I was talking last week about the 3 pivot actions I’ve isolated, all of them related by having different hip and leg actions because of the subtle differences in setup and balance.
They all feature the “Leaning A” setup but it varies to produce the 3 different pivot types, but the variations are just the 3 major ones in a sequence of pivots from the traditional Classic Golf Swing (the first) to the 3rd, the “adjusted” Mike Dunaway type of pivot.
There was no post yesterday because I was working on something that came to fruition today.
It shouldn’t be a surprise what I said in the title because, let’s face it, the pivot is about how you move the hips and legs to make a back pivot.
I solved the pivot mystery without having hit a ball since May of last year.
What mystery is there to the pivot?
“Pivot Action” or “Golf Swing Model…” take your pick.
I am posting this historical narrative of my swing research journey from 2005 to today, so that late-comers to the blog can refer to this and yesterday’s posting to get up to speed on what my work has been about.
As for the title – it would be very ironic if I have, because I began this journey with the intention of figuring out the “perfect” golf swing if it didn’t already exist – and I thought it already did!
When I vowed to figure out the golf swing back on US Open Saturday back in 2005, I was in the Moe Norman camp for someone having the “perfect” golf swing. So, I spent two years studying and trying to replicate his swing action.
I deal with my title statement about other peoples’ swings, here is the thing about models.
From my experience in other sports like hockey, baseball, track & field, basketball etc., I know (outside of the golf world, apparently not so much inside it) that there is such a thing as kinesiology.
There is also a reason I am so harsh on the Modern Golf Swing and its proponents – they violate the principal tenets of kinesiology.
There are of course a million different ways in which someone can swing a golf club, but the focus on this blog has been on building a mechanically-correct and proper golf swing.
Even here however, as you can see with my exploration on different pivot actions over the years, there are variations you will find in swinging in a mechanically-correct manner.
I’ve been thinking that the “Late Hogan” pivot action needs a better name and, after investigating the similarities between that pivot and Mike Dunaway’s, I can confirm that the proper pivot action is a “Shift & Post” pivot.
You may think, “they don’t look anything alike,” and you’d be correct – they look different at a glance because of the differences between Ben Hogan’s and Mike Dunaway’s setups, and also their overall swing actions.
The main reason I didn’t choose Ben Hogan’s swing for the MCS model is that he was a feel swinger who practiced endlessly, and so his setup would vary almost day to day – he would get the feel of how he was swinging on a particular day and go with it.
That’s not going to breed consistency – Hogan could do so because he hit balls every day, every single day, when he wasn’t actually playing. Most of us can’t do that, and even if we could, we can simply avoid having to by building a consistent and repeatable setup over the ball.
Something I noticed instantly when I began to make practice back pivots, now that my shoulder is improving enough to do so, was the much flatter plane I have at the top compared to my previous, more typically Classic pivot style.
I began to look into it, wondering why I didn’t have much higher hands at the top the way I used to, a la Jack Nicklaus, but the flatter plane is actually a feature of the “Late Hogan” pivot action.
Earlier today, I posted about how I view the optimal swing to consist of the Jack Nicklaus setup with Ben Hogan’s pivot, and I mentioned Mike Dunaway as well.
I couldn’t remember exactly what I had named this gif., so I had to go searching for it month by month in my media archives, remembering that I had made it when I was producing the “MCS – Drop The Hammer” video in early 2017.
Now, the thing to remember with all of my waxing poetic about Ben Hogan’s pivot actions, especially what I call the “Late Hogan Pivot,” which is the one he used in 1953 (when he won 3 of 3 majors played), you simply can not exclude Jack Nicklaus from the conversation on swinging.
This is because the optimal setup closely mirrors the exact same setup that Jack Nicklaus recommended in his book “Golf My Way.”
WAX Golf 