I am waiting to see if I have recovered enough from my Frozen Shoulder to shoot new video to include in my June video project, but the good news is that I really don’t have to.
I have swings in my archive where I performed the pivot action exactly the way I would today, with the exception that I was swinging left-dominant at the time (which I alone can probably spot apart from a neutral swing action since it’s my own swing action), and I had a stronger grip than I would use today, but the pivot is the pivot.
If you like a smooth, athletic golf swing action with the optimal Classic Golf Swing mechanics, it would look essentially like my absolute favorite swings ever of mine, that I shot back in the spring of 2015.
As I said last year, I basically mastered the optimal pivot action but my other flaws (the left-dominance and grip) kept my swing from being what I might call close to perfect, but the pivot action and setup over the ball keep me watching these particular swings, over and over again, to the point that I can’t stand to watch any other swings I’ve ever recorded aside from my Late Hogan Pivot swings back in 2017.
Here is that action:
I might narrow the stance a tad, but that would only be due to the fact that I didn’t need a stance this wide, but aside from that, I keep coming back to this day (May 16, 2015) because the setup and pivot just mesmerize me, if you’ll forgive me saying something so self-praising.
It’s not that it’s me, it’s that I look at the setup and my brain says, “Bingo, there is your optimal setup,” after 20 years of research and analysis.
I used to work with a PGA of America teaching pro out in California whose setup over the ball back in 2016 I loved as well, although he also could have narrowed his stance and been just as good:
Jerry “BT” Crowell, January 2016
Even now, my only critique for this setup would have been to move his ball perhaps an inch or two at most closer to the target, and it would have been impossible to improve his setup – the wider stance can be an issue if one doesn’t know how to release the trailing foot with the hip turn through impact and the finish, but BT did it as well as I did myself.
He even told me after I had described how to perform the short-stop slide, “I made two swings and had it!”
Here is another drive from the same day that I shot the above drive, with a closer zoom:
Again, that setup just screams out to me when I watch the clips, and I was definitely hitting over 120 mph club speed (at 46 years of age) even though I wasn’t measuring my club impact speed – when you register 183 mph ball speed, you know that with perfect a Smash Factor of 1.5 you would have a minimum of 121.5 mph club impact speed with a legal driver:
183 mph Ball Speed – June 11, 2015
Bear in mind as well that this above swing was nearly a month later, and my swing action was already changing from May 16th because, for years, I was experimenting with adjustments to stance, ball position and pivot action – when you pass the correct turnoff and it’s not marked, you will only realize this after you’ve already passed it.
So, I hit a near-perfect pivot action back in May 2015, except I didn’t realize it at the time, and only now, looking back years later, can I tell you the day that I actually “had it” without knowing it.
Just as I didn’t realize that I had hit the Late Hogan Pivot action back in 2017 until I looked at it again years later when I watched a particular angle of Ben Hogan driving the ball at the Open Championship in 1953:
So, the point I am making in a roundabout way is that anyone can swing like this above because all it requires is the proper setup and then to know how to make this optimal pivot action.
As I also said previously, of the three pivot types I have isolated, they all follow the same pivot principle, just with slightly different setups, and I mean subtle setup changes that take me from the traditional Classic Golf Swing pivot all the way to the Post-Modern pivot.
I came up with a great pivot for my current video that features how to make the Late Hogan pivot action, and now I’ve devised a universal pivot exercise that works with all three pivots.
It not only teaches one the proper back pivot and down swing pivot but also how to make a tight, on-plane swing, and how to leverage the swing down from the top.
It is the sort of exercise that you could teach a six year old child wanting to learn how to swing a club, and once they learn the grip and setup complete with ball position, they are off to the races.
If that sounds incredible, remember that Jack Grout taught Jack Nicklaus his golf swing when Jack was ten years old – the Modern Golf Swing industry is a scam, my friends – it doesn’t take years and years of lessons to learn a proper golf swing.
It took me 20 years starting from scratch to figure out everything I know now, and if I had followed my own instruction on the grip, it would have taken ten, and that’s with having no one to show me what to do.
In fact, take that ten years and make it one – I started the “Ben Hogan Project” in the summer of 2015 after realizing that Hogan didn’t have a Modern Golf Swing as claimed, but a Classic one, and I this pivot in less than a year’s time.
And again, that was with no one giving my any help to do it. Less than a year from looking at Ben Hogan’s swing, I nailed this pivot action.
If you have the blueprint provided, especially with an exercise that shows you how to move your body from address to impact, you can learn the golf swing in days, start to finish.
That’s how simple a proper and optimal golf swing is – just as it takes a very short time to teach kids the basics of any sporting type motion – what follows next, with a good coach, is drilling and practice to perfect the motion.
If you have learned how to improve your swing with my MCS Golf Swing videos, hold onto your hats, WAX Nation – and I don’t say what I’m about to say to insult or belittle, because everyone comes to things in life with varying degrees of athleticism and aptitude – but I have to say, if you still can’t understand how to swing a golf club after trying this exercise, then it just may be that golf isn’t for you.
That isn’t a bad thing – I might love the idea of being an astrophysicist, but it doesn’t mean I have the math skills and aptitude to earn a PhD in the subject, however much it fascinates me.
My abilities lie elsewhere.
As Stewart Maiden (Bobby Jones’ instructor) was once heard asking a lady student in despair during a lesson, “Madam, must you play golf?”
But if you have no serious physical limitations – if you can walk, if you can balance on one foot (you won’t have to, but I’m talking about physical limitations), you’ll be able to make the hip and leg action to perform this pivot, and even if you have some mobility issues, if you can’t swing a club in the manner of this exercise, it may just be time to find another past-time.
Some may need assistance getting it completely down, but if you can’t perform this motion, I don’t know how else to teach someone a pivot in any easier way.
I say this with all seriousness – it is that easy.
You’ll find out soon!
More to come.
WAX Golf 