It is now becoming evident to me that, out of all of the issues that people investigate with regards to swing modelling (ball position, stance, etc.), the grip is most overlooked part of it all.
I have spent years believing simply because he set the standard over a century ago that Harry Vardon’s grip was the correct one to employ.
I found a swing from a session back in July of 2021 and am looking forward to comparing how my mechanical action looks down the line in comparison to now.
I’ve made the complete transition to a right-dominant throwing action and, although the swing below is a very passable action, driving the ball past 300 yards, it was still very “pulling” with the left arm.
I have talked about how rotation is the enemy of gravity, and for some this may seem strange, as the popular opinion is that one must rotate in the golf swing.
That opinion is wrong, mechanically-speaking, and I’ll show you an example in the extreme to illustrate the difference between a proper rotation around the supporting leg over rotating in place during a swing.
If this analogy works for anyone, consider the moment of impact in the golf swing as the moment a door swings closed.
At impact, the door has swung shut, so one must ask oneself, “from which point is the door shutting?”
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 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.
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 