Everything in an athletic model of motion is designed to deliver optimal performance, this we know.
Broken down into micro, it’s all about leverage, and how best to produce said leverage in motion, whether it be throwing, running or swinging.
My readers who were here during 2018 will remember the numbers I worked on compiling with some trips to TGX Golf lab to show how powerful a leveraged swing could be, even at the age of 48 (which I was at the time).
Back then, I presented some driving stats which showed how a positive attack angle, optimal launch angle & spin rate could get a lot more out of a swing than one without those metrics.
Note: This isn’t a posting attacking or bashing BDC, just a discussion on technique vs strength.
We’ve all been inundated with the exploits of a certain golfer who has been hitting 190+ mph ball speeds on the PGA Tour after going on a weight lifting & eating regime, making some swing changes (for the better) & of course, picking up an er… helpful driver…
I’m not going to spend a lot of time on these swings as I still have a change to make (hopefully just the one), at which time I’ll definitely want to discuss every aspect in full detail!
For now, here are slo mo gifs of the driver swing from the two angles I shot on Tuesday, down the line and face-on.
I was looking at the swing arc tracer gif. of Mike Dunaway (produced for me by an old friend & reader JM) and I noticed for the first time something I’ve never seen before on a swing arc.
Although the back swing arc is different from the down swing arc (due to the weight shift in both directions, you will see something about the entire arc if you pay attention: Continue reading
I wrote a post about Mike Dunaway’s “Figure 7” leverage last year and just want to expand slightly on the what and why of how it is so powerful in creating that leverage.
The reason is because the body and legs especially are so much more powerful than the arms.
I said I would give everyone a chance to just look at the down the line swing action of Mike Dunaway’s superb mechanics, so let’s take a look at the longest driver of the ball on Tour, young Cameron Champ.
Now, there are more differences in their swings than similarities, which is why Dunaway never hurt himself swinging the club while Cameron’s had back issues since his teens.
Those of you who have been around for a while know of my interest in the Dunaway pivot, mainly how he was able to have such a low trailing heel on the back swing.
I like to use Ben Hogan’s pivot move to illustrate the perfect pivot action for a reason – he didn’t have the “move off the ball” action with the head, and his head stayed in place on the pivot, leading me to coin the phrase “floating pivot.”
This stable head allowed him to strike the ball with unearthly accuracy (he complained about playing 36 holes per day in some events because he sometimes drove his ball off a tee in the afternoon and ended up in the morning’s tee shot divot).
This is not, I will say off the bat, any comparison between skill level or ability – people are always confusing swing technique versus the overall game or ability of a swinger and the two are not the same.
I have been looking at Cameron Champ’s down swing to impact however and have compared it to Brooks Koepka’s and this is the thing:
