Both Jack Nicklaus and Ben Hogan had a setup that was considered “the same for all clubs,” and that is the way you want to swing as well.
I’ve been saying forever now that you want to setup more like Nicklaus did (I don’t think he invented the setup, but as the G.O.A.T., we’ll just call it the “Nicklaus” setup), and that you want Hogan’s pivot action.
The old-timers here will know very well of my forays into studying left and right-dominant swinging – it came about because I discovered back in 2022 that I was swinging left-dominant, and how it had caused several problems with consistency.
They’ll all remember as well my trip down the right-dominant rabbit hole, looking at Mike Dunaway’s swing model, which is the most powerful swing I’ve ever seen, mechanically.
If you were to ask me what my greatest breakthrough was in studying and analyzing golf swings (and building swing models), I would have to point to the day I figured out Ben Hogan’s pivot action.
Hogan himself stated that the proper pivot was a whole-body motion and didn’t separate the upper and lower bodies.
I am still finding nuggets in my previous swing videos to present in the upcoming video and, to be honest, it’s slow-going because there’s so much in those previous videos that the problem is not what to include, but what to leave out.
It is my goal to make this the simplest video I have ever made, because let’s face it – we’re talking about a golf swing, not rocket science.
One thing I have noticed with the Modern Golf Swing crowd is that they are either incredibly disingenuous when discussing proper swing fundamentals or incredibly dense.
I don’t believe so many people can be this stupid, so I have to conclude that there is a great deal of dishonesty required to be a Modern Golf Swing proponent.
It’s a pity Tom Weiskopf didn’t win more majors than the one U.S. Open that he bagged, because his golf swing has to be one of my top 5 to watch.
It was powerful and athletic, so mechanically-correct – and if you want to know how powerful, Jack Nicklaus said that the only golfer who could consistently out-drive him was Weiskopf.
Sometimes, when I want to torture myself (because I really hate looking at swings and swing models that aren’t optimal), I will go back and look at how I was swinging in the early years of my swing research, and today I decided to go back to 2011.
It was the year after my first MCS swing video and I was working on the second one that I would release the following winter (MCS 2.0), and while the swing was mechanically-correct, there were some issues good and bad that I’d like to point out.
Those of you who were around last winter will remember that I had been conducting research on the right-dominant swing model and that I had concluded around that time that I had already figured out the optimal golf swing model.
It is an ironic situation in which one may find oneself when realizing that one had actually accomplished one’s mission but lacked the knowledge or expertise at the time to actually recognize the accomplishment.
The answer is very simple – I don’t actually “squat” in my swing, as I’ve said for a long time that this position is merely a snapshot in a down swing where the weight is transferring from the trailing to the leading side.
It is useful to show positions in a swing, but useless to try to teach “swing by position,” because it occurs so quickly.
I don’t often see swings these days that take me back to the “good ol’ days” of when the Modern Golf Swing had only one major flaw – the nailing down of the leading foot on the back pivot.
For years, the trend has seen the Modern Gold Swing move ever further away from the fundamentals of the Classic Golf Swing, including the setup (largely due to back injuries, I’d wager) to that stilted, stacked and tilted horror show currently unfolding.
WAX Golf 