Sunday thoughts.
One thing that has struck me, since I began to unravel the mystery of the pivot action and since I have figured out the optimal grip (Classic neutral), has been how unnecessary and literally obsolete “tips” and “drills” have become.
This is, I suppose, because proper technique eliminates the need for little special things that you find all over YouTube and in magazines.
Most people who began playing golf in the 90’s or 00’s probably only know Johnny Miller from his days as an announcer on television.
On his best day in the 70’s, he was one of the best golfers on the planet, hands down.
He was the first tour player to shoot 63 in any round of a major, and he did it in the final round to win the ’73 US Open.
There was no post yesterday because I was working on something that came to fruition today.
It shouldn’t be a surprise what I said in the title because, let’s face it, the pivot is about how you move the hips and legs to make a back pivot.
I solved the pivot mystery without having hit a ball since May of last year.
What mystery is there to the pivot?
Those of you who are still here from the Mike Austin/Dunaway era of the blog (2009-13) may remember that, when I built the MCS Golf Swing model and had it essentially finished around 2015, I said that it was simply the Mike Austin swing model but with a stable head on the back pivot.
Here is the proof of that statement, because I am now doing what I didn’t have the technical insight to do 15 years ago – you’ll all recall that my blog began as the documentation of my search for the perfect golf swing (let’s say optimal now), and I was still learning even as we all discussed golf swing mechanics.
I deal with my title statement about other peoples’ swings, here is the thing about models.
From my experience in other sports like hockey, baseball, track & field, basketball etc., I know (outside of the golf world, apparently not so much inside it) that there is such a thing as kinesiology.
There is also a reason I am so harsh on the Modern Golf Swing and its proponents – they violate the principal tenets of kinesiology.
The main reason I didn’t choose Ben Hogan’s swing for the MCS model is that he was a feel swinger who practiced endlessly, and so his setup would vary almost day to day – he would get the feel of how he was swinging on a particular day and go with it.
That’s not going to breed consistency – Hogan could do so because he hit balls every day, every single day, when he wasn’t actually playing. Most of us can’t do that, and even if we could, we can simply avoid having to by building a consistent and repeatable setup over the ball.
Part of the reason this project is taking so long to complete is that I am still looking at things while I’m putting all of the components together.
I have in the past couple of days spent a good deal of time looking at the grip instruction in my previous videos, and finding them OK for showing the “standard neutral grip” that I have always advocated, but there’s something else I want to offer.
I’ve already highlighted in previous posts how people claiming to emulate Ben Hogan’s swing are so far from the goal, they’re not even in the stadium, first and foremost being the way Hogan set himself up to the ball with his various clubs.
We know that Hogan placed the ball on the exact same line from Driver to wedge, and that he adjusted his stance to angle himself from closed with the feet to wide open with the wedge, something that no one you have seen every does.
I’m likely going to have to start paying royalties to Ben Affleck for this picture, because every time I try to even enjoy watching something on YouTube, something invariably comes across my feed to make me react the same way.
This one is a beauty – you literally have to discount just about every great player in professional golf history to be this wrong about something, but hey, it’s the internet, so you know what’s going to happen.
I nearly deleted my YouTube account when I read that comment regarding the golf swing this week.
Now, let me preface the following observations by stating that I don’t care what this golfer or that golfer does, because we are talking about optimal with regards to mechanics here.
So, how do I make a statement that refutes this statement that there is no fixed fulcrum in the golf swing?
WAX Golf 