Hi there - I’m pretty new to the forum, and am pretty keen to become a student of Lags (I’m just waiting on him to come back to me!)
I’ve read this article, and pretty much fit into the category of swinger, eg, tall with a smooth, unhurried flowing action.
I want to strike and compress better, I have a personal feeling that hitting would be the way for me to achieve this, I know that I can learn, but my question is as above.
Is it possible to change from swinger to hitter, ( I relate to swingers under pressure!).
As I said I’m pretty new, so don’t shoot me down here, but is ABS and its modular approach more geared towards hitters, or can swingers still become better players by practicing its methodology?
Swingers to hitters…you just described 98% of the golfers here and what we are working to accomplish. There are aspects of ABS that would benefit swingers (module 2 comes to mind immediately)…however, after weighing the pros and cons - I don’t think you’ll want to swing.
Aye, I’m very much looking forward to getting onto the Module work - I’m waiting on John coming back to me about it. I assume he’s very busy and only takes on a certain amount of students, so I’m waiting!.
However any info on the modules or point to practice while I wait will be more than welcome!
I spent a lot of my youth trying to build a stylish swing and just got frustrated when Ididn’t kick on, but I realise now that stylish doesn’t mean effective, and in terms of maintenance as I get older I think that hitting my prove a more effecive way of playing.
Also good to know that I’m trying to make a similar shift to the majority of the people here.
The more I read about hitting vs swinging the less the distinctions make sense. According to Homer (who started all this) a swinger employs a Rope Handle Technique while a hitter uses Axe Handle Technique. It would appear that swingers thus are restricted to a Snap Release and Hitters to a Sweep Release. So far so good. This suggests that swingers pull the club and hitters push it with the right arm, but suppose a player uses a pivot driven swing with passive hands and fires his right leg. Is he swinging (because the club is pulled) or hitting (because firing the right leg activates the right arm)? Fifty odd years of play and study have convinced me that a golfer can swing effectively in more ways than even Homer could catalog. But this swinging vs hitting stuff strikes me as a blind alley. Am I alone in thinking this?
Jake, forget about Homer’s hitting versus swinging distinction and view the threads on this site about Lag’s distinction between hitting and swinging. They are different, or rather, the swinging part is the same, but the hitting is not. Hitting in ABS = pivot driven with use of forearm rotation to square up the clubface from a deep 4:30 line and a strong post-impact pivot to prevent the clubface from turning over too much. The right arm resists the outward force, rather than being straightened intentionally as in Homer’s hitting. When viewed this way, there is a huge difference between hitting and swinging!
You are correct, there are more ways to do this than Homer suggested in TGM. He got the swinging stuff right that’s for sure.
His version of hitting is just bad news bears in my opinion because by actively firing the right elbow, you shut down the face intentionally, disturb lowpoint and drive the shaft out to the right and off plane through the hitting arena. I’ll trust CF to square the clubface much more than any effort I might make to do it with the right elbow…
However… what I teach and promote here at ABS is a more sophisticated and advanced way of doing all of this. Ultimately simpler, much more reliable, and very powerful also if you strengthen up a few key muscle groups. Getting stronger is easy because you just do the work and the body makes it happen. Trying to figure out timing a right arm throw at the ball, much more difficult to do day to day.
Firing the right leg means kicking the right knee past the ball as soon as the weight has moved left in response to the backswing and response of the right leg brace. Watch any great player without exception. The first powerful move in the forward swing is a push of the right leg off the ground. The hands retain whatever angle was created by the backswing and transition. Ground reaction force created by the right leg causes the arms to drop and the right arm to straighten through the ball. The straightening right arm supinates the left hand and makes the clubhead cover the ball. All this is pretty much automatic provided the golfer trusts it and doesn’t interfere. The only things a player can really control are his grip, ball position, posture, leg brace, backswing and explosion off the right leg. How well he does these things is largely a matter of athletic ability. As Bob Hope told a guy who gushed about Snead’s swing: anybody can swing like that with Sam’s body; I’d like to see him do that with my body!
If the torso is actively rotating properly at the right time, weight won’t have any issues going left.
I would argue that if you pushed off the right foot at transition, you would spend your rotational range of motion too soon
and have nothing left over when you really need it.
Take a look at these weight transfer charts and ponder.
Is this a “feel vs real” thing? I’m looking at Norman and Beck (2 reasonably good players…I might even consider Norman to be in the great category) in the pics from the weight shift article. Neither looks to have a right knee anywhere near kicking past the the ball.
December edition of Australian Golf Magazine hits the stores today.
I havent seen it yet but there is a 5 page instruction spread in there that I wrote called - “Myths of the golf swing- Swing Plane”
If any Aussie readers get their hands on it and want to post it here feel free. I am away for the next 3 weeks and wont be near a scanner to be able to upload it here for forum members.
I will be doing more articles early next year for the magazine also.
Here is the article from Australia Golf Magazine. Someone posted it on another site and the pixel compression is not the best. I will try replace these pics with my own scans when I get back
Managed the first couple of pages before it got too difficult. Really enjoyed what I read so far and chomping at the bit for more. Can definately see some feathers being ruffled
I am new to the forum, however I am not new to golf. The Hitting vs Swinging articles are really great. So much really great info from you. So happy I found the site via Bradley Hughes web site. Might be the best money I have ever spent on golf.
Do you ever come back east ??
Golf7272
