We already know that Mike Dunaway was a powerful individual, as he had played football before an injury led him to turn to golf.  So, he was always going to be a long hitter given he had sound technique.

The answer to the mystery of his prodigious length however lies in that technique, the swing model he used.

It is very simple and straight-forward – his impact position couldn’t be any more powerful, as in his down swing, he impacted the ball with both feet flat, and while in a “Leaning A” position:

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He brought together everything you need when you start down from the top of the back pivot – there was the weight transfer to the leading foot, but the nature of his top position allowed him fully leveraging down to impact without losing contact with the ground.

I’ve already stated that Mike Dunaway was the one who “used the ground” in his golf swing, not the guys jumping, twisting and flopping all over the place.

We don’t hear that phrase often now, as it was used in the late 2010s and annoyed me to no end – if you aren’t connected to the ground with the leading foot:

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… how exactly are you using it?

You aren’t, is the answer – it was a phrase invented by the television announcers who were trying to explain why golfers’ leading feet were flying around, and they went from “using the ground” to “vertical lift,” when I have already shown that the most famous swingers with the Flying Foot Syndrome had very low angles of upward attack with the driver.

Meanwhile, I could generate over 12 degrees of launch angle with 8 degree drivers with a perfectly planted leading foot at impact:

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That, my friends, is “vertical lift” and it comes from the club head’s attack angle into the ball, not from jumping around.

The Flying Foot is to keep swingers who keep their trailing foot anchored through the entire swing and/or who are spinning in place like a top through impact:

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It doesn’t add power or speed, it’s an anti-destruction move to keep one from snapping in half.

No, the most powerful impact position is the one with both feet on the ground, and you can certainly generate good power with an impact position that has the trailing heel raised at impact:

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… but the more contact you have with the ground as the hips are turning to the target (the driver of leverage is the hip shift and turn from the top), the more leverage you will have through the swing bottom.

The key as well is to not deliberately be trying to keep the trailing heel down (I’ve tried this) – that is interfering with natural body motion – you need to be set up and swing in a way that allows you to get to impact with both feet flat.

I will try my best to disprove this theory myself when I get back outside, because I can now swing in the Classic Golf Swing style and should be able to swing with Dunaway’s model when I get back to hitting balls.

I still have the Swing Caddie SC300i portable launch monitor and of course the simulator at Tracer Golf, and I’ll be switching back and forth between swing models to see what the numbers say about club impact and ball speed.

A theory can’t really be proven, only disproven, but the more one tries to disprove a theory, the more likely what the theory states is to be true.

So, let’s see if that was the source of Dunaway’s extra leverage that allowed him to achieve long drive club speeds and distances with a very short-looking swing.