Topic: Ask Golf Guru - Golf Instruction / Alignment Secrets

This is not an alignment method, but it’s a way to check your alignment that I just read about and am going to try: After you think the clubhead is aligned, put the thick end of a tee against the clubface so it’s perpendicular to it. Then you can move the club, step around, and check where the tee is pointing.

Topic: Ask Golf Guru - Golf Instruction / Weight transfer problems

Here is what one novice feels:
At the top, the force in my feet feels pretty centered between my inner right rear foot and my inner left forefoot (provided I keep the shift out of my backswing).
As I begin the downswing, the movement generates a downward force into my right foot that presses it hard into the ground.
Sometime around contact, a little after perhaps, the right foot no longer feels like it’s sinking, it’s using that stored up energy to push my body through to the finish.

Topic: Ask Golf Guru - Golf Instruction / Right armpit. Open or closed?

Burner nailed it, I think, but this exercise from Titleist Performance Institute might be useful.

http://www.mytpi.com/mytpi0...

Topic: Ask Golf Guru - Golf Instruction / Driver swing?:

I am not a fan of an active wrist cock. The left wrist cocks as the right arm bends. If it bends too soon you lose the left arm radius – as the chap shows in his video- and that is not a great thing to contend with as now you have to straighten it in your downswing.

Topic: Ask Golf Guru - Golf Instruction / Swingplane

Thanks for that video. Very helpful.

Topic: Ask Golf Guru - Golf Instruction / Left wrist at impact

What were Hogan’s left side issues that caused him to need an arch?

Topic: Ask Golf Guru - Golf Instruction / keeping club face square through impact

Jeff, Hogan reminded me of that hip motion, but I’m sure I learned about if from you. Thanks.

jarrod, keeping the elbow relaxed is not something I’ve seen emphasized on this forum, and I know some teachers even say to lead the downswing with the right elbow. My teacher says that if I lead with my elbow, I pull the club into my body and shorten my swing arc. He says instead to take the hands back and out by uncocking the elbow (NOT uncocking the hand, of course), widening the swing arc. The elbow is supposed to be a sort of pivot point, always pointing to the ground. He also says if the elbow or any part of the arm or shoulder is flexed, it will not be as able to transmit power into the ball. This has been true in my experience.

Topic: Ask Golf Guru - Golf Instruction / keeping club face square through impact

Thanks for the confirmation, Guru. I have to admit, my teacher has told me a million times not to pull with the elbow, but rather to take it back away from the target, but I have never understood what he meant the way I do now. It’s getting to be more and more fun.

Topic: Ask Golf Guru - Golf Instruction / keeping club face square through impact

Jeffmann.
pretty easy to explain,grabb a club jump in front of the mirror, get into back swing position, simply stay static, set your right arm inside your right hip, watch your body, tilt as you do this.
As the club loads this creates the stretch we speak about and the body fires pretty simple.

I performed your experiment multiple times – I brought my right elbow down to the right hip area in a simulated downswing action, and my body doesn’t tilt. It only tilts if I want it to tilt – by moving my pelvis left-laterally at the same time as I start to bring my right elbow downwards.

I just caught up on this thread. Jeff, try it again. I believe the way Bio expressed it was misleading. Get to the top, then begin to straighten your right elbow. Don’t pull your right elbow into your hip, that doesn’t work. Keep your right elbow in position, and uncock your right elbow, reaching back away from the target. When I do that, my hips pivot.

I hope you and others will keep discussing this. It’s a fascinating question for me at this point. Over the last few days at the practice range, I’d found that if I start the downswing by turning my left hip, and move my right hip down the line rather than around, my layoff happens naturally and things are good and powerful (very good for me to focus on because my pivot sucked). Today at the range, I noticed that I wasn’t really leading with my hips anymore, it was all just smooth, like the arms reach back at the same time the hips move. So I consciously thought to lead with the hips, but I kept forgetting to do it because it really felt better the new way. Then I get home and catch up on this thread, and discover the hands can lead the pivot. My personal experience so far is that it’s simultaneous. The feel to me is that the hands reach back at the same time the hips pivot, creating a big stretch, and then it all just unloads pretty effortlessly. So, for all that fuss in various threads about pivot controlled hands or hands controlled pivot, can it just be that they blend together? (I’m not knocking the feeling that awareness of the hands is critical, as the TGMers have emphasized.) Thanks for any comments.

Topic: Ask Golf Guru - Golf Instruction / Ben Hogan

Homer says, if you are shaft and body oriented this is how it will feel, inside loopy. If you are shaft and plane line oriented it would feel straight back and straight down the line.

Guru, I will go back over the drills in the articles.

Topic: Ask Golf Guru - Golf Instruction / Head movements

Eventually, Jeff, I know I’m going to make a serious effort with your stuff, instead of just reading what’s around the Hogan photos. What a tremendous gift to put it all out there for us. Thanks.

Topic: Ask Golf Guru - Golf Instruction / Head movements

Bomster, I’ve been afraid to really read JeffMann’s articles, in case they are not correct but the intellectual effort gets ideas into my head that could screw up my swing. Sorry, Jeff! However, for those of us who are learning as adults, whatever works to get us to discover what a good swing feels like is very good. Once we make that discovery, then we can stop thinking and groove the pattern, hands bleeding and all. I’ve read that children’s brains are adapted to copy movement patterns that they observe, but adults have lost that functionality and have to go through a relatively laborious intellectual process. It is cool to have a playing pro posting here… to be able to hear what it’s like from your perspective.

Topic: Ask Golf Guru - Golf Instruction / Ben Hogan

Very few can read, duplicate and apply so it was hard to get help with what he said. Who to blame; our English teachers perhaps.

If you use your own common sense you will get nowhere unless you are very lucky. Do Hogans plane and hand work with his welded arms drill and you could not miss. It could take more time than most are prepared to spend.

Perhaps because I’ve not been out to one of your ISG fun days for a personal demo, the concepts of plane in Guru’s articles do not resonate with me as well as Hogan’s. That tilted plane on the downswing, which I don’t remember seeing anywhere else, does the trick for me.

Unless we take total responsibility for our swing development we can keep blaming some one else.

Thanks for the responses.

Topic: Ask Golf Guru - Golf Instruction / Ben Hogan

Since its release in 1957 or thereabouts Hogan’s modern fundamentals must have sold squillions of copies. And if my observations are anything to go by, destroyed thousands of swings. Is there anybody out there who has benefited from this book? I’d be interested to hear comments/experiences from the swing fanatics of this excellent forum.

Cheers,

PC

I found this thread in the archives. I don’t understand the negative reaction to Hogan that was expressed here, although I’ve heard it at the driving range on occasion, also. (At least Dart supported him.)

I read Five Lessons at about the same time I first picked up a golf club, and I didn’t see much use in it. Seemed too mechanical. I’ve spent the last year and a half taking lessons from someone who’s a Hogan disciple, who told me Ben said he put everything important in the book in as simple words as he could; that it was geared for the average guy, but the best players could find everything they need if they read carefully. So I reread it, and it makes terrific sense to me now. It clarified several things for me, and I went out to the range and found my best swing ever. Is it only me, because I’ve been personally coached from this same viewpoint? What is it about this swing that makes people say it’s outdated? Or say that it’s too difficult for mere mortals? I agree that it’s very counter to instincts, but isn’t that true of any good golf swing, until you retrain your instincts?

Topic: Ask Golf Guru - Golf Instruction / Toolish - Journey to scratch (I hope!)

Toolish, you might want to check out the Geoff Mangum website/book that Burner mentioned somewhere recently. He uses the findings of brain research to analytically explain why putting is best done non-analytically. (I’m an engineer too.)

Topic: Ask Golf Guru - Golf Instruction / Anyone heard of the "drop and pop" swing method?

I have seen it. Its a gimmick.
He says you should DROP the club on the inside, wait until the club head is a foot or so from the ball and then POP with your hands as hard as you can.

and its as simple as that. Drop the club from the top of your swing, let gravity swing the club and the longer you wait to POP, the better. IF you can do it an inch from the ball like he does, you too can hit it 400 yards.

Topic: Ask Golf Guru - Golf Instruction / Feeling from Mechanics

Spike, you have turned on a thousand lightbulbs for me. Thanks.

Topic: Ask Golf Guru - Golf Instruction / Putting Grip

I got Geoff Mangum’s book. Wow.

Topic: Ask Golf Guru - Golf Instruction / Hitting the Ball Thin

Thanks again, Burner. Good reminder.

Topic: Ask Golf Guru - Golf Instruction / Putting Grip

http://puttingzone.com/

Topic: Ask Golf Guru - Golf Instruction / Feeling from Mechanics

You observe yourself, or have someone helping to observe you, doing a planned specific set of motions. When you can do the motions by thinking about them, you can also perceive how the process feels.

Topic: Ask Golf Guru - Golf Instruction / Bio Mechanics

Laney

Do you really think that one judge dynamic force from a photo? I can understand someone estimating static force (static weight distribution) from a photo, but I cannot fathom how one can make rational judgments about dynamic loading from viewing a static photo position.

Jeff.

I was thinking of static forces in the last photo. Just musing out loud, Jeff. I’m not in your league.

Topic: Ask Golf Guru - Golf Instruction / Bio Mechanics

When I look at the 3 Hogan photos (link bookmarked, thank you), I notice that his head is to the right of his spine at address. In the final picture, his head hasn’t moved. It looks to me as though more of his body weight (hip area) has rotated left, generating a strong downward force through his left leg, with a lesser force down through the right leg.

Topic: Ask Golf Guru - Golf Instruction / Toolish - Journey to scratch (I hope!)

Have a rummage around in here. Geoff Mangum has some interesting views on Peltz and his “research”.

Topic: Ask Golf Guru - Golf Instruction / left shoulder swing center?

The diagram titled “The Machine” on p. 10 of the 7th edition shows the TGM view succinctly. Vertical hinge pin at the spine, angled hinge pin at the shoulder.