I’ve broken that long iron swing of Jack Nicklaus’ from yesterday’s post down into the 2 separate components of the back pivot (loading the trebuchet) and the down swing weight shift (leveraging the trebuchet).
This weekend, you’ll be able to watch all you want of today’s pro players contorting themselves trying to generate power from every wrong way, and you can compare them to Nicklaus’ weight shift leveraging his power effortlessly.
Once you see the “vertical” nature of the swing, as I said I only see “up” or “down” with the swing action, you will spot it in technically superb swing actions.
Jack Nicklaus, at times, came so close to the optimal swing action, it’s why he was able to win 18 majors and snag 19 runner-up finishes (that’s 37 Top 2 finishes in majors, something you’ll never see again).
I have to conclude that the real reason no one has ever mastered the true intricacies of the swing model known as the “Austin/Dunaway” is not because it’s too complicated or difficult to learn.
It is simply, in my view, that it wasn’t explained in a way that people could relate to it.
Shot on July 20th, 2018 – I’d give this swing a C+ grade, as I have since fixed the grip (it wasn’t standard neutral here) and of course I’ve done yeoman’s work in optimizing my stance, back pivot and downswing.
I was chagrined at the time that I was only able to shoot video that day at 30 fps – my up-to-400 fps camera had broken and I hadn’t yet sprung for an iPhone to make the need of a camera obsolete going forward.
I’d like to thank M.L. for emailing me the link to the George Knudson swing highlights that I’ve never seen before.
The quality is amazing and I immediately could see so much more clearly just how MCS his swing was.
It doesn’t matter that the swing action most people associate with Moe Norman is the quirky, arm-out half-swing from his later years.
He had a more traditional-looking swing when he made his name in the game of golf, winning 2 Canadian Amateur titles which then earned him a berth at the Masters two years running in the 1950s.
This is the concept that the Iron Byron uses, or any other hitting or swinging machine.
The Iron Byron does not “swing at the ball,” rather it just swings the club attached to its arm and the ball simply gets in the way.
If you’re wondering why it’s so difficult to properly apply gravity in your down swing, then it’s likely because you’re interfering with it due to rotation, which is the true enemy of the so-called “gravity drop.”
Many people are not actually aware of what a proper “release” is in a mechanically-proper golf swing.
You can blame modern instruction and television analysts.
Most of those people are stuck in the visual of the “hold-off” release where the arms and hands continue to move as if to “push” the club through impact and to throw the club “at the target.”
Let’s discuss the concept of Leverage, Levers & how to produce optimal leverage in a golf swing.
Below, you see the picture of a swing model using the 3 Levers, a static “At Address” pose:
