Cool photos and good call. Miller intrigues me in regard to his release. He talks a lot about having the right palm facing down through impact yet looking at photos or footage he does go through there with what you guys call an angled hinge. I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on that. He talks like a hand closer but it doesn’t add up. Though as he got older it seems that maybe his hand intentions took over and he became quite erratic? Was he flatter with his shoulders through the zone when he was younger?
I still think one of the all time greatest wins was him at the AT&T that year- how that doesn’t get talked about I’ll never know. He looked terrified every time he had the putter in his hands… He is awesome in so many ways…
This kinda says it all…
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Here’s two good examples why flat works better than upright…
I have been hitting a bunch of balls of late doing this (just for fun) but also to prove to non believers that a flat shallow entry into the ball works far better than the chop from the top that gets down the line too much…so far I am 10 for 10… 10 knee swings…10 crushes dead straight with a 2-4 yard hint of draw approx 240 yards (frying pan…sorry!!)
Thought it would give a great look at 4.30 and shallow angle of attack…any steepness or over exaggerated hand action you will dump the club into the ground behind the ball and more than likely whiff it
Trevino almost has it that flat standing on his feet! Good stuff.
His whole aiming left and dropping it into the slot… hitting a block cut… kinda sets this whole thing up nicely.
There was some serious method to his madness… no doubt.
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Maybe flat is instinctive 
Gotta love this…first day @ the range yesterday and two youngsters in their early twenties come in to buy balls. One had a new bag full of brand new Adams’ stuff from Dick Sporting Goods- frying pans, hybrids, and all. His friend was holding three wood woods in his hand proudly proclaiming to the other that these were “his grandpa’s” and that they looked so good he wanted to try them out.
They both basically played out of the new bag of Adams’ gear- and both had very poor motions in the 25-30 handicap range, but often the one guy would give grandpa’s gear a go. As chance would have it, I happened to pass by them both on the tee line and during their discussion I overheard the one guy say…“I love my grandpa’s clubs, they are nice and flat.”
I stopped in my tracks, turned around, walked back and politely asked…“excuse me, what did you just say?”…
He told me that “flatter” to him was a lower flight trajectory…but then he added that his grandpa’s clubs made him feel that " I can get everything into it."
I said…“I think you may be on to something…by the way, do you know Lag?” He said…"who?’
Way to much for my rat brain to handle on opening day. RR
I think I’ve been working on this since I started to play golf. Not as a separate topic but more as a quest for a swing path and motions that work in harmony.
Here’s what I’ve landed on:
Open feet & hips at address. Slightly open shoulders as well. The arms swing on a steep plane, the club on a flat plane. I keep my hands out in front of me during the down swing, and the pivot brings them back in before impact. Although I feel a strong pull force in the leading hand at impact, it is basically a push stroke. The club is laid off and stays that way until the ball is gone. And I guess it can be argued that everything except the club head is aligned to swing out to left field.
I wasn’t aware of any of this. I basically thought everything was on plane 
Then I bought a plane tracing laser device to attach to the club. Surprise surprise. It looked really bad. The club was laid off big time. I’ve been trying a more conventional TGM pattern the last months, with on-plane right forearm at address etc. Swing speed is the same, but I get less thrust through the ball. But more important: The stroke turned into a timing lottery. I lost the feel for where the ball was going and distance control suffered big time. So now I’m back to my DIY stroke. But since I have been totally unable to produce an equally “right” feel with the club on plane I’ve come to peace with the laid-off thing. In fact, I am wondering whether it’s the laid-off that enables me to keep driving through impact without messing up the club face angle. I can’t drive as much if I don’t do it.
The geometry argument: I don’t buy the flat is straighter argument. I would expect that an upright swing would produce straighter shot everything else equal. Because hands too much or too little forward will influence trajectory height more, whilest a flatter plane will produce more horizontal effects with the same inaccuracies. Imagine putting with a horizontal or a vertical plane. Which is most likely to put the ball on the correct line? Ther’s a good reason most people prefer to have their eyes straight abofe the putting line.
But I believe that the swing mechanics - the ability to stay with the shot, to maintain the pull and the drive, through impact is far more important than the geometry itself.
PS: I have quite similar impact position as the guy in black & white that Lagpressure posted above when I’m playing well. When I struggle, the hands doesn’t come back in properly and it feels like a throwaway.
I do not think in terms of flat being straighter, but rather slower. Slower in terms of rate of clubface closure i.e. at what point the clubhead passes the hands and the toe passes the heel. hit some balls of your knees, or go through the little procedure that Lag mentions. Zero loft club on a horizontal plane. Can there be any doubt that flat tends to favor the trajectory vector, as opposed the direction vector?
You have a good point there bobscottjr,
But I think much of the same can be had with a steeper swing plane. As long as you get the hands low through the impactt zone, dont let the club flip over, turn right etc…
And besides: I think Jack is highly underrated as a ball striker. He hit it high, long and straight. And he never had to spend years to get rid of his nasty snap hook. As Ben Hogan did.
Lefthook, you were probably closer to a good swing being laid off than using that laser tracing device. Knowing what I now understand, you have to perform in ways very counterintuitive to stay on plane.
And flatter is straighter. It’s been debated and explained in a few places on the site.
Good luck.
Captain Chaos
Flat swings have the advantage on two fronts…
The degree of severity of both pushed and pulled shots is minimized… (try pulling a shot hard left while hitting a ball off your knees)
and secondly, deviations in shaft rotation which open or close the clubface sending the ball left or right start instead toward a variation in ball
flight trajectory.
If you fire a few ball off your knees, this becomes very clear. If you don’t do this experiment yourself, then you might struggle understanding this reality.
I think you’re 100% right. 
I spent a couple of weeks, trying to get the lazer on plane. But eventually I realised that the prescribed geometry was pretty much in conflict with the dynamics I prefer through impact. I managed to get it on plane - at least without a ball but the power was gone. Still learned a few things about my own stroke and about TGM swing theories so it wasn’t a waste after all.
But after this I am not even sure if the club has the same plane angle at all times. I am not even sure if it needs to either. All I know is that the more I turn through before impact and the more P#4 pressure I keep at impact the straighter and harder I can hit the ball.
I’ve been fiddling with TGM magic wedges and so forth for almost half a year. I still think it’s a great book, but flying wedges at address position seems to be very counter productive for me. I loose lag pressure control in the short game and I loose a lot of consistency and lag pressure on the long game. Where I before could simply think how hard I needed to strike I got a lot of new timing issues entering the equation.
Thank you very much.
Most of you guys are way better ball strikers than I will ever be, but nevertheless, flat doesn’t work that well for me. When I start to swing flat I bring roundhousing into the game big time.
But I am pretty flat through impact though. The swing feels like straight back and a strong inturn righ (I’m a lefty) right at impact. SInce the club releases out left it all evens out on a god day.
For a few years there I thought there was something wrong with my ball striking since I couldn’t use irons with regular lie angles.
Shooting from the knees with arms way out in front of the body requires a sort of timing that I really would like to avoid. I am slim and flexible and there’s just too much degree of arms freedom between my left and right shoulder. No power. No precision. Just a weak timing lottery.
But seriously, ball above /below feet is a more relevant situation since it will allow for a more normal stroke pattern, including feet and hips. I usually hit the ball much better (with mid to long clubs) with feet high and ball low than the opposite. Ball high is a big pull risk for me. Ball low sometimes feels more comfortable than level if the lie is flat enough for a normal impact.
When I use steep arms I can bring the hands in pretty close to the core. It makes the synchronization of pivot and arms really easy. And I am a lot stronger there too, compared to hands far out in front of me. It produces the feeling of hitting the ball with the feet.
Yes,
However that is simply a function of the lie angle at impact. You can bring the hands low at impact with steep arms. Swinging the hands basically in front of you instead of around your core can get the hands closer to the core at impact and therefore also lower.
I think we are facing different realities. It may be because you learned golf at the right age and had a talent for it while I picked it up close to 30 and only brought mediocre coordination abilities and strength to the game. But I think body shape and physical abilities has a lot to say as well.
I play regularly with a mid handicapper. He is big and strong and totally inflexible – basically the opposite of me. I am not convinced that there is one best method for everyone. Those guys who wrote the LAW of Golf were on to something.
I happened upon a great drill (based on what Lag has said concerned the advantages of flat swinging) Firstly let me say that FLAT is not as flat as you think it has to be although it feels like you are swinging around your belt buckle! But I found a little trick to determine how flat is flat. I open the face of my seven iron and flatten the plane until it no longer goes to the right, but rather goes UP! Damn if what Lag said is not true! I can lay that sucker open…if I swing flat enough it just goes insanely high, dead straight and nuked! The flatter I go the more I feel I can rip it left. A sensational feel! I happened upon this last week when I taped a practice session thinking that I was now a flat swinger. When I looked at my flat swing what I saw was elbow plane to turned shoulder plane and pretty much staying on the turned shoulder plane (habit from TGM hitting) 
So if figured a test for flattness would be if an open face at impact would be a trajectory thing more than a direction thing. What felt flat was not even close. The thing is when make a concerted effort to flatten it out if feels crazy flat, but I ended up going from hands plane to just below the turned shoulder and a small shift to the elbow plane. It looks a lot like Lag’s! 
I may be onto to something! 
So, I had a question related to my high ball hitting escapades. I thought flat swinging tended to hit the ball lower, not higher. It does not appear to be an easy thing to get the face closed when swinging that flat, open yes…closed not! Am I off base here? Can I just shut the face…swing flat, and the ball will come out lower? I have fought a career ruining pull-hook so I not like the look of a closed clubface! 
Practiced the flat move today. Too cheap to spend money at the hardware store, so I imagined a plane a little above shaft plane…Dantien started the process and certainly was flat and under the plane line going back.
It made the transition easier…being that flat going back…you have only two choices going the other way…get even more Flatter or Over it. There are no in betweens. It made dropping the club to a flat, laid-off, open position with the right palm oriented skyward almost automatic.
Not sure about the next part…post impact it felt like I was ripping left, but over top of the plane line on the target side.
Felt good however…seemed like a lot of hand pressures at that point.
Still haven’t fully decided to dump McHatton and Schaffer to the curb…but this stuff is real challenging…and rats love challenges.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv-I2wzGkdo[/youtube]
Courtesy of bomgolf from a different thread…plopped it in this one also…good stuff
This one actually comes courtesy of bobscottjnr… yeah it’s a pretty good one. I was trying to remember if I’d had a load of beers at some point and forgot posting videos on ABS- scary thought… I’m glad I got to the bottom of it!
Rained out in the maze today, so I thought I’d put something out I’ve been playing around with re: flatness
Made a 5" plumb-bob and tied it to the where the hosel and head meet. Raised the clubhead upwards til the bob was plumb. This movement upward of the clubhead flattens the club from it original position.
Then I move the club back to the top and through again without changing the “plumbness” orientation to the shaft. Any flippiness, OTT, or other irregular motions, will disrupt the plumbness.
Don’t recall if I’ve ever seen something like this before, although people like Chuck Cook and others, have similar “tasks” regarding “keeping sand in the bottle” or other such techniques.
I like the feeling it promotes…especially bringing “plumb” through the dantien area. 
RR
Having a hard time visulaizing this with my tiny little bird brain RR.
Sorry Eagle: My computer skills are worse than my ferreting skills.
Don’t know how to post pictures or video…that’s my next project- learn how to do that.
It’s just kind of a feel thing, and does not necessarily address hand/wrist attitudes…but it could. It just helps me reinforce flat from the top through the dantien area.
Haven’t checked this out yet emperically, but perhaps the same feeling can be experienced by tying a 5" plumb-bob to the index finger of the trail hand…goal is to keep plumb at all times. Any flipping, OTT, pivot stall, improper plane shift, etc, will cause the string to gain slack, or wobble, or to lose plumb.
Kinda like lag=no slack. Just on a flat plane. Best I can do in words. RR