No Dog fight here…
LCD is not an ABS student, and doesn’t know what is taught or how we go about things in the private student side of this forum.
This is the public forum on this side, and everyone is free to express their opinions politely and respectfully. It’s the two sided forum here that makes things work.
All those doing module 5, which prepares for the transition module 6, would disagree with lcd’s statement, I think. The things we are taught will only increase our angles during transition, which to my knowledge, adds power rather than reducing it.
Sorry LCD…I completely disagree.
Speaking from personal experience, that ‘gravity drop move’ really primes and potentiates the strike from a deep 430 position.
To further qualify my view, the ‘gravity drop’ sets up a sequence that, for me, pins the swing on a rollercoaster ride, with the result that I have a much more consistent strike on the ball than before. I can well imagine that there are other ways of playing that allows one to hit the ball further but I hit it plenty long enough and I am primarily concerned with accuracy.
That’s the definition of a steer job. A Player is never concerned with accuracy. Accuracy, more than that precision is a byproduct which is created by the total package. Power on the other hand is always a consideration. Power allows Players to dominate and do things WITH precision that the field cannot. Go ahead and jump to your ridiculous extremes with your John Daly and Sadlowski stuff which hasn’t much to do with reality. Nicklaus became Nicklaus and crushed the world because of a never seen combination of power and precision, but he was precise BEFORE he was long and after and the combination allowed him to dominate anywhere and everywhere. When you play one without the other you take half the bullets out of the gun.
And the best players, hitters in particular dominate and control the club ALL the time. At no point do they put Sir Isaac Newton behind the wheel. Compare what you’re doing to Hogan, Venturi, Nicklaus, Weiskopf, Miller, young DLIII, Nelson, on and on, the best of the best and compare. The best don’t have to bother with a passive drop reroute coming down and they would never want to. They slam it down in the slot their damn selves (with a straighening right wrist) and hit frozen ropes all day.
Compare what you’re doing to Hogan, Venturi, Nicklaus, Weiskopf, Miller, young DLIII, Nelson, on and on, the best of the best and compare. The best don’t have to bother with a passive drop reroute coming down and they would never want to. They slam it down in the slot their damn selves (with a straighening right wrist) and hit frozen ropes all day.
LCD these are the exact players you mention bar none that the ABS program is based on…
Johnny Miller even talks about ‘passive gravity drop’ himself
Hogan calls it the free ride down
That’s a set position and not a motion shot. He says the exact opposite in that NBC video and never does a passive drop in actuality. Look at the hands in the pic, dead shut with the club pointing outside the ball when he plays from square to square with forearm rotation only. That picture is meaningless.
“Steer job”!! You must be kidding. Really??!!
It’s been a crappy week, but at least I get a good chuckle before the weekend starts. And when did Sadlowski and Daly suddenly become the poster children for ABS? Personally if I never see a Sadlowski sequence again it will be too soon. I’ve been around plenty of LD guys up close and personal… they are NOT studies in solid technique. Unless of course your enamored with distance and getting 1 of 6 inside a grid. And don’t tell me about how these guys can “play”… that’s fiction.
Guess I’ll see if I can steer my way to a 68 tomorrow.
Thanks for making my point for me. Shows a lot. Enjoy being right about everything, I wish I had spent the last 25 years hitting a sack of carpet holed up at home getting ready to lay up on a pitch n putt instead of breaking course records and living. Then I’d get it. I guess I’ll have to wait until the next lifetime.
The proof is really in the pudding with the success of the students.
If you haven’t touched on any module work then you are speaking about things that you know little about even if you believe you do. The reasons behind the modules. The feel and the intended look of it. It isn’t just ‘whacking a bag of carpet’
There is look and there is innner feel that no-one has ever been able to teach before and there is an individual aspect also.
Let me dump out a partial list of our ‘models’ we may use…Hogan, Nelson, Nicklaus, Palmer, Trevino, Player, Seve, Miller, Kite, Venturi, Floyd, Norman, Watson, Casper, Bolt, Hagen, Knudson, Wadkins, Middlecoff, and even an dude who actually won 6 British Opens whacking hickory around…Harry Vardon…a bunch of hackers I am sure…with absolutely no 2 swings alike… so unlike most golf coaching …ABS isn’t a model swing…it’s a program based on many principles the greats ALL used
Never do we use Sadlowski as a model although people have brought him up and we talk about it. We don’t like to diss something because it’s against any belief we may hold. Every swing that works bears studying and looking at deeper.
I am not sure what happened LCD…you started out with some informative posts and some good insight but now are alienating your self with some bold statements about winning the Claret Jug and knowing everything about the swing with calls of ‘Yahtzee’ and giving everyone a blow by blow rundown of each round .
It is perfectly fine to think you know everything and that’s why we have a public forum for those who think they do. There are plenty others in the public area that are there to learn . And of course our students have an entirely different world of their own in the private area and that’s where the hub and the engine and the action is.
All the students bar NONE have improved so far by working through the ‘bag of carpet’ as you call it as a starting point. Some drastically improved, some are slowing improving, some will really improve by the end of the program.
Most on here would agree it is offensive to come into someone’s office space and trash the product.
No-one has ever seen your swing or seen your record or even know who you are…all we hear is how good you were and say you are going to be. That’s awesome, that’s what the internet helps some people with.
Do what you have to do…play, win or whatever. But you should refrain from smacking the teaching principles of ABS when you have zero knowledge of the program and what it is trying to achieve and the way it evolves.
The students have been sensational at keeping the major goals, thoughts, moves, principles behind closed doors in the private area. So they all actually understand the modules, the principles, the points that some people and yourself are missing. If we dropped all the candy and gold nuggets out here in the public forum then that wouldn’t be doing it the right way.
I myself still learn a little every week or month and Lag likewise by discussing and thinking about feelings and thoughts of our students while monitoring their progress… we learn nothing from being domineering and stagnant in our beliefs.
The students themselves have learned more in the last 6 months than they have in the previous 30 years of aimlessly playing and delving through the tuition that is actually out in the real world. They are the bar that is being raised.
In this video at about 4 mins 10 secs in, he talks about the passive gravity drop.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvTWgui4Tjo[/youtube]
As the forum grows there inevitably will be dissenting voices. ABS should not be beyond critique, analysis and disagreement. We believe that this methodology has been time tested. The thing I would hate is for someone to be shunned other than for vulgarity. At the same time I don’t like guerrilla tactic of I am here/out a here. If you have strong disagreement state it and stick by it with an open mind though. That is the only way ideas get refined.
It is not the ideas it is the way. A little grace will go a long way here I think.
LCD
I dont understand how pounding a 40-50 lbs carpet bag with full force instead of a golf ball will make you shorter.
So much of the golf swing is personality dependent. Someone like LCDV, who I would imagine likes to go after it, would find the idea of not being involved in his swing difficult to embrace. I know I find the idea of a gravity drop difficult to get my head around, especially while playing, and more so when something is on the line. I think the action of reconnecting the arms to the pivot is vital, but I think it can be active. As long as you don’t fire the pivot from the top, how you reconnect your arms, or how you feel like you reconnect you arms, is irrelevant as long as you do. There are very few top players, I would speculate, that disengage during transition and let gravity bring their arms down. The problem, as i see it, is the term. Hogan gets cited a lot in this discussion, but looking at the speed of his swing, I find it very hard to imagine any time where he’s not involved in the action, or where anything is ‘gravity dropping’… except maybe his golf ball when it drops to the ground at the end of it’s flight like some scene from the Roadrunner cartoon…
Bom
Lag addresses the drop in Module 5 and more in Module 6. Its a passive drop feeling for the hands but not for the body. The body is digging into a hole into the ground. it is such an energy intense process. I swear I got a remarkable drop sensation hitting balls just a couple of days ago, and after a hitting a few I felt sick and had to stop, grab a glass of OJ and banana in emergency. I wanted to post something about it but did not. I was seriously thinking about introducing a term “EFFORTLESS EFFORT” . I think the eergy intensity is because of the effort required to get out of the hole you have dug yourself into.
The public forum here is where we all like to share ideas, kick things around, and learn from a variety of perspectives and platforms.
Our private ABS student area focuses on our work and the progress of students.
It really doesn’t make sense for a non student to be discussing module work, because they simply don’t know the protocols and chronology of how things are presented. Viewing random student videos posted around the web may or may not be correct, and I have little interest in defending someones poor module execution or even proper execution because the work is often designed to move us into extreme movements that will later be used as a slingshot, fulcrum often creating a force that we can then apply an opposing force. The net result generally comes out looking quite different than what the student has been working on… but in a good way.
The other thing to note is that there is a big difference between hitting and swinging… and as long as this difference remains clouded or not fully understood, there will be endless debate about how to best swing a golf club.
If LCDV doesn’t like a gravity drop feeling at transition, that screams swinger. All his posts aim at such a conclusion, even the equipment threads. It’s not wrong… but it is not compatible with a hitting protocol where the goal is to bring a pre stressed clubshaft into impact.
As far as accuracy vs distance… I like both… accuracy first however…
Faldo was hardly the longest hitter out there… but his record is one that needs no introduction. Trevino another great who was not particularly long.
Snead and Hogan bombed it in their primes… and also had a handle on where it was going.
It’s good to be accurate, and designing your golf swing to be one of easily repeatable accuracy is a good thing.
Amen. Lag is not shy to admitting people trying to make the long driving tour should be swingers not hitters, I knew that before joining the course, but still decided to come here, and not go to someone who likes teaching a swinging style. Why? The last sentence sums it up pretty well for what I want out of this course.
Gravity Drop:
Hey Aiguille…remember we had this as an topic of conversation before? 
Boy did I put my foot in my mouth back then, but I think I can speak more clearly about it now. I truly think that the confusion with gravity is one of semantics. Lag describes it as a passive move. I agree it is passive.
For example: in J. Miller’s video he uses the term gravity in describing the drop. IMO, it is not a pure gravity drop as Miller is sequencing the drop. Unlike some swingers who like to “catch the drop”- I think Couples might be an example of one who uses primary gravity then has to catch it at some point. Couples’ method, if that’s what he is doing, takes the timing of a gazelle…and alot of ongoing practice to keep it in tune. 
Range Rat,
It has always been a pleasure to discuss things with you 
I don’t feel like I have to catch the club at any stage, it just feels like it falls into the slot, like I have to be quite patient to allow that to happen, then BANG!