This video has over 300K views, so I’m sure there are a lot of confused golfers out there wondering why they’re blocking their ball dead right, banana-slicing it across three different fairways or pulling it clear out of the golf course.
Let me put this out there right now – I have played baseball, and I have played golf, and I struggled for so many years trying to swing a golf club properly because I had played baseball first.
Sometimes, when I want to torture myself (because I really hate looking at swings and swing models that aren’t optimal), I will go back and look at how I was swinging in the early years of my swing research, and today I decided to go back to 2011.
It was the year after my first MCS swing video and I was working on the second one that I would release the following winter (MCS 2.0), and while the swing was mechanically-correct, there were some issues good and bad that I’d like to point out.
Those of you who were around last winter will remember that I had been conducting research on the right-dominant swing model and that I had concluded around that time that I had already figured out the optimal golf swing model.
It is an ironic situation in which one may find oneself when realizing that one had actually accomplished one’s mission but lacked the knowledge or expertise at the time to actually recognize the accomplishment.
An up the line view of one of my driver swings from when I was shooting the “E = MCS” video back in 2017 shows how you can use the Ben Hogan “Perfect Pivot” to get great consistency in your golf swing.
I’ve said before that the golf swing isn’t really a rotary or “turning” motion, rather a pivot action and a down swing, where the hips and legs drive the swing and the turning of the hips are what rotate you to the finish.
I have been reviewing the vast quantity of swing clips that I shot with the assistance of The Welshman back in the spring of 2017 for the “E = MCS” swing video, and they truly have withstood the test of time, regardless of my earlier opinion.
One thing I love to look for (and I’m never disappointed on a good swing) is that shaft impact line and how the body and club interact with it when you watch a swing down the line.
There is one thing that essential to comprehend and to believe in, for one to achieve one’s utmost potential in swinging a golf club with both precision and power, and to swing “in the box,” with no lateral motion.
That thing, friends, is to comprehend and believe the golf swing effort is over at the swing bottom.
I used to say the “the swing is over at the bottom,” but that then conjures the image for many people that “the swing stops at the swing bottom,” as if swinging into a wall or impact bag.
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 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.
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.
There’s nothing wrong with helping people improve their golf swings.
It is a tad disingenuous however in my opinion to present old and established mechanics principles as new and a result of “the advent of new technologies in the sport,” which is an exact sentence from the article I just read.
Or worse – it means that these basic principles aren’t being taught to beginning golfers.
WAX Golf 