There is a problem with an “unquiet” swing, or one that uses a lot of little movements to perform the action.
I’m referring of course to compensations, the more of which you have, the harder it will be to make consistently good golf swings, especially under pressure.
There was one thing, way back even before I began my swing research, that was particularly fascinating about Ben Hogan’s swing.
There was a liquid smoothness to his irons that you just don’t see nowadays, and it was only after years of looking at swings of every sort that I realized what it was – it was the effortless swing action that is produced by position and the pivot, and by position, I mean the address.
I love Moe Norman. There were two swingers I looked at primarily in the first years of my swing research, and they were Ben Hogan and Moe.
That’s because of more than one reason – the first, being my 2nd and last swing instructor was a Hogan/Moe fan, and had build his own swing model that he taught, based on Hogan and Moe.
It’s not a new model, that ship has sailed.
The only model I will ever present is the current one, with the MCS standard right-biased address and the positions I’ve referenced within that stance.
It’s not really a mechanics change, as any pivot I perform with my golf swing is according to the mechanics I’ve laid out in the MCS Trilogy Series, so what am I working on?
The numbers in the above title are relevant ages – Sergio Garcia won the Dubai Desert Classic this past weekend, beating world heavyweight Henrik Stenson for his first Euro Tour victory in three years.
It was a wire-to-wire performance as well, and I’m sorry to have missed it – I was busy wrapping up the “MCS – Dropping The Hammer” video and couldn’t spare the time.
And my response is, yeah?
So what?
My return question would be, “Why doesn’t yours?”
Let me show you a really, really bad swinger, a guy who couldn’t win anything because he was always crossing the parallel line to the target line with his club shaft at the top:
OK my friends, I am still going to make a video explaining the action you will see in the below Jack Nicklaus back swing gif.
But you will see what I am talking about with regards to the Mike Dunaway-inspired wrist-cock move and how it relates to Nicklaus’ pivot move.
Part of the reason hardly anyone on Tour can drive it the way Jack Nicklaus did in his day (if you take persimmon and balata era drives that Jack hit, perhaps 2 or 3 players today could even come close when you factor in the equipment tech advancements since then, not to mention the run-out fairways that are quicker than yesteryear’s greens) is that he had a huge back swing.
Byron Nelson is the greatest ball-striker ever on the PGA Tour, though not many would know it or even remember his name as something other than the man for whom the “Iron Byron” golf swing machine is named.
I would ask anyone who says Byron Nelson wasn’t the greatest swinger ever, why did they name the machine after him? Tom Watson had said once that Byron hit at least two flag-sticks every round he played.
I have talked about the key to Ben Hogan’s swing being found in the pivot and not anything else he was doing, and there is one picture that you want to look if you’re trying to figure Hogan out.
There’s a before/after illustration of his swing, before and after his near-fatal car wreck in 1949.
