Let's Talk Lag's Golf Machine

Essential Reading
41

Paul’s belief in Hands Controlled Pivot concept is very strong, as was Homer’s, and it was the dominant instruction idea until about the mid-eighties, when Ballard and then Lead focused more on a Pivot driven swing theory. Today it’s most visible proponent is Jim Flick, which I always felt was super ironic last name, given that a wrist “flick” is what inevitably occurs with his notion of hands/arms leading and body pivot following. If I had that last name, I think I would change it in a hurry, but I guess it’s better than Craig Shankland!

When I look in on the TGM forums, that notion of Hands Controlled Pivot is bandied about as if it was a real concrete “thing you do” mechanically with your body motion. Of course it is no such thing. It is referring instead to the sensory feedback loop system I have written about in this thread before. It means ONLY that because you have a ton of sensory nerve endings in your hands, a good player can feel if his hands are out of position, relative to their proper path, or distance from the ground, or speed - and then the subconscious mind will make compensatory adjsutments to the pivot, to help save the shot. Also applies to clubhead lag and clubface angle sensory feedback.

These adjustments are mostly very subtle and small in nature. I am describing what a really good ballstriker can do here, not the average golfer - except very rarely. Average golfers compensations that save the shot are mostly just good luck! I have heard some tour pros refer to this as “hand save”. TIger has talked about it. His hands tell him that they are “stuck” too far behind his chest, ie too much arm lag, and sometimes he can save the shot.

To extrapolate from that true fact, and base a system of instruction on the idea, one geared to average golfers, is beyond absurd. For one thing, “hand save” flat out does not work for anyone who has not already mastered a fundamentally sound pivot. It also totally ignores the basic biomechanics of how the body moves itself. How in fact do the hands “get into” their proper position in the first place in a sound golf swing? You COULD get there - sort of - with almost no pivot if you were very flexible and moved your arms a ton. I see very high handicap golfers trying to do that very thing on every shot, I never see a good player do that.

Hand save also can never work if the golfer has not already acquired a sensory feedback loop system to start with, ie if their body feel sense awareness is poor - 90% of average golfersin my experience - or if they lack good mental focus skills - also 90% of average golfers, good luck trying to get better at ballstriking relying on sensing where your hands are!!

42

It’s possible that “The Hand Save” is what Homer was trying to get at with his “educated hands” ?
Doyle used to love to use the “educated hands” thing as a go-to clause to give understanding to the good players that were clearly dealing with faulty mechanics. He didn’t like Lanny Wadkins swing nor Curtis Strange’s. He would tell me “but they have educated hands, and think how good they would be if they understood G.O.L.F.”

Langer came by for a lesson from Ben, and Ben was trying to get Bernhard to dump in out to right field… Not sure what Langer took away from the lesson, but his swing looked the same months later. I remember Langer winning somewhere and Ben was quick to take credit for it. I guess that’s what teachers do! :unamused: What Ben did with Clampett in the early days was more than worthy of praise for sure… However, if you give a great player a quick swing tip… and he goes out at floors everyone… is that worthy of an official student- teacher relationship? Certainly some gray areas there.

There are a few that claim to have given Hogan his missing piece.

43

Yes, hand save is part of educated hands. So is using athletic, dynamic hand-eye coordination to apply the clubhead to the ball, something that you really do not need at all in a really sound golf swing. I always thought Homer’s educated hands stuff should really have been called “educated wrists” since it seems to be mainly about that, at least in my early edition version.

Henry Cotton I believe is one of the first to coin the phrase “educated hands”. He was a hands teacher all the way. The first to use an impact bag type of training - except his “bag” was an old rubber tire. He liked a very firm grip pressure, like you do Lag, that did not seep into the wrist and forearm muscles. Takes a bit of practice to get this as you know. He never wanted the hands to move even a fraction of an inch during the swing, no moving around on the handle, no handle twisting in your hands. He stressed checking hand position at the FInish to see if there was even the slightest change from Address.

We teach educated hands more along the line of Cotton and have a separate section of the training for wrist mechanics. Our goals are 1. no slippage via grip pressure points, similar to Hogan’s ideas, 2. palms aligned 15 degrees to right of clubface as baseline grip position, can change from there a bit depending on ball flight, ie to correct for a hook or slice. 3. pressure fundamentals: overall pressure, equal pressure in left and right hands for a normal shot, constant pressure (no changes in pressures), Cotton’s “wring the flannel” pressure to unify the hands. 4. feel sense awareness for clubface angle, clubhead weight or lag pressure point, clubhead to ground awareness during impact segment (Low Point especially), hand path awareness, hand speed, and a few others. This is the starting point of development of the sensory feedback loop system.

44

Very true, because subjects can become so complex that a uniform language must be developed to break things down into small, conquerable units to (at least) establish a foundation of total agreement from which to build.

However if I can speak for other scientists, we are stubborn and don’t accept something just because someone else said it, regardless of who they are. It can be a curse at times because if something doesn’t add up, we have to spend ages convincing ourselves we aren’t in the wrong. Otherwise it just nags at you, manifesting in lack of confidence when intentionally trying to just shut up and do it. I liken it to the feeling you get when interrupted midway through a snack, then afterward wandering around in limbo thinking ‘something’s not right’ until you come across that half eaten snack, and voila, all’s good again.

In my readings of TGM, I wasn’t comfortable with some things I read. I would ask but I would be quoted a passage from the yellow book as though it was law. “Why is a FLW important?” - Answer: 'Because it’s an essential - see 2-0". It was that same frustration you got with a dictionary looking up say ‘exculpation’ and reading ‘the process of exculpating’.

And then I’d try to dig deeper. That meant I must know the difference between an ‘imperative’ and an ‘essential’. Well Homer hasn’t defined it, they’re not in his glossary, but they are capitalized so they must be his definitions. The English dictionary doesn’t distinguish between them anyway.

It took a long time to even think I understood why Homer chose to have two categories. But then I didn’t agree with the stationary head essential, still didn’t know why a FLW was critically important, and thought the only way a plane line can’t be straight is if the ground is bumpy, planes being flat by definition.

‘Search for the Perfect Swing’ will always be showing its front cover on my bookshelf. Only Percy also gets to face outwards. Simple experiments, simple, practical conclusions. Something solid to ponder and extend from. But TGM and the industry it spawned comes across as though, like Teddy said above, everything is set in stone. Even questioning it to understand it better leads to frustration through vague responses and book section numbers already read twenty times.

It sure had me seeking someone who didn’t bow to it to the exclusion of everything else.

45

So good this thread is still alive!!

On ISG Gery Hogan made a point that the sensory system of the hands takes 2/10 ths of a second to reach the brain, about the same time as a golf swing. It would be pretty much impossible for any but the absolute best golfer to change the action of the swing as a result of feedback from the hands. So it wont drive the pivot I guess either. Of course it might affect your next swing. Just thought it was an interesting point.

46

And pressures are what humans have such fine control over. Next time you’re driving just notice how little the brake pedal moves between braking flat out and barely at all. If brakes didn’t work on pressure but had a position sensor instead, we’d probably be dead.

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I’m not sure how valid Gerry Hogans statement about 2/10 of a second is - basically a quarter of a second. I am certain that nerve signal speed is far faster than that. Maybe by brain he means conscious mind discrimination. Different story then, but still faster than 2/10 second, unless your mind has a really slow processing speed. Downswing takes roughly a quarter second. I and I am sure Lag and Twomasters as well, can testify that we can feel our hands throughout the swing, although there will always be some tiny delay, especially during later downswing just before impact when hands are travelling the fastest. I’m talking about what I prefer to label “subtle mind” kind of awareness, which operates at a faster speed than conscious thought.

Hand Save thus is mainly confined to backswing and first half of downswing, as it is too late to do much of any saving after that point. “Search” described their famous light bulb switching off experiment to see if tour pros could do anything to alter their body motion once the downswing started. Their conclusion was that little if anything could be done that was observable change at that point. Of course that begs the question: were the pros actually doing a type of hand save that they perhaps had done many times in the past and thus at least somewhat good at doing, or some other much more concrete and gross type of body motion that the scientists could easily detect? Sounds like it was the latter. And - how do we know that the observing scientists were sufficiently knowledgable about the golf swing to detect a change visually? I have students all the time who watch another student and simply don’t see all kinds of body and club motion that I can see.

48

Yes, I don’t know how accurate it is either, or if it makes a difference if your focus/mind is already on the sensors involved. Obviously the better golfer will be more aware (more educated hands?) than a beginner like me. So their chances in the backswing and initiation of the downswing to react and affect things will be far greater than mine. He talked of that same experiment, nice to read your take on it, thanks.

49

Yep BP,
Lots of feeling something off and trying to save it-- but— how often do we actually save it? maybe 1 or 2 out of 5? And that is at the highest level of the golfing scale. So what hope has a lower/lesser level golfer got of saving face by using the hands aggressively, actively, passively? It takes years of playing, practicing, pressure situations to get even close to saving shots with the hands. The intentions are there but sometimes it’s too late- sometimes we save it too early because we feel something off very early in the swing. Lots of stuff going on in 0.5 seconds of the swing…educated hands or not doesn’t help much on many, if not most occasions . And this flashlight thing means nothing to me. Flashlights seem to work too much in straight lines in my opinion. Better to have an educated body and let the hands/club come along for the ride.- is that more along your thinking?

50

Yes, Twomasters - very much my line of thinking. Educated Hands means more than just the hand save part though, as I said. Holding on to the handle end properly to avoid slippage, and having the right amount of overall pressure so your wrists can uncock fast and effectively through impact is also important. If I had to choose Educated Hands over Educated Body, I would take the Body any day of the week!

And you are right of course - even the best strikers on the planet will fail to “save” the shot more often than not. The sensory feedback loop system is not limited to the hands. There are proprioceptive nerve endings in the feet, and all throughout the body that tell our brain/mind how are body is moving in space, assisting in Balance, and Tempo, as well as helping us to learn better Mechanics.

This is what Percy Boomer meant about developing an effective golf swing over time based on “lines of control based on feel” - not thought. Lines of control for the Pivot, Arm Motion, Wrist Motion, Right Elbow, etc.

Most average golfers are engaged in a futile and frustrating attempt to acquire a good golf swing based on lines of control that are grounded in thinking - not feeling.

The other system I referred to is the Feed Forward or Motor Program system - which means learning new body movement patterns to the level of dominant habit. Feedback system for some degree of compensation (when needed) and for Learning, and Feed Forward system for creation of effective mechanical habits that repeat under pressure.

51

I’ve never seen any hard science studies about the time delay issue, but I have always believed it to be there. Years ago when I was doing a lot of
re design work on my swing, I found that if I wanted to change something in my swing, I would have to make the change about 3 feet farther down my swing path, and then I would see results as I moved backwards. For instance, if I was trying to get to a more open clubface just past impact, I would have to work on that clubface being more open well beyond P4, or heading up toward my finish. If I tried to focus on that sensation at the exact time I believed it to be going on, I would fail every time. It’s fascinating stuff.

This is why I really work on high ideals with proper intentions, and preservation of impact alignments all the way to finish when drilling as much as possible.

52

Lag, that’s the sort of insight you can only get from a player of your caliber, nice.

BP, lines of control based on feel, sound great. Feel is so different for each person. I know in my area of expertise I can talk technique to the student, but it means nothing till they can transfer this into feel. I can’t teach them the feel, wish I could with some : )

The golf training I’m doing is along these lines, sure I talk a lot of technique with my teacher but the training is without thought, well conscious thought I guess. This way you establish movement patterns that survive under pressure as you say.

53

Well said, Lag. The “neurological time delay” as I like to call it, is one of the most fascinating subjects in golf. I took a look at the Gerry Hogan thread over at ISG, about the Search experiment, and it refreshed my memory that the goal of the test was to get the players to stop their swing. Its a flawed test, for many reasons. First, we all have witnessed Tiger stopping like a statue at Lag’s p3 position on full swings - so we know it is humanly possible. Tiger explained it as a result of many hours of slow motion mirror training and position practice, also half speed training. And coming to a complete stop is a HUGE change. I was talking about very small and subtle changes to both Pivot timing and to forearm roil if the intent is to change the clubface angle.

Gerry Hogan seems to think that no such hand save is possible, a complete illusion in fact. I think it is possible, but only for good players with a highly developed sense of feel for their body and club motion, a strong mind/body connection and a mechanically sound golf swing. Remember that the only part of this whole hand save issue that is conscious, is the first step that something is “off” as Twomasters said. The compensation that happens a fraction of a second later is 100% (or nearly so) unconscious. There are many examples of other sports, including hitting a baseball where the batter reacts to a very fast but still conscious perception that the ball is starting to slide or curve or whatever, and then his body makes a very fast response, instinctively. Martial arts a similar thing can happen when fighting an opponent, I have some experience with this in karate and also in kendo, Japanese sword fighting. The book “Zen in the Art of Archery” explores some of this stuff.

The best book I have found on reaction time studies and the time delay is called “The User Illusion” by a Danish science writer, dont recall his name. Really good stuff.

Gerry Hogan is also off on his elapsed time of swing stuff. I have never seen anyone on Tour at .89 of a second. Using videotape at 30 frames per second, average tour pro is right about at 1 1/2seconds from start to finish, the faster tempo guys are at 1 1/4 second and the really slow guys about 1 3/4 seconds.

His larger point is a good one, though. The golf swing is happening way too fast in too short a time interval for any kind of precision conscious mind control of the body, except perhaps at the very start of the backswing. High speed or “ballistic” body motion that is mechanically complex by definition is involuntary in nature. You do indeed program into the subconscious the kind of body motion you want - but not with a conscious mind single thought as he suggests, but by practice! Practice creates the motor programs, or dominant habits. The body can indeed respond to a “suggestion” or “Image” that is sent from the conscious mind to the subconscious. But even that is a bit of an art and requires the mental focus, body awareness and strong mind/body connection I talked about before. The problem with that “single swing thought” approach is that you need a lot of things happening correctly more or less simultaneously in a good golf swing. And you can only focus on one thing per swing effectively, or at most one for the backswing and one for the forward swing.

54

If you have to think about something in your swing to achieve it, then best to leave that for practice. Ideally we want what we are working on to become what I call “our swing DNA”.

When something in your golf swing becomes so second nature that you would have a hard time “NOT DOING IT”. Then we can take comfort in the fact we have fully integrated it into our swing DNA.

I didn’t play golf for over 15 years, outside maybe a once a year round with Dad on a holiday visit. Without playing for so long, it was incredible what I learned about golf and my own golf swing. It really told me what parts of my swing I really owned and what I didn’t. During my time off, I would often have swing thoughts as you might imagine, and while I never acted or worked on anything, my brain somehow made changes to my swing without drilling, nor practicing.

My first round was May of 08, at my newly discovered Mare Island, and I was able to shoot a 74 without even hitting a practice shot or range ball, or even warming up on the putting green. It felt very strange, terribly uncomfortable yet hauntingly familiar.

One of the reasons I didn’t play golf was I truly believed that if I dabbled with it as a once a week golfer, or a casual once a month player, I would adjust to that level of play. By not playing for so long, when I teed it up, I never went through the process of “I’m not good anymore” In other words,
my brain never received the negative feedback of moving from a full time tour player to a once a month chopper. So when I teed it up, my brain simply sent out the same signals to my body that it did when I was on tour.

Now my muscles were a bit out of shape, but not nearly as bad you would think. The calluses on my hands were almost entirely gone. But very interesting that they were NOT ENTIRELY GONE!

I realized that my swing would only get so bad… I am just not going to be a 90 shooter no matter how long I lay off. It was an absolutely incredible sensation to know what was really and truly mine, right through the game from tee to green, intuition, feel, mentally, everything.

Of course I don’t recommend anyone do this! But I think the lessons here run very deep. I certainly don’t have any fear of taking time off now.

The experience of playing felt completely transformed. It was the first time I played free of any agenda. No high school or college team. No upcoming events to prepare for. No tour schedule, no sponsors to please… just me and the course. The first couple of rounds I played at Mare I would just play alone… it was simply amazing. For one, a fantastic golf course right on the north SF Bay. Strong winds, and incredible views in every direction. The course being built in 1892, you can just feel the history under your feet. It just really felt good to play for all the right reasons again.

I often wondered how long I could play incognito. I wasn’t interested in telling anyone about my past… but over the months, as I did on occasion get forced to join a group, word got around about this guy who played with persimmon and old irons and would shoot under par. Questions started to come, the marshalls would follow me around for few holes and want swing tips and such. The club champion tracked me down for a game when I was casually eating a bag of popcorn in the grill. So that era of solitary isolation eventually ended.

What I really missed when being more open to playing with other people was the persimmon age. It was absolutely gone. Not a trace of it’s existence.
On tour, I played right up to the end of the persimmon age. By 1994 they were almost gone… just a few die hards around. Now, they were all gone.

Golf without the sound of the crack of persimmon, I just couldn’t believe how much I missed that. The high pitched ping of titanium was not a fair trade off to my ears. It quickly became clear that the new gear was acting as a crutch for the golf swing. Removing the precision from the game didn’t seem like a direction I wanted to go. I enjoy the challenge golf has to offer. Who am I kidding really?

1 Like
55

The 0.89 seconds was from start to impact as opposed to start to finish. I suspect Gerry said ‘full-swing’ more in the light of not being a 3/4 swing, but I agree he gave the wrong impression.

56

Might have been me that confused or miss quoted? Re reading his post it states that it takes about 2/10ths of a second to go from top to impact, I guess this is where he is saying most of the "hand save’ action might be? He is addressing the subject of pressure points in TGM with relation to affecting/feeling the shot.

57

Thanks guys,

I sent Gerry an email this morning… inviting him over. He would be welcomed.

58

Hi Lag

I have been studying Moe Norman, George Knudson, Ben Hogan and Sam Snead for a while now on my own and I would say I am most defiantly a swinger of the golf club as apposed to a hitter! one of best quotes i have ever heard with regards to being a swinger is it should feel “oily” - Sam Snead

I believe the secret to great golf for the swinger is it’s all in the motion of the torso and setup and I have hit well over 100 thousand balls and read countless golf books in my pursuit needless to say most of these books you could chuck straight in the bin, the first 65 thousand balls was all hands and arms though back when I was taking lessons of some friends who are PGA pros, what a mistake!! But that’s a different story

I have a few questions for you as you state you used to be a swinger at the beginning of your career and from our limited conversations and from the posts you have made that I have read I believe you do know what you are talking about unlike 99.99% of other golfers out there.

How important would you say spine angle is for a CF swinger do u need to be angled to the right as Moe Norman appeared to be?
This is something that I have found myself thinking about after hitting another 400 balls on the range today, you see I hit 1 perfect iron shot then 1 ten yard pull (at worst) 1 perfect 1 ten yard pull etc etc etc. these are all perfectly straight shots unless I intentionally play for a fade or a draw, I don’t get this problem with the driver but my driver is significantly heavier than standard and you can really feel the CF, im thinking that this spine position would eliminate the pull entirely from my game when coupled with the right foot staying down (inversion) at impact.

59

Lag

also can you check my footwork out as im doing a new move where i go down with torso into right foot at start of downsing if that makes sense (its a new feeling) this causes foot to roll over and stay down at impact, like your thoughts on this.

you can view the video here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnQFgTZ8ZYs

60

The footwork looks better than most… if the pressures are moving through it correctly, you are on the right track… good stuff.

My thoughts on hitting vs swinging are different than TGM version.

I view the main difference to be active vs passive hands… or are the hand motors, actively applying pressure to the shaft? or are they merely acting as passive hinges?

Hogan talked about hitting with the hands… wishing he had three right hands… he didn’t say three right elbows.
Snead talked about pulling the club down with the back three fingers of the left hand, then firing with the right hand at the bottom.

If you fire the hands in unison with forearm rotation, you are changing the path of the clubhead, especially if you pin your upper arms to the body.

The club if given a chance, wants to move out and away from us… due to the outward throw of Centrifugal Force. We can either fight this… moving the club tightly around the body, or we can relax and let the club move away from us with the arms moving off the body post impact. Personally I prefer the first method for a host of reasons.

If we go with the loose arm throw out to say right field… the hands work better as passive hinges, and the clubface will rotate or close quickly post impact. This is the full roll or what TGM calls a horizontal hinging action.

The hit on the other hand, works better with firm active hands with the club cutting what appears to be from a DTL view…as left post impact. Shocking to many, this is actually “on plane”. It’s not uncommon for the player to feel an almost underhanded feeling going through impact, because the closing of the clubface becomes more the action of pivot rotation rather than independent rotation of the clubface with when left unchecked will seek an inline gravitational disposition quickly post impact. This requires passive hands…

Now once we understand here my perspective on hitting vs swinging, then we can talk about other things like spine tilt.
Either way, you need to get the club moving toward the inside quadrant of the golf ball… and this is VERY REAL for all of us visually, because we don’t swing on a plane that is even with our eyes… only then would things appear to us to be moving back and forth in a straight line. Spine tilt is necessary for us to allow a clear pathway for our arms to come down from the top, and open up access for our hands to move toward the inside quadrant of the ball. Hit or swing, the clubhead then rotates into the back of the ball… and this is one of the great illusions of golf. Get this and you get a lot of this game. Moe’s right leg acting as a post on his backswing made good sense to me when we discussed this in 1987. Both Moe and I set up closed at address because if you think about it… you are going to rotate back anyway… so if you can eliminate unnecessary movement in the golf swing… I am all for it. Baseball players set up closed… they don’t have time to take a backswing… Moe told me the quicker you can swing the better. I agree 100% assuming it is done correctly with the torso and pivot, and not the arms.

The arms don’t have much of a role in the golf swing… the right arm folds on the backswing, partially unfolds on the downswing, and the left arm folds into the finish. The more the arms can stay in relatively connected relationship with the torso, the better. The pivot and the hands combined with forearm rotation, not elbow thrusting do a better job of handing an accurate repeatable strike to the golf ball…

Homer was spot on in my eyes when he discussed how variations in right elbow bend during release create problems with clubface control, and even labeled it an inferior procedure… yet every TGM instructor I know teaches the complete opposite.
Something lost in translation, but it is right in his Chapter #2. I’m not one to memorize scriptures, but I could look it up for anyone who really cares to know.

So spine tilt is a good thing, and also helps save pivot range of motion for a post impact rotational torso acceleration, which Homer did not get… given that he forgot to include a form 1 lever to assign to pivot thrust through and post impact. That is a serious problem in my eyes.