I was doing my usual tour through YouTube yesterday and posted about how the art or knowledge of the natural swing has been lost – it’s even more than that – the Modern Golf Swing has evolved.
It seems to me that lesson of the X-Factor wrecking lower backs has been taken partially to heart by the Modern Golf Swing world, and the swing theory has evolved, or devolved, if you will – back to the days of Stack & Tilt.
It occurred to me, watching things come across my YouTube feed earlier in the morning, that the knowledge or art of natural swinging has been lost, and the culprit is clear.
You simply can’t make a mechanically-sound golf swing with the leading heel nailed down and the hip turn being restricted, so instead of solving a simple problem by removing it, people are getting further and further adrift from proper mechanics in trying to solve it.
If you don’t know who Lee Trevino was, then I blame the Modern Golf Swing world for forsaking all of the Classic Golf Swing greats who came before it, because that would be a real shame.
Trevino is another golfing legend from Texas, and he was so good in his prime that Ben Hogan didn’t trust anyone else to hit his prototype clubs when he was running the Ben Hogan golf club company.
I can show everyone here some swings viewed “up the line,” which illustrate how a proper, mechanically-sound golf swing does not have a heel spin with the leading foot, and it doesn’t matter how hard or fast you are swinging.
Part of the issue is that which also causes the “Flying Foot” in certain golfers – by anchoring the trailing foot to the ground at all costs, adjustments and compensations must be made.
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?
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’ve just uploaded some irons swings from the same date as the down the line swings I shot back in August of 2022.
Now, I had said that I loved the setup viewed down the line and the face-on, not so much – however, upon review, it’s not so much the setup that I didn’t love, rather the pivot action.
Of course, the old WAX Nation crew from the days of the Smash Golf blog and the DJ Watts Golf blog (I used to get bored of my sites and create new ones, but WAX Golf has been around since 2013) will remember this.
There are actually two pivot actions that I know of which are mechanically-correct – which one is optimal, I haven’t yet figured out, and each could be equally effective depending on the person using it.
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 