Go Low: This doesn’t count as an official turn by me as I have to rat along to some Christmas things. The above was your last move…are you sure you want to take your hand off the moved piece. Your Queen is in great peril! 
RR
Ok my bad. I said: “you seem to prefer the opposite of what the bulk of the people at ABS seem to prefer”. What I meant by this was that you’d prefer to have a student start out with cavity backs. I will try to be more precise next time 
No, you said: “Why do the best professional golfers in the world play with (+ or - 2*) standard lie angles”.
THAT just doesn’t cut it for me. It still implies to me that you assume that ‘These guys are the best and surely they must have done everything to get the most out of their talents.’
Another example:
Here in Europe we still drive mostly stick shift cars (manual transmission). At the moment we have lots of snow and I have two cars at my disposal. One brand new higher end car with all kinds of ‘advancements’ that make life easier for the driver. The foot pedals and gear box all react to the slightest of movements. Initial reaction: ‘Driving was never this easy’. I never really noticed the loss of feel/feedback. I only noticed that when I took a drive in the other (and much older) car wherein everything feels more mechanic vs. electronic. For me, the older car performed much better in the snow because I could feel the relationship between my foot on the gas and the traction the tires had in the snow and there were no braking or stability systems interfering with my feel.
If the golfer can communicate with his or her family members, via reading lips or signing, and then a family member communicate with me what the golfer says or asks…then I would choose the deaf individual.
Who do you suggest is better than these guys (meaning the tour players)? Do you think the tour pros do not experiment or talk with other pros and experts in their field? You suggest they are in a bubble and are told what to do…and have no means or interest in questioning the status-quo, seeking differing opinions, etc., etc. Do you really think that’s the case?
I’m not sure what the analogy is for the two cars with reference to pros playing with +/- 2* standard lie angles versus 6* flat lie angles. The car analogy seems like it may be more in-tune with a [feel-type] discussion on swinging versus hitting where swinging requires that the golfer have an inate ability to apply and control centrifugal/centripetal force whereas a hitter requires application and control of brute muscular force.
I will give my background as to why I teach this way. I doubt myself and Lag are the only two experienced people that teach this way…but there is reasoning behind it.
I had a self taught swing built by watching the great players of the 70’s and 80’s, when persimmon was in and blades were the rage. I felt the swing. I had no video. No coaching. My clubs were flat…probably 2-3 degrees flat ( I don’t know as we never had loft lie machines at that time where I grew up)… I hit the ball consistently well. Had some great success as a golfer. was recognized as one of the longest straightest drivers of the ball in the world with persimmon.
THEN-
The Leadbetters of the world came along…I thought maybe I need some fine tuning to keep up with all this…Plus…it would be nice to know something about the swing as I don’t really know how I swing I just go by feel and ball flight and divot pattern…so off we went for lessons…next minute everything was changed except my hair style…I lost my transition…I lost my feel for the club…I lost impact…I lost post impact… lost all my feel for playing golf…YET…I was being told I was swinging awesome
Didn’t feel like I was swinging awesome. The ball told me I wasn;t swinging that awesome…but who was I to know?..I was being helped by swing gurus who held all the cards as to what we were meant to be doing
Then because my swing changed…next minute they propped me up into upright lie angles for my clubs…3 flat became 3 upright…now I had to lift and raise and straighten even more at impact to somehow get the sole of the club striking the ground properly…then my around my body swing became a steep slap with arms whacking trying to create speed because my body had decided it wanted nothing to do with all this new swing stuff because it was now an uninterested spectator with nothing to do.
So each year my supposed ‘great swing’…was deteriorating because of observation based teaching and equipment that was getting me farther away from the round and round swing ideals that the greats such as Hogan, Trevino and such endorsed and employed in their games. Then clubs got longer, lighter and bigger and I had no idea where the head was or what to do with it…so here we are now
I have now been coaching people for 18 months. I use all my own experiences of playing in my teaching…and somehow, someway my old swing linked into what Lag believed through his own experiences of playing and then not playing for so long and then getting back into the game. That’s how we got together and why we teach what we do. Not because we want to agree with one another. If Lag said something I thought was a load of crap I would tell him…BUT…from my own personal experience as a golfer everything he has said has rung true for me.
I have had one student not be able to break 120 and just 18 months later his best score is now a 75. I had another student who was only able to hit his driver 50 yards forward and 50 yards right -every shot… Now I have him hitting it 80% of the time splitting the fairways and over 235 yards… all based on what we teach here to our ABS students
There is a lot of stuff in the student area that is only privy to our students…but we don’t teach anything new. What we teach or ask of our students has stood the test of time.
The huge problem has been equipment being made for the average to poor golfer- which in turn has been used by the pro- who is paid $$$ to advertize…so equipment ill designed to the best way to swing a club has been thrust into people’s hands year after year…and now they come out with a new model every 6 months for no other reason than to try and call it the ‘greatest new technology’ and splice some more cash from people’s wallets
As for teachers of today…how many actually played high level golf?.. A couple…maybe…plus they all get emblazoned out with sponsors who pay them big bucks to advertise product…doesn’t matter if it is crap or not…they don’t have to play it, so they may as well endorse it…then their students are into it because they say they love it…and crap and junk is to and froing everywhere in everyone’s hands.
I know people who are given their teaching licence by passing a test…not a playing test…a book test!!! that’s a pretty novel way of becoming a teaching pro…read a book that was written by goodness nows who and you get a golf degree
The PGA playing test to pass these days to become a pro is 156 !!! 78 -78 or better and off you go to sell balls and give lessons…you have got to be joking.
I have some friends who are on the Top 100 list of teachers who literally wouldn’t know if they were Arthur or Martha and have called me with ridiculous questions about the swing because they honestly don’t know. they guess and people think highly of them because they made it onto a list that is all about brown nosing and networking than about actual quality teaching…I checked out how to get in the top 100 list and it is ridiculously about who you know and not what you know.
There has been so much money in golf the last 15 years you don’t find good tour golfers ever having to quit playing and then teach…myself and Lag maybe being the exception…most guys quit on their wads of cash and go hunting and fishing and do little golf except playing with their buddies. They don’t teach…so the great tuition from top players who experienced heat of the battle sunday afternoons and knew what their swing felt like under pressure or such isn’t coming to the people growing up…so they get taught from book readers or guessers who think they have a clue based on what blind Freddy told him 3 weeks ago at a bar in Cleveland airport while he was waiting for a plane
Sean Foley had a quote in a golf magazine the other month… added below:
Here is a guy cashing in and he states he doesn’t really know the right way to swing a club!!!
If you don’t know the right way…then how do you know what’s wrong??? like he says he knows
That right there is the deal breaker on why the golfing society is where it is today. It trusts the bullshit we hear way too much from teachers, and equipment companies and even from the PGA and Golf Associations as gospel rather than the putting any effort or thought in finding out the actual truths …everyone is brain washed
I have my students hit my old, heavy. flat VIP irons from the early 70/s…I thrust it in their hand and say “Go ahead…hit it”… they ALL reply…“Oh I can’t hit that, It looks too small or the head is too heavy or the shaft is too stiff”… I say I don’t care…go ahead and hit it… They all flush it and turn to me with an astonished look on their face saying they can’t believe they could do that because society has informed them they can’t yet fact showed they hit the best friggin shot of the day
It is all about perception and we are just trying to open up a few people’s eyes that there are other/better options available out there if you can eventually wade through the waters of BS that have been thrown around you.
3 Likes
Go Low,
It’s more than possible to hold shaft flex well beyond impact. I can do it… and Arnie posted that sequence a page or so back.
It’s a reality. It can be done, and I can do it. Not impossible. Your experts are not correct in their assumptions about the impossibility of doing it. They are wrong.
Feel free to stay in your opinion that it can’t be done… but it can. I live in that truth. Of course anyone can choose not to believe it… but I won’t be told it can’t be done. I know better.
Perimeter weighted irons don’t give accurate feedback. They don’t, and people suffer over time and slow their own progress with a lack of feedback. You need feedback to learn. That’s how we have evolved as humans. Trial and error. We need to feel the error. Without it, the brain simply can’t make the adjustments to do better next time. It’s just fact.
Modern coaches, unless they are great players themselves, much of what they teach or believe is based upon speculation. If you can’t do it yourself, you can’t possibly know what you don’t know. This is one reason I don’t teach Moe Norman’s technique. I can speculate, and probably better than most, but I would not kid myself into thinking I could really know all the inner intricacies of Moe’s approach. Then again, I haven’t really spent time trying it. I want to be able to answer every single question a student can through at me, properly. I want to be able to demonstrate, explain, and support it with fact, not speculation.
Modern touring pros are playing with training wheels on their clubs. Are they really great golfers? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. The would need to beat me first with a set of blades, persimmons and on a real golf course. If they can, then there is probably not a lot I can teach them. They can teach me… and I will listen… but until then… “for me” it’s an unknown.
There was a good college player that came to me last year, and we went and played a round. He had all the latest stuff… but I beat him with 50 year old clubs. Guess what? He listened. So I disagree with you that younger players will not listen. They will, especially when you beat them with antique golf gear. I worked with him, and I think he will play much better this year.
Most new golf courses are not as good, because they don’t require the full spectrum of golf shots. The fairways are too wide and flat, and the greens are too big which both require less precision to land the approach. Not much to argue really. On a subjective level, I find most aesthetically lacking charm and character.
I am sure you miss wrote the above, because surely “the mental thought” of increasing acceleration is possible post impact. Here at ABS we use the word “intention” a lot.
Flat lie angles? Unless you have played 6 degrees down, and learned the proper biomechanical methodology to do so… you simply cannot know. Speculate? yes… but not know.
Could the worlds best players, instructors and clubmakers all be ignorant?
OF COURSE! 
That’s why ABS is here.
The greatest ball striker hands down of all time played flatter gear than I do… was he wrong? Of course not.
Think about it.
Now regarding the openness of this forum? Absolutely. We always have new readers, and although many of these debates are rehashed and buried in the pages of the LTLGM thread… it is never bad to go over them again. It helps me as an instructor to re think things and I like my new tricycle analogy today. It seems correct. You are still pedaling and going somewhere… but it’s different. Just because you can ride a trike, does not mean you can ride a bike. Maybe, but not necessarily.
2 Likes
This is not an accurate statement.
I just spent two days with Sam Randolph, and we agreed on everything. Sam is great player, and a great teacher also. He, like Twomasters, has worked with most all the famous coaches, and calls them out on all kinds of stuff. Sam loves flat lie angles, and also thinks the guys who played the older stuff learned a better golf swing. Sam won the US Amateur and won on the PGA Tour.
Two,
That’s an interesting story. One thing that really stands out was your experience with David Leadbetter. Was David Leadbetter personally attending to you, or was it one of his on-staff teachers? How long did you spend under the direction of Leadbetter…or whoever on his staff was teaching you? No doubt you were already an excellent golfer, though still probably a young man, when you went to Leadbetter. You must have questioned (at least in your own mind) why you were not able to do what Leadbetter was teaching you. Knowing that Leadbetter had (at the time) taught some of the best golfers in the world - why do you think he was unable to teach you his method?
Well,
#1 rule. If a player has had success, you don’t change their feel at backswing transition. If they are a late loader like Greg Norman was, you leave that alone.
If a player has great footwork, and applied ground pressures, only a foolish instructor would remove that from a tour player’s golf swing.
If the instructor is focusing on the backswing, and insisting the player swing on plane, the instructor does not understand the proper application of forearm rotation.
If an instructor does not clearly understand the difference between hitting and swinging, the student runs the risk of incompatible components working against one another in a negative way.
If an instructor makes the assumption that a proper set up guarantees that the player is going to then properly drop the shaft into the slot, they are under false assumption.
If the instructor ever says “once the ball leaves the club, it doesn’t matter what you do”… they are not as knowledgeable of the golf swing as they need to be.
1 Like
You are correct Lag, I did indeed word that incorrectly. I thought the reader would understand that I was not in opposition to having the “mental thought” (or intent) of increasing the clubhead’s acceleration rate beyond impact with the ball, but that I was in opposition to literally being able to do it - "it’ meaning to increase the clubhead’s acceleration beyond impact with the ball. Do you agree that “it” is not possible?
I should have said; "with the intention of actually increasing the clubhead’s acceleration rate beyond impact with the ball (having the intent is good, but actually increasing the clubhead’s acceleration rate beyond impact with the ball is not possible in my opinion).
Whilst not directly taking lessons from leadbetter himself at that time…(I did have him watch me later on)…but there were a few ‘gurus’ that people would know who I tried for a while at a time, without wanting to name names.
I actually meant previously that---- because Lead had success with Faldo & Price around that time and they were 2 of the best golfers in the world, that many, many teachers started basing their teaching ideas on what they heard Leadbetter or Faldo say on TV or in a book… they weren’t teaching based on what they themselves knew.
I had a huge wide late set takeaway ( a la Greg Norman) and the teachers ALL wanted to change that because that then made me really, really load the club late and they thought this was an issue and would cause me inconsistent golf.
Sure…every now and then my timing was off and I would shoot higher than I wanted…but that was my swing…my feel…and my way of playing…they didn’t know what that swing felt like to me (and unfortunately I didn’t know either at the time) why I did it and the feel it was creating for my swing and how I went and attacked the ball with great angles thru impact and beyond. That swing also allowed me to be able to shoot 64 at the drop of a hat if the putter co-operated.
BUT…they didn’t know what I was doing as like Lag said…they COULDN"T do it… they couldn’t play. They hadn’t tried out their thoughts or other player’s thoughts themselves. They had just basically lucked into someone like Faldo or Price (fantastic players already) that clicked with the logic they were being told. I still to this day believe Faldo and especially Price- DON’T swing it much like any other Leadbetter student… that’s my opinion and maybe why they were the standout students… because I think they achieved their OWN model swing with his guidance…whereas others lost their true own swings in the Lead process (charles howell…and even ernie els to a large degree who don’t strike the ball like they used to… Norman got worse…Frost was always searching…Denis Watson left the tour for years…and many others) so I don’t see the success of players as most would believe…in fact in the pro circles they say it was more screw ups (25 to 1) than successes going the Lead route
I couldn’t work their model swing into my game as well as they hoped because it wasn’t natural. It was a try and hit a position swing and draw lines on a computer that left all the dynamics on the floor…instead of using my natural go get it swing that hit all the correct positions on their own accord but with a wide late takeaway set. On occasions I had a good spell, but it would be a constant battle and whacking balls on the range to try and time these motions being taught…with my old swing all I had to do was turn the key and vroom the engine up because I knew what it felt like and it repeated because it had good intentions and force right to the finish of the swing.
That old swing allowed me to practice putting, chipping, have a few beers and even take in the Eiffel Tower or The Empire State building on a day trip. The new ‘improved’ swing sent me to the range for hours at a time day in day out, week in and week out…hoping and searching for something to click…that would somehow allow me to play well that week…in the process I was neglecting my short game, my travel enjoyment and my afternoon beers with my feet up somewhere.
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Yeah, it sounds like you really didn’t understand much about different swing methods because up until that time you only had your one and only [existing] swing experience, therefore when Leadbetter started changing things you were fully under at his mercy…and didn’t know to say anything. Looking back on that time, and knowing what you know about the golf swing now, you probably would have said; “no, I don’t like that - let’s try something different”…or something to that affect when their changes opposed your view. That type of thing is what I understand Tiger is doing with Foley when he doesn’t like a particular change. I’ve seen it first-hand with Matt Kuchar and his swing coach Chris O’Connell. There’s many ways to skin a cat.
I think the better, more experienced, players pretty much already know what they want when it comes to any changes being made to their swing and look for a swing coach they can easily communicate with to help them incorporate the changes into their swing. I would say it would not be wise at all for an experienced golfer to tell a swing coach; “Here I am - do what you want with my swing.”.
Two,
Considering what you went through with your swing after going to David Leadbetter, wonder what would happen with Lee Westwood’s golf game (and his future) if his swing was changed to get rid of his steep swing and chicken-wing left arm?
With Westwood’s steep swing I was curious to find out what color dot his Ping irons are. I found that the Ping dot color on his irons is green, and his iron lie angles are 2.25* upright: golfdigest.com/golf-equipmen … my-golfbag
that’s because Westwood has steep shoulders at impact and high hands…he needs upright clubs- just like nearly everyone else these days who straightens their right leg and elevates their hands and shaft at impact well above their address positions…he does roll the face over a bit right after impact with his hands as will happen from this impact alignment…BUT… he then has great pivot thrust to the finish- that’s why he is good… he saves it all with that one good move and can get away with it
He gets his bent left arm because he drops his shoulder level whilst he straightens his legs—so something has to give- right?
if he could fix the steep shoulders/high hand impact/slight flip … he would be hard to topple from number 1 for a long long time-- but he won’t alter it because no-one sees those faults as they don’t know any better
Would you see any of that stuff if i didn’t make mention of it?..or do you think I have made up a load of baloney to test you out?
Test me out! Yes, I’ve seen it all including the right shoulder chasing deep into the follow-through so he doesn’t run out of right arm.
I think he’d be crazy to change his swing because he obviously knows it and owns it.
GowLow
Lets say you set up your club at P3.5 (about two feet behind the ball) with fully rotated shoulders and very flexed knees and wrists fully cocked and forearms rtoated (club open). Now from that stationary point you whack the club as hard as you can ensuirng to reach to a fully extended finish having released all those angles that I enumerated above. Do you think the club is accelerating post impact??? Hopefully you say yes. Then its all a matter of doing it in a full swing which I agree is not an easy thing.
Hi Macs,
I’m no physicist, so I can only go by what I’ve learned over the years from people that have a far better understanding of such things…and they say it’s not possible. It would seem likely only if the shaft did not flex at all and the power generator (body) was powerful enough to produce enough torque to overcome the mass, velocity/acceleration physics of collision with a golf ball at-rest. I’m of the opinion that the human body is simply not powerful enough, and/or the shaft is too flexible, and/or the mass of the clubhead vs. golf ball at-rest is too great to have the clubhead still accelearating post impact. Maybe Iron Byron or PingMan has been used to run such tests.
Does the clubshaft’s tip flex (bend) target-ward, rearward, or not at all prior to impact? Does the clubshaft’s tip flex (bend) target-ward, rearward, or not at all at the moment the ball leaves the clubface?
Lag,
Does Sam Randolph teach his students a swing method that requires very flat lie angles? Does he recommend to his mid and high handicap students that they use very heavy clubs with stiff shaft flexes?
Are Mr. Randolph’s personal clubs 5*-6* flat?
OK…so we know Iron Byron is not human…BUT…if you look at the picture below
red arrows- he holds the flex of the shaft bending back (which means acceleration is still continuing all the way into impact)
yellow arrows- he continues to hold the flex of the shaft back AFTER impact (which means the club is still accelerating with speed after impact)
If the shaft was bending the other direction that would prove velocity loss- but it does not show that
Does this show it can be done and that the clubhead does not necessarily have to slow down due to ball collision if you have the right intentions with your swing?
Does this image alter your thoughts that it cannot be done?
Yes,
Sam like myself is always suggesting his more serious students work into flatter gear. He just moved one of his pros into
irons 4 degrees flatter. He also thinks the new stuff is too light, and he has been moving into heavier shafts lately also
for himself. We also discussed the problems offset irons create for players, and laughed at one of the sets the Hogan company sent him. (Is it really the Hogan company?)
Sam played some of his best golf with irons 4 degrees flat. He has played 2 to 4 degrees flat most all his career.
I don’t require students to bend their irons flat. However, I highly recommend it… especially if they want to hit more greens and keep the ball under the hole more often.