I’ve been talking about how I tightened up my pivot action and got a lot more pop in my down swing over the winter, and there’s a process you can follow to get the same results for those times you feel you really “got hold of one” with a swing.
I don’t like the process of trying to convey one’s “feels” to another, but for yourself, the “feels” are the key to your own swing.
Here’s what I saw when I went looking for Brooks Koepka’s 6 mph decrease in club head velocity between 18″ pre-impact to impact, and it should be plain to see for anyone who analyzes motion.
I’ve said before, been saying for years, actually, that when you squat into the address you will restrict hip turn, and when you restrict hip turn on the back swing, your hips will reach impact position before the upper body.
Note: I know what day today is, but this is not an April Fool’s posting.
I’ve been exploring the pivot since my rib injury left me unable to swing two-handed for most of the post-New Year winter, but as I said a few weeks back, there’s a silver lining to that cloud.
Unable to swing right-handed, I was swinging for a few weeks left-arm-only, which made me really focus on the relationship to the leading side and the hip action on the back pivot.
Have you noticed that so many athletes who excel or who have excelled in other sports tend to have much more athletic-looking swings than the ones who play the game for a living?
I saw a swing of Tony Romo’s on the PGA Tour’s Twitter feed, and there is some good stuff to look at there.
I caught sight of a great Sam Snead swing on Twitter today, and I have to tell you all, I could watch this man swing all day long and some nights to boot.
I’d say that Sam Snead has the best self-taught swing of all time. It would be hard to argue, because I would actually rate his swing as on par with Jack Nicklaus’ swing, just that Nicklaus had a better over-all game to go with the swing.
I love when something I see online sparks a “hmm” moment, making me go back to check what I’ve written about this thing or that – and I end up being validated.
I have talked extensively this past autumn and winter on the nature of “tight” when it comes to the pivot and top position before the transition, and I showed John Daly as an example of how one can have a tight position even when way past parallel at the top with the club shaft.
As I’ve been saying with regards to optimal technique for power production and accuracy/consistency, the tendency to turn toward the target during the down swing makes it very difficult to build a repeating swing without years and hours of practice and swinging.
Responding to longtime WAX Nation citizen Goose’s comment yesterday on the concept, here is the “Figure 7” that Mike Austin and Mike Dunaway used to explain the nature of the leading arm and leading side leverage.
I have said before that, even after I stopped trying to model the MCS Golf Swing after Mike Austin’s model, that there is still probably 90% commonality between his and Dunaway’s and the MCS models.
When I talk about the “swing angle,” I mean that you must get the arms, hands and club behind you with the tightest position possible for the most efficient leverage generation.
You can see how efficiently one is leveraging the club when looking at the trailing heel at impact, for example.
Thanks to everyone who emailed/messaged about the following news piece, as I hadn’t yet seen it when I began getting your forwards! Once again, WAX Golf readers are on the ball.
While the title actually says, “X-Factor Golf Swing Linked To Back Pain,” you can’t have pain without damage, and if you’re damaging your back doing something repeatedly over a period of years – you’re going to destroy it.
