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.
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.
Now, this applies of course to all clubs, not just the driver, but I have found in my archives a swing session in which my setup and grip are nearly perfect with regards to swinging optimally.
Sadly, I am not enamored of the actual pivot action, but I was still hitting my irons and driver beautifully long and straight on this day of tinkering with my setup.
I have talked about how, when I began my golf swing research, I had chosen Moe Norman’s swing to study because of how it was always being called the “perfect swing.”
I have of course concluded that, while he could strike a ball nearly perfectly straight time after time, it wasn’t an optimal golf swing.
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 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 made mention of Jack’s grip a little while back and that I was still looking into it, and I believe I have just figured out what made him so powerful and yet so accurate simultaneously.
Take a look at his 1963 grip at a time where he was becoming dominant – he won six events that year and the only year in which he won more events was in 1973, video of which I’m trying to hunt down to look at his stance and grip for a comparison.
I should perhaps at the outset of this posting provide a caveat of sorts – when I say that Jack Nicklaus’ swing model was the closest I’ve seen to the optimal Classic Golf Swing, I mean a certain version.
His swing changed over the years with regards to his setup and sometimes it was not even a good one, let alone close to optimal – yes, even the Golden Bear strayed away from his principles at times, by his own admission.
WAX Golf 