facility, or are they perpetrating an absolute fraud on the unsuspecting students with this nonsense?
I’ll leave it up to you to decide for yourselves.
WAX Golf 
I think for the most part it’s fraud as I remember being told by someone who became a coach after not making it as a tour player that the pga teacher told the students basically “Just focus on making money”. But, at the same time I can’t see it all being fraud when it’s so common even for the professionals to swing in this unjust way.
Side note: Am I the only one who’s never used a stick? I see so many hacks practice with a stick in front of them on the ground and never understood it. You don’t swing in a straight line,and you don’t have sticks on the actual course.
Part of being able to hit the ball straight is being able to line up with your target line. I fail to see how using a stick teaches one how to do that.
I swing sticks. Don’t have any other use for them. 👍🏼
DJ,
With your right-side dominant setup, how is your weight distributed at address? Do you maintain a 50/50 balance between your feet and simply rotate while keeping your pressure distribution relatively even? Or do you start with significantly more pressure on your right side—say, around 80%—and maintain that until the transition?
Scott
You should be balanced, Scott. Having the weight on one or the other foot isn’t balanced and causes problems.
Right-biased means only that one’s head is to the right of center, but one’s weight should be balanced 👍🏼