Sometimes, when I want to torture myself (because I really hate looking at swings and swing models that aren’t optimal), I will go back and look at how I was swinging in the early years of my swing research, and today I decided to go back to 2011.

It was the year after my first MCS swing video and I was working on the second one that I would release the following winter (MCS 2.0), and while the swing was mechanically-correct, there were some issues good and bad that I’d like to point out.

First, you all know that I had spent a lifetime in sports (my first memories of such are nearly winning the school decathlon in the first grade – runner-up, and playing league footy  or soccer in the summer following the second grade).

From there, I moved on to organized baseball, hockey, basketball and finally track & field in the years between then and the end of high school, and I mention this because I’ll point something out later in this post.

Let’s take a look first at my swing back in September 2011, which interestingly, had a flight time of over 8 seconds, so it was absolutely hammered (watch the fellow in the back watching my every swing, as you’ll see from another slow-mo swing later):

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I’m not fibbing when I assert that I was always able to smash the ball (my first year taking lessons, I reached a 550 yard par 5 hole in two with driver and 5 iron, and also drove through a 325 par 4 hole with a 3 wood off the tee), so that’s not really a big surprise to look back and see this.

For me, the issue was never power but accuracy and repeatability – the whole consistency thing, because no matter how long you are, you can’t play good golf without a repeatable and consistent swing.

In slow motion:

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Let’s take a look at the issues, now.

First, my setup wasn’t “Leaning A,” because I had no idea at the time that this was the optimal setup to use:

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The Bad – The spine was nearly completely vertical, which made my head a little too far to the center, but aside from that, excellent ball position and just a strong-ish grip – everything looked pretty decent aside from the spine angle.

Not exactly bad, but certainly not optimal.

Here’s why – take a look at this below, and you’ll see where my athletic experience and instinct take over during the swing:

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Even with that address, position, I arrived at a near-perfect impact position:

• Weight into the leading foot at impact,
• Head over the trailing knee,
• Spine tilted well away from the target,
• Backward-leaning shaft at impact for the driver and
• The short-stop slide release of the trailing foot to finish balanced on the leading foot

The reason I had a great impact position was that, having played at least one swinging sport (baseball), I had learned instinctively where you have to be at impact, and I applied that to the golf swing without anyone ever having taught me this.

Not only that, my sports experience also taught me the importance of the stable head on the back pivot, and so while I wasn’t optimal in the setup, I still was able to pivot and swing “in the box,” with no lateral moves:

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The un-optimal part of this all was that I had to perform what I used to call the “Trebuchet Drop” with my head falling back slightly away from the address spot on the down swing.

I achieved the “Leaning A” impact this way:

• The pivot is a Classic Golf Swing pivot, so I still get a full hip turn without having to twist the lower back or reverse-pivot,
• The head drops back on the down swing and
• The hips have shifted toward the target on the down swing and together, they create the required backward spine tilt at impact.

Not one bit of this was conscious – it was all hand-eye coordination and athletic experience, and I had no idea I was even performing that “Trebuchet Drop” on the down swing until I looked at the video.

So, I could hammer the ball and even hit it pretty straight but under pressure or a loss of focus on the course, disaster was waiting around every corner.

It wasn’t until around 2014, when I had left the Mike Austin school of swing the previous year, that I began to put 2 and 2 together:

“If the head should remain stable and you want a ‘Leaning A’ position at impact, then the proper setup is also a ‘Leaning A’ position.”

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Let’s face it – I wouldn’t have bombed the ball nearly from the start of my golf life without injury if I couldn’t get that proper impact position.

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Here I am in 1998 with a 3 wood, again with the vertical spine position at address, but look at the impact position:

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But again, power and distance but lacking consistency and repeatability.

I find that golf instruction doesn’t place enough emphasis on the correct impact position and the matching setup – it all begins and ends with the setup, and no matter how well you swing or how much power you create at impact, you will struggle with performance if you don’t nail that setup.