I came across something today that is absolutely heart-breaking – I don’t know who this young lady is, but she is literally destroying her body in real time just swinging a golf club.
This is criminal behavior, teaching these golf swings to young and unsuspecting golfers – there is no way on this planet that an athlete this young should be falling to pieces just from the way they swing a golf club.
I came across a YouTube short of Xander Schauffele’s driver swing, which is pretty good as it really only has one flaw – but that flaw leads to another flaw, and then a required compensation to avoid injury.
While listening to the USGA narrator, I heard yet another Modern Golf Swing myth that I have been hearing and seeing for years, so let’s take a look at it, shall we?
Now that I’ve seen the light with regards to my own stubbornness in changing a faulty grip (for me, it was an over-strong right hand because I was swinging left-dominant and so was focused on the left hand to the detriment of the right), things are jumping out at me.
For example, Tiger Woods’ former swing coach Hank Haney made comments about Bryson DeChambeau’s struggles in the final round of this year’s Masters, where he started in 2nd place behind Rory McIlroy, briefly took the lead and then tumbled down the leaderboard as the round advanced.
I have used just about every type of grip method there is, except for the leading hand low method, which I reject out of hand because no one anywhere on the planet, when swinging an implement, does it with the leading hand below the trailing hand.
For that reason, I knew it wasn’t going to be a path to go down, just as I wouldn’t try hitting balls right-handed with an inverted left-handed club.
I keep going through swing clips that I’ve amassed in these years of swing research, and I can’t escape the nagging (and nearly maddening) reality that I had indeed figured out the optimal action for the golf swing ten years ago.
Notice that I said “optimal action,” which then leaves room for two things that I neglected to notice or fix, for the next seven years.
I’ve of course hit longer drives than the one in this video, but when I drive balls into the executive course or over the mounds guarding the green on one of the hole, I don’t get any distance feedback other than, “Well, that one was pretty long…”
I can gauge my distances with irons pretty well when there are flags and greens at which to shoot, but the driving, I’m at a disadvantage hitting balls unless I’m in a place with a Foresight or Trackman (and I don’t trust these completely, because many times they give me distances that are well short of what I know I can do on the course or range).
I keep coming back to it, and I keep seeing it – I had actually nailed the MCS Golf Swing setup – the likely optimal one, at least for myself, way back in 2015, which was the first year I had built a swing model not trying to copy anyone.
Sure, I of course had looked at the greatest swingers when studying their setups and swing actions, but when I actually got over the ball, I wasn’t trying to emulate Ben Hogan or Jack Nicklaus, Mike Austin or Dunaway – I was just getting over the ball and slamming it.
I haven’t invented anything with my work on the MCS Golf Swing models over the years – I spent the first part of my research looking only at the greatest swingers ever and compiling a list of things they did in common.
The first thing of course, was seeing that every great player in history when you talk of the absolute greatest swingers, used the Classic Golf Swing.
I talked the past week about the “Power Line,” which I call that straight line you can create from the joint of the leading shoulder down through the hands to the club head, and I’ll expand a little.
For the irons and other clubs except the Driver, it’s pretty simple – get that Power Line going vertically from shoulder to club head either past impact or just at impact (say, with a 3 or 5 metal when the ball is teed up) and you’re pretty much assured to have generated maximum leverage and power into the ball.
The reason so many people struggle to maximize their power with the golf swing is likely because they’re not set up in the proper manner in which to do so.
It is also a reason you’ll find all sorts of professional players who contort themselves coming into impact – they manage to get the power they want to generate, but at a cost to consistency and/or physical health.
WAX Golf 