“From 3 O’Clock To The Top” sounds kind of like a 50s rock song, but whatever – this is the second part of the back swing after the initial move, and you will see that, once again, it is mostly lower body action.
There is the right arm action of course, which is the only major action in the upper body as you lift the hands to the top, but look how stable the head is, the upper body in general, and how it’s the lower body driving the pivot move.
Byron Nelson’s only swing “flaw” if I were to call it that, was the shifting of his head on the back swing, although it is related to what I was talking about in yesterday’s posting, so it was really not a “flaw” but a compensation to avoid shanking the ball.
I have said before that “restricted hips means ‘shank!'” and for the same reason – when you swing with the hips and legs, you will tend to shift forward (to the left) and therefore you will come into the ball early – welcome to Hosel City.
I slipped out to the range today for an hour to hit some balls, to see how things would go after having practiced my setup procedure for a few days.
I had just gone out to get some exercise and make some full swings, but I predicted late last winter that I’d be increasing my numbers with the tighter pivot that I had worked on.
There was one thing, way back even before I began my swing research, that was particularly fascinating about Ben Hogan’s swing.
There was a liquid smoothness to his irons that you just don’t see nowadays, and it was only after years of looking at swings of every sort that I realized what it was – it was the effortless swing action that is produced by position and the pivot, and by position, I mean the address.
I always like to get a rough indicator of hang time when I launch them especially high and long (and only ever when on line, because who cares low long it flies if it’s going OB?).
So I knew something was going on today when I got home with video.
You all know that one of my pet peeves on golf swing analysis is the ridiculous “using the ground” excuse the analysts use when they simply have no clue what’s going on and still want to sound knowledgeable about what you’re seeing on your screen.
Simply, launching one or both feet into the air while swinging a golf club does nothing to add speed or power, rather it is an anti-injury move because the swinger is either not using a proper weight shift to the leading foot and/or doesn’t want to damage the leading leg or hip.
TargetTom had never seen the Ben Hogan swing shown below in the gif., so I told him I’m write a post about it.
People don’t realize that Ben Hogan was actually a very athletic man before his near-fatal car wreck.
Good Sunday morning, friends.
There’s something about which I wrote recently that I must revisit.
I will tell you all why I was so enthused about Brandel Chamblee’s soon-to-be-released book on the golf swing, “Anatomy of Greatness.”
I had posted earlier that although I’d always heard Steve Elkington had a great golf swing, I hadn’t yet conducted my swing research the last time I saw him swing.
So I wouldn’t have known the difference between a classic versus modern golf swing.
Then, when I finally got around to looking at Elk’s swing – oh yeah, not only a great swing, it’s of course a classic era golf swing.
The most difficult part of making the “Kinesiology of the MCS Golf Swing” video has been a matter of, where to start, and how to go about it.
So many things that I’ve covered in ten years of swing research and eight years of blogging, I actually had a writer’s block of sorts on what to begin with and how to get through the material.
