I should perhaps at the outset of this posting provide a caveat of sorts – when I say that Jack Nicklaus’ swing model was the closest I’ve seen to the optimal Classic Golf Swing, I mean a certain version.
His swing changed over the years with regards to his setup and sometimes it was not even a good one, let alone close to optimal – yes, even the Golden Bear strayed away from his principles at times, by his own admission.
It’s probably not a coincidence that Jack Nicklaus was the greatest major champion of the PGA Tour’s history.
I say that because his swing model, out of all the greatest champions, was the most vertical – in fact, it was always pointed out how vertical it was, flying elbow and all.
That, in my opinion, was always his greatest strength and not a potential flaw, and I’ll explain.
For all of the analysis that has gone into Jack Nicklaus’ golf swing – that is, before the Modern Golf Swing madness took over the instruction world and all of the swings from Bobby Jones’ to Nicklaus’ disappeared forever from The Golf Channel – the engine driving his power was not properly looked into.
You hear about his power fade and how Nicklaus had the “flying elbow,” but what about his actual pivot action?
You’ll remember my looking at a particular Jack Nicklaus setup from back in the 60’s and how I declared it nearly optimal, except for the extra wide stance?
Well, don’t look now, but the more you compare certain things in setups of great swingers, the more you see how you should be doing it yourself.
If you need any proof that the Classic Golf Swing hip action provides enough power for even the modern game and equipment, look no further than Ian Woosnam and Patty Sheehan for the evidence.
I just wrote a post on Patty Sheehan’s great MCS-like swing action, but don’t forget the “Wee Welshman” Ian Woosnam, who was one of the longest drivers in the game in his day and who, standing just 5’4.5″ or 164 cm tall, was pound for pound the most powerful driver, period.
While working out the model I’ve been building of late, I fell across something that may have solved my issue of “head shift on the back swing or into the down swing, head shift at all or none” that has been on my mind.
First, does anyone remember how Jack Nicklaus used to get over the ball and, just before he began his backswing, he’d tilt his head to a certain spot and then swing?
I would like to show you all the driver swing of one Jack Nicklaus from the 1963 match against Sam Snead.
These are the only two golf swings from the PGA Tour that you should be looking at to begin with, in my humble opinion, if you want a golf swing that will give you everything from speed, distance, accuracy and consistency.
Words definitely matter when you’re speaking or writing about the swing, because if the diagram, picture or video were sufficient, we’d simply watch and implement, wouldn’t you agree?
In that regard, let’s just get rid of the word “shift” when it comes to the Classic Golf Swing, particularly the MCS version of it, because there is no “shift” in the optimal swing.
Thanks to BM for reminding me of the existence of overhead video showing Jack Nicklaus’ driver swing.
If you’re interested in Jack’s “Golf My Way” video, you can find it here on Youtube. The overhead part from which I took the below shots to make a couple of Gif.s is at 45:00 of the video.
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.
WAX Golf 