I spent year upon head-clanging year “pulling” my golf swing with the leading arm, and am just now getting comfortable with a purely trailing arm swing action.
I mentioned in my last post that I have set my swing aid to a difficulty setting that simply will not snap unless I’m swinging with a pure trailing arm motion.
The difference in speed and power production when you properly use leverage and gravity versus when you don’t, is massive.
The entire point of building an optimal setup from the ground up is to maximize the benefits of leverage and gravity, and that includes the grip, of course.
I’ve been working for the past few weeks on that conundrum (for many) – how do you start a golf swing with the setup being balanced in a certain way, with a back pivot which transitions to a weight shift into the down swing, all with a stable head position?
The answer to that question is that you can have any number of swing models that purport to solve this riddle, but that they do so using unsound mechanical principles that will a) make it very difficult to master such swings and play golf with consistency and/or b) cause injuries to the swinger ranging from joint damage and muscle/ligament strains all to the way to catastrophic spinal injuries.
I would love nothing more than to have figured out what made the old Classic Golf Swing grip so effective and to at the same time stick a dagger in the Modern Golf Swing instruction scam.
To wit: Imagine that the grip change from the old Classic era along with the restricted-hip pivot are why people have so much difficulty making a proper and athletic swing at the ball.
I have been discussing Jack Nicklaus’ 1963 setup, swing and grip for some time as you all know, and I concluded that his grip in this setup was optimal.
The question however would be, is it optimal, period? Or was it optimal because of the way he set up over the ball, and would a stronger grip than his work as well in a slightly different setup?
There’s been a lot of discussion lately about the announced golf ball rollback that will decrease the distance one is able to attain.
What hasn’t been discussed, and this is my personal prediction, is that golf swing injuries will likely increase with swingers going after the ball even harder than they have been, to try to retain their current distances.
I am tempted to say that if Jack Nicklaus had swung his entire career with just one adjustment to his 1963 swing model (narrowing the stance), he would likely have won everything under the sun much as Byron Nelson did before retiring in his prime.
Nelson, if you don’t know, had set the PGA Tour record for consecutive Tour wins (11) and wins in a single season (18), both in the 1945 season, at the end of which he retired to pursue his true love – farming.
I said a couple of years ago that I would tone down my aggressive rhetoric when discussing the Modern Golf Swing and all of its madness.
I am only human however and sometimes I just can’t sugarcoat my despair about how I regularly trip over incredible golf videos and articles, and by incredible I mean, I can’t believe what I’m watching and reading.
If you didn’t have The Golf Channel in the 90’s through the 00’s, you really have missed out.
I remember getting it on my cable package in ’97 and dropping it in 2016 when we cut the cord because it no longer offered value of any amount for me, but the first ten years I watched it, there was gold in them thar hills.
Bear in mind that there is a difference between the standard Classic Golf Swing and what I call the optimal Classic Golf Swing, and there will be two obvious differences between the two – the grip and the footwork.
Many people who play golf either pay little heed or none at all to the crucial element of footwork.
WAX Golf 