“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.
I’ve spent some time talking about the down swing with regards to the “Drop & Pop,” so I thought perhaps I’d go backwards from there to the most important part of the back swing pivot, which is the initial move.
Just as the tendency for something to go wrong in the down swing is the initial move, the “Drop” part of the “Drop & Pop,” the most crucial part of the back swing pivot and the “One Major Move” is the first part.
I received some quotes from Uncle JJ taken from Harvey Penick’s “Little Red Book” (20th Ed.), and I have to admit, just about every one of them would nail some MCS principle or concept.
I don’t think there are two better-known books about the golf swing than Hogan’s “Five Lessons” and the “Little Red Book.”
Especially interesting is the quote about the down swing you’ll see in there, which is pertinent to the down swing “Drop & Pop” treatment from earlier in the week.
**David D. sent me this Youtube clip…
How does he do that, when I’ve never met Dustin Johnson, who has likely never heard of DJ Watts or MCS Golf Swing theory?
Well, Dustin Johnson proves the MCS Theory by producing the same kind of ball speed numbers that I can – but he’s a 6’4″ PGA Tour player, ranked #1 in the world, and a far better athlete than I am!
targettom and David D. both sent me links to an article on Golf WRX regarding the golf swing and the back.
It’s written by Jim Alberry and asks, “If Your Golf Swing Hurting Your Back, Or Is Your Back Hurting Your Golf Swing?
He makes an excellent points regarding the lack of hip turn in many swings, but as to the title question, I’d answer the following:
This is more to encourage others who saw what he was doing, but If I were to have a conversation with Padraig Harrington, who is a vigorous 2 years younger than yours truly, I would tell him that not only can he “keep up with those young guys,” as he stated in a post-round interview during the Irish Open last weekend (right at the end of the clip), but he can motor right past them.
First of all, he’s an accomplished major winner (3 times), which means it’s not like just hitting the ball a long way is going to suddenly turn a journeyman into a major champion, though it may.
I have been doing more work on the “pressure plate” concept that I actually talked about in the very first video (“MCS – Ultimate Leverage”) of the model that has become the standard MCS Golf Swing Theory model.
Back then, it looked a lot simpler, but of course, it’s been nearly three years since I developed that model (two others being the one emulating Mike Austin’s swing theory, the other being the “New MCS” model of 2013), so the new concept will be far more sophisticated than the previous one.
**Updated At Bottom
It occurred to me that the whole idea of swinging with a lifting heel versus a “planted heel,” as I like to term it (deliberately pressing the leading foot into the ground so that the heel doesn’t lift) has become a tiresome debate.
This may be due to the fact that I don’t think a proper swing has anything to do with whether the heel lifts a lot, a moderate amount or even a minimal amount.
I hadn’t done this before, but I was shocked by what I found when I researched the standard weight of the Momentus Power Driver to compare it to the standard modern driver.
What I found was that it wasn’t just the head that weighs more – the entire Momentus driver has a mass of – are you ready for this? – 500 grams, which is actually more than one pound of weight!
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.
