You are not dreaming if you have been thinking that this whole “flying foot syndrome” used to be considered a swing flaw.
I can show you a swing clip of a long-hitting (formerly named) Buy.com/Nationwide/Web.com (now Korn Ferry Tour) player who averaged 339.3 yards off the tee in 2003, and the comments regarding his footwork are very interesting.
I don’t know what it was that made me snap, but I have to constantly bite my tongue to not tell respected people in the golf industry that they don’t know what the hell they’re going on about.
It’s not that I’m afraid to, I just don’t like the road it goes down when you tell someone who is looked up to that they’re full of rubbish. Bruised egos and whatnot.
If you have been looking at repeat NCAA Div 1 Champion Matt Wolff’s swing, you’re sure to be distracted by his funky-looking back swing and top position, but when you look at the part that really matters, it’s pretty darned good.
I’ll show you his down swing after the club has reached the plane of a more orthodox-looking swing, and you can see an excellent “3 O’Clock” position (other than the high trailing heel, but that’s an optimal matter, not a mechanically-unsound one), and a pretty good impact:
I am betting you’re going to hear a lot of the “using the ground” and/or “vertical lift” nonsense this coming weekend during the television coverage at the Players Championship.
This of course refers to the insane rationalization the analysts are making trying to explain why certain swingers’ leading feet are flopping and flying all over the place through impact.
I have said – and will be showing in the upcoming “MCS – The Kinetic Chain” video – how you can create excellent positive Attack Angle (hitting “up” into the ball with the Driver) when you are properly set up with the MCS Golf Swing model.
That of course is how the modern driver is supposed to be utilized.
Today is a busy work day for me, so I’ll just offer a few thoughts as everyone gets ready for the season’s penultimate event, the BMW Championship.
I got an email from a WAX Golf reader who has experience in long driving and is very knowledgeable on biomechanics and the golf swing.
I asked a rhetorical question the other day if a baseball swing is “using the ground” in the same manner the Modern Golf Swing proponents say you get power by leaving the ground.
I also used a javelin throw – but silly me, it seems the the way you’re supposed to get power is by emulating the track & field event known as the shot put!
It never occurred to me to point out the simple proof of the “using the ground” fallacy you hear all the time in Modern Golf Swing analysis.
If you can find me another motion better than a baseball swing or javelin throw as an example of leveraging against the ground to swing or throw something, then I’d love to see it.
Another de-bunking here, as I heard a couple of times on the PGA Championship broadcast that players like Justin Thomas get “vertical lift” by having a high trailing heel and having the front foot leave the ground at impact.
Of course, I’ve made my view clear that I think the analysts on TV have no clue why a player does the “flying foot,” so you hear a lot of bunk concerning this.
I think it was Gary Koch, and I wish I had been recording yesterday’s Rd. 4 of the Players Championship when Danny Lee found water on the short par four 12th hole.
Basically, Lee hit it left into the water guarding the green, had to drop and made bogey on the hole that measured only 299 yards from the tee box.
