The thing i was focusing on was the left leg and how quickly it appears to straighten after impact…
Normally I would have kept this to myself, but Lag had recently commented on a video i made of my swing, and when i speculated that my left leg should be straightening out more through impact, he said
"does necessarily not need to be straightened out more at impact… hold off on that …
The post impact pivot thrust can be either provided externally, or internally…"
Which i don’t understand. And Lag invited me to come here and kick off a topic.
So is a rapidly straightening left leg throught impact a fundamental in a top class swing or is it just peculiar to 4 of the best players of all time??
Left let straightening makes it easier to fuily rotate the left hip externally and very fast. If you try to keep the left knee flexed past impact, like Nelson did and Lehman does today, it can hurt your power a bit. We teach a straightening left knee that should have about half as much flex at impact as at address and fully straight or nearly so at P4 or what we call Followthrough position. This seems to be a good Middle Way that works really well for our students. Golfers who suffer from Pivot Stall almost always show this too bent left knee well into almost the Finish. Not good…
Disclaimer: I am just guessing to see how close or far I am to the actual answer, so…
Since Moe straightens the left leg into the finish after impact I am guessing that is a source of post-impact pivot thrust to expend the last of the horizontal ground pressures from waist high to arms above the head. This would be a way of carrying lag pressure to the end. Alternatively, I believe Lag expends the last of the horizontal ground pressures while using the straight left leg and a squeeze like the wringing of a sponge. He’s saying there are options maybe and your tendencies may lend to those options.
History shows us fine strikers who do both… so I think we need to look at the pros and cons rather than this is the way to do it…
Nelson, Moe, Lema, all great strikers into bent left legs… but there is a difference… I don’t think it is a soft left leg… firm but bent… full of structure.
Straightening of the left knee tends to pull the right foot ankle up earlier, which is also ok… because they still have the ball of the right foot preserving ground forces… Gary Player is a fine example of this…
If the left knee stays bent, it helps keep the right foot on the ground longer offering a greater opportunity to further the application of horizontal ground pressures…
The bent left knee encourages the torso to rotate more internally with hip resistance rather than the hip being moved externally lower by the straightening of the left knee…
I vote for a user option here… as history has shown us… of course which better from a purely idealistic standpoint of course is up for debate.
Personally I am a straightener… but I have seen a lot of fantastic ball striking from the benders… Nelson may have been the straightest hitter of all time… I think there have even been some long ballers… long drive champs with the bent left knee.
It’s an interesting topic to debate because we have seen both techniques do very well.
I hadn’t realized that so many great players played into bent left legs.
The thing that triggered me to focus on the straight post-impact-leg, was when i noticed that Trevino straightened, Trevino is famous (in my mind anyway) for breaking his knees.
Not sure i want to be classified as a bender though, that does not translate well across here.
There are certainly pros and cons to going either way… we talk about this quite a bit in module #4.
A bent left knee (firm however) encourages torso thrust post impact against that resistance, and bent knees do
encourage longer ground pressure rooting particularly with the right foot pressures. If torso pivot thrust is weak by nature,
then externally straightening the left leg to aid in keeping things rotationally moving would arguably have benefits.
We don’t have to keep the right heel on the ground to P4. Strong pressures can still be applied from the ball of the right foot…
check out Gary Players classic M#2 action.
The important thing is to make sure something is there… and it’s not just a empty void of “oh, I forgot about that”
Probably as good a place as any to let you guys have a chuckle at the old guys expense…
Have put alot of this ABS stuff together by putting the pieces of the puzzle together from this site. SO…packed up the Hogans and went to an indoor range today. All I can say is pretty cool…When I’ve wanted to use my body I’ve always been more of a Frost, Faldo, Price kind of guy in which the lower body is really primarily supporting things up top. So if you hit the right spots at the right time you don’t have to worry about a 4:30 line…it’s there for the taking.
Here’s what I found as far as feels with ABS stuff…from the top I had to really sit down hard while holding at the same time in order to get that puppy to drop to the 4:30 line. It’s almost like backing into it, if that makes sense.
Anyway…once I sat and held to the 4:30 line is was pretty easy to get through because if you get to that point you really have very little left except pivot thrust to get you through the ball. Man, is that a narrow entry but the compression is worth it. I was feeling alot of sit down, but that was probably because I am using standard lie clubs…would imagine feeling a little less with flatter stuff. The overall motion felt alot smoother than what I am describing. My left knee stayed somewhat flexed but I had a distinct feeling of getting up onto the top of my L hip at P4.
Pretty cool stuff…another arrow in the quiver for us oldtimers.