Sometimes, you realize that all of the blood, sweat and tears you think you wasted on a wrong path or seeming dead-end was actually producing something of worth.
You’ll recall my saying not too long ago that the reason I didn’t think the standard Classic Golf Swing, while an excellent model that worked for the likes of Sam Snead to Jack Nicklaus, was optimal because of the setup.
I’ve been going over the mechanics of my new model after having (hopefully) found my optimal setup for the address position.
I’ll be testing it all soon after the weekend and will answer the one question people may have about why I decided to take this route after so many years of swing research.
I’ll keep this short and sweet, but the specter of Mike Dunaway will not leave me alone – time and time again I’ve said “Aha, I’ve got him!” only to be proven wrong.
That could be about to change.
Mike Dunaway, you’ll recall, was a college American football player (I say American because I have European readers who call a different sport “football”), and I daresay he was a better athlete than I was.
This is actually a Part II of the previous post in which I discussed Will Zalatoris’ back surgery and other things.
I will admit something at the expense of my ego – I am far too proud and too stubborn, because I deluded myself into thinking I could swing the way everyone else swings, despite a fundamental and significant deformity in my spine.
He will miss the rest of the season having gone under the knife on his back, and we all know that once the surgeries begin…
You’ll recall my writing about him last year when he went down with the initial back woes and how I could show that the current “In The Know” characters were praising the same swing that broke his back not long before it happened.
Almost from the time I picked up a golf club, I could send the ball a good ways, even when I had no idea what I was doing.
Distance comes from speed and power.
Having played baseball among several sports as a youth, and having swung axes and sledgehammers from a young age living in the country and working on my father’s construction sites, I learned to utilize the Kinetic Chain quite effectively.
A report on the progress with my new “build it myself” golf swing model, and today I confirmed that my preferred and intuitive way to setup over the ball and also how to swing are on the right track.
I spent the session not trying to build the stance according to positions, but rather I just took a proper grip on the club and then set up to the ball based on what felt athletically correct.
I’ll use this post to clarify yesterday’s topic – in that people may have varying positions on the optimal placement of their own ball in the stance, and I’m working on how to identify one’s own.
The reason I’m searching for this answer is because I don’t agree with the conventional method of addressing the ball.
It will be glaringly obvious what this particular heresy of mine is if my next foray to Tracer Golf proves me correct and I make a permanent setup change in this regard.
You see, there is something about conventional golf insisting upon a certain aspect of the setup that has just never sat well with me, but only in the years of my pursuit of Moe Norman (circa 2005-08) did I myself depart from conventional thought.
I have said for years, based upon my own experience and seeing/hearing what golf “experts” have to say about athleticism in golf, that most of these people haven’t really ever played or excelled at any other sport.
Those of you who have followed my golf swing blogging for a certain number of years will remember that I came to this golf swing research already able to produce lots of speed & power.
WAX Golf 