Swing is feeling good! Wish I could shorten my swing, I get to parallel with the club on the backswing and that “feels” like half a swing to me. I’ve always fought over swinging but never have had trouble finding the middle of the face. If I could shorten my swing I think a lot of things would fall into place and be more consistent. I would hold shaft flex better, be on the 4:30 line, and rotation would be used closer to impact. It’s getting there and I’m definitely hitting the ball the best I ever have.
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A full turn with a shorter arm swing on the backswing is the goal. Looks good though, and will only get better the more you drill.
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Good work, everybody. You may not know it, but sharing your swings inspires the rest of us.
I am very thankful for ABS. I picked off this screen grab from a Mike Malaska YouTube. There are so many well-intentioned, very smart golf people talking “all around the edges” of what makes the golf swing work… but IMHO, ABS and Lagpressure has given us the core of the golf swing. With ABS, we know what is being referred to in this graphic:
Screenshot came from this URL YouTube Malaska Golf - “Swing is invisible quote” is at 10min-41second mark
This is not a plug for Mike Malasaka. He’s very good, as many are… but IMHO, if you are not able to do the internal body pressures and feelings that ABS teaches us and gives us a rigorous proven method that we can follow… if not for the ABS drills, we “everyday golfers” will probably never be able to “piece together” on our own nor ever get in the required repetitions, to achieve the physical ability and requirements to execute, what teachers like Malaska and many others are talking about… let alone add the required ‘hold shaft flex’ and ‘post-impact pivot thrust’ that is at the core of ABS - ABS gives us the path to the promised land.
Let’s keep drilling! ABS will work for each of us in our own way, given enough proper reps and time.
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Great swings above. Wish I could swing that well.
Here’s a progress report for me, from November 2024:
Since my previous July 1, 2024 videos posted above, another 5 months of ABS drilling is yielding further incremental (albeit slow) progress. There’s no magic bullet; the ABS drilling is clearly improving my motion, my post-impact pivot thrust is better and faster for sure; but that said, there’s still so much that needs to be improved that I can see.
I have been diligently drilling all the Modules: Modules 3 and 4 to improve my post impact pivot thrust thru the ball, to “hold the X”, “exit low left and around”; Module 1 to improve my forearm strength and rotation into the ball; Module 2 cohesive body tension to firmly ground my body for the Module 3/4 “orbit pull”; Module 5 to transition; Module 6 to slot the club.
It’s worth noting that while my swing videos show my motion is nowhere near what it ideally could/should be; for example, I’m clearly not holding the right elbow bent enough and exiting low, left, and around the way I’d like; I’m raising up thru impact as my old 40 years of early extension pattern exists and I still has a long way to go to learn to truly rotate fully level thru the ball.
But what’s important is the above key foundational ABS fundamentals are incrementally improving slowly. The golf swing is truly invisible; my external positions above do not and cannot truly portray the internal improvements in my body from now almost 2 years of ABS drilling. It’s getting to the point where I can feel much different and deeper body sensations, and as a result, while it’s not visible, I feel myself really learning and re-learning a new, different way to strike the ball. I trust that I simply need to keep ABS drilling (there’s no time to waste, as I’ll be 66 in Jan 2025!). It’s hard work. It’s difficult (Module 3 is such a workout!) It’s not a magic bullet. But it IS making a positive difference.
6 iron face on - Nov 2024:
6 iron down the line - Nov 2024:
Driver face on - Nov 2024:
Driver down the line - Nov 2024:
My YouTube playlist of all previous swing videos:
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Hi, all,
Sharing for everyone’s benefit, the suggestions about my swings above, from Neil Gascoigne, one of our ABS instructors on the forum, who reviews our swing videos.
From Neil Gascoigne:
Your swing looks good. My thoughts on this are:
- Do lots of (ABS) drilling
- More module 4 and (Module 4) “Magic Trick” pitch shots, focusing on getting the club more in the left hip pocket post impact, (JSing: i.e. low - left - around, “holding the X”)
- Then hit lots of half swing (Module 4) “Magic Trick” shots (i.e. pitch shots)
- Then hit 3/4 swing with PV5 finish
- Then full wedge swings
- Then finally on up through the bag.
If you can’t do (the ABS principles) with a half swing, then you’ve no chance swinging at 100 mph.
Neil
This really makes a lot of sense and super suggestions. Mirrors my experience with Lynn Blake and The Golfing Machine instruction which states the same thing, that being (my paraphrase) “learn to do the movements first with 12-5-1 Basic Motion two-feet-back-two-feet-thru chip shots. Then proceed to 12-5-2 Acquired Motion pitch shots. Only after that can you effectively proceed to 12-5-3 Total Motion. You must learn proper movements at slow enough speeds that you can monitor and execute correctly, before ramping up. No one can learn proper movements at full speed 100 mph, you have to build up step by step”.
I think Neil’s suggestions above are masterful. Thus worth sharing.
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Clubface skyward at P3. Excellent…
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Working with John and Neil on address and setting up on the 430 line. I thought i was setting up my shoulders on the 430 but realized through video that when I turned my head to look back and the ball, i wouldn’t disconnect my head from shoulders and the shoulders would line back up parallel with target line. Crazy the difference between feel and real!
Once i got the above worked out, John had me practicing taking the club back straight on target line and looping it back onto 430 line…I was surprised to see what happen in the pictures. Can’t wait to go out and play!
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As far as playing… the key is always to go out with some kind of repeating shot pattern… regardless of what that is… a repeating pattern can be managed. So just keep that in mind.
Then when practicing… be vigilant about your Module work.
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Been working on this for 13 seasons now.These last 2 years has been my best.The slotting Hughes/ABS style swing really travels well.Merry Christmas and hit em straight
This par 3 looks amazing! Hope the shot was just as pretty!
Hi, here’s a video from last fall. I decided to boldly try keeping the clubface pointing toward the sky for as long as possible during the swing. It felt great to hit that way, and the ball flew straight to the pin.
(After 1 year drilling)
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Looks good, great work!
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Here’s my latest “Post your swing” updates.
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From April 15, 2025:
7 iron - down the line
7 iron - face on
Driver - down the line
Driver - face on
Since my last videos Nov 11, 2024 - the post impact pivot thrust is getting better. Ball striking is trending better, thank you ABS! At my age of 66, I’m thrilled to just be able to get better. Much more to do…….
(Playlist of my previous golf swings for historical comparison): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kkvAHP1Spw&list=PL48HyQsACx3izNc6tGGc5gioKoP-bqwYu
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Sharing her some of my thoughts as a life-long mid-handicapper
now after 2.3 years of ABS ( https://advancedballstriking.com ) drilling and practice.
(Warning: overly-long stream of my ABS thoughts below. Hope it’s helpful, it’s just my experience, I’m only ABS student like all of you)
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1 We mid-handicappers have more to learn, thus we should be more patient and Keep On ABS Drilling
I think those of us who are mid-handicap golfers (I include myself in that) have different, longer, “need-to-be-more-patient-and-keep-drilling-ourselves” ABS learning curve, than students who are already low handicap golfers.
We mid-handicappers have much more to learn, explore, integrate, we are literally learning a different way to strike a golf ball, compared to our old swing. The already good players have more of the primitives for ABS already in place in their bodies, it’s different and shorter elapsed time for them.
Therefore we former mid-handicappers should be more patient, keep drilling, keep exploring internally, give ourselves the necessary time and persistence to keep growing our ABS golf-knowledge, body-self-awareness, skill. I promise you, ABS is well worth it for us mid-handicappers!
My swing above, after 2.3 years of ABS, is FINALLY slowly starting to show truly different characteristics than the swing I started with. Better ball striking and ability to control the shots is starting to consistently repeat itself on the golf course. Nothing else I have done prior to ABS (over the past 40+ years!) has resulted in this same level of major leap forward. It is real.
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2 Magic Trick drilling (“pitch shots drill’ from ABS Modules 4 and 8) has been really, really key
I also think we mid-handicappers, at same time that we drill to develop our Advanced Ball Striking body movement skills, must also: A) eventually transfer that new ABS skill to actually hitting the ball B) develop our ability to score and do short game with these same ABS fundamentals.
For these reasons, my experience has been the Magic Trick drill from Modules 4 and 8, has been the major beneficial drill for me to take ABS drilling and transfer ABS skill into BOTH short game AND ball-striking ability on the golf course.
For past year, I have been highly focused on doing variation of the “Magic Trick drill” focused on doing 20-100 yard pitch shots applying ABS skills.
(ABS calls this pitch shot drill the “Magic Trick”…. because you start from the 430 line position with hands on right hip, with club wide open… and then learn to hit the ball from there (see more details below). Hidden inside this specific pitch shot drill is all the fundamentals of good full ABS swing, but at a much lower speed - thus easier (especially for us mid-handicappers) to monitor and learn ABS. As ABS’s Neil Gascoigne counsels us: “if we’re not able to execute ABS principles properly and repeatably on 20-50 yard Magic Trick shots, we’ve no chance at executing ABS on full power swings”) Therefore, here’s some videos of working on “Magic Trick” pitch shot drills with a pitching wedge:
Down the line
Face on
Three-quarter view
I should note these are “short game variation” of the Magic Trick drill, where I adjusted the stance because I’m only trying to hit 20 - 50 yard precision short game shots. Idea here is to practice both ABS ball striking AND my short game, simultaneously. As a mid-handicapper, I found I had to gear myself way down to short game pitching distances/speeds, in order to be able to monitor/LEARN/feel execution of ABS principles. I also knew I really needed a much better short game in order to score well.
Thus…. I ended up doing for past year, about 100-150 daily repetitions of this variation of Magic Trick pitch shot drilling, where I narrowed my stance to a short game stance……. (to allow the body to rotate properly at much lower power magnitudes with short game control and finesse)….. yet still applying full ABS principles. (Regular ABS Magic Trick drill uses a normal full stance). In this Magic Trick variation, I am practicing pitching the ball accurately 20 - 50 yard range, with my stance appropriate for a short pitch shot (my feet separated about the width of one feet for the 20 yard shot). With that 20 - 50 yard short game stance, body will be able to rotate much easier in ABS body-post-impact-pivot, with the necessary precision. All other ABS principles apply (Modules 1, 2, 3, 4 especially, 4:30 line, cohesive body tensions, firing the forearms yet post impact pivot thrust stays ahead of the hands and arms, “Holding the X”, keeping right arm bent through the strike, Orbit Pull, center of my chest and my bellybutton are ahead of my hands and my hands in turn are ahead of the club even when holding the finish, etc. And now recently, I’ve been applying mini-portions of the ABS Hogan Modules into Magic Trick as well.
(Trying to do the Magic Trick drill with the wider 7 iron stance is a different drill, the wider stance is not the stance you’d use to learn to pitch the ball precision short distances. I am fully aware in John Erickson’s Module 4 and Module 8 Magic Trick videos as well as Neil’s videos, they’re doing Magic Trick with wider stance. That’s because they are practicing “full power Magic Trick” - a good drill, just for a different purpose. However, for a low power pitch shot, wider power stance for a full 7 iron makes it more difficult for our body to control precision power granularity and low point consistency).
I found I didn’t have the skill set to do full power Magic Trick right out of the gate; so I had to gear down in power and speed so that I could teach myself ABS skills. At same time, I also thought this simultaneously get me into the sorely needed wedge game improvements I needed, if I wanted to score better!
Right Hand only variation of Magic Trick:
Lately my left wrist has been sore from over-working the “Hold the X” in all these Magic Tricks. Thus I also found that you can learn tons by doing this short game Magic Trick drill with the right hand only. If one is using the body properly and keeping the right elbow bent and keeping lag pressure on the club as you pivot through… this is actually fairly easy to do, yet worthy of tons of practice to reinforce our proper bent right elbow / post-impact-pivot-driven strike. More useful learning!
Left hand practice on Magic Trick :
To remind myself that all this “is not easy” especially when my golfing buddies ask me “what are you doing?”, as well as follow the theory from Whole Brain Power / Michael Laverty that learning to do something ambidextrously significantly boosts the myelin-building / skill building on both sides…… I started doing left-hand Magic Trick drills as well (using left-hand 8 iron). This is very instructive. Just because I can do something right-handed, does not mean I can do it left-handed, I have to re-learn it when doing the other side. But, after a month or so, left-hand ABS Magic Trick pitch shot has come a long way - I think a beginner learning to strike a golf ball using ABS and ABS Magic Trick is absolutely better than traditional teachings. Left-hand drilling is humbling yet gives me a lot of good deeper feelings about what’s going on inside that is transferable to my regular side, and reminds me what ABS might be like for someone just starting out.
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- The Magic Trick variation that helped me the Most
What has really helped me “get it with ABS”, was this further specific short game version of the Magic Trick drill, as shown in this video (got the idea from watching Erickson’s legacy Magic Trick videos in ABS modules):
start the Magic Trick drill from right hip position with club on 4:30 line
This variation, in which I start from the hands-at-right-hip position with clubface-facing-the-sky with club-on-the-430-line….. from there using body and post-impact pivot thrust to rotate the club through and square….. learning to do this, is what really put me on the ABS path to improvement. I learned all sorts of ways to do it improperly….. eventually including re-studying ABS videos, I learned to properly rotate the body and forearms and strike with ABS principles from this starting position - no other way possible. 
Tip: as I started learning this drill, l learned “don’t have anything to the right of you, that would suffer from being hit by a golf ball”. I had many rightward shanks in the beginning before I learned to execute this drill properly with ABS intentions…….
Tip: The most common mistake I found out when discussing this drill with my golfing (non-ABS) buddies, is that they all assumed when trying this hands-at-the-right-hip Magic Trick drill, they almost always mistakenly positioned their club on the “3:00 line”. The “3:00 line” starting position for Magic Trick will NOT WORK, for the reasons this YouTube ABS John Erickson “4:30 line “video talks about:
John Erickson talks about the 4:30 line
So I found that I needed to tell my golfing buddies that this “Magic Trick drill starting from right-hip” MUST start with the club oriented on the “4:30 line”. I tell you, not a single one of my buddies had any idea about the “4:30 line” nor have a natural inclination to put it there…. nor did any of them initially have any idea how to strike a golf ball from that 4:30 line Magic Trick starting position! Tells you ABS knowledge, learning and practice should be more widely known in the golfing community….. Note that 430 line starting position and basic body pivot strike, are the base fundamentals of ABS Module 1.
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4 Doing Magic Trick with all clubs, especially the long irons
What also helped greatly, is doing the short game Magic Trick drilling not just with one club, but with all my clubs, long irons and hybrids and fairway wood included. Doing Magic Trick with long irons (especially the 1 iron) is the most instructive drill that I have ever done. The 1 iron won’t lie, it forces me to fine-tune my ABS study and execution ability to my short pivot-driven pitch shot swing. The ball can’t lie, it knows if it’s been struck properly or not.
Magic trick drill with 1 iron
Learning to reliably hit a 1 iron punch shot 1 foot off the ground to varying distances, starting from hands-at-right-hip with club-on-430-line with clubface -wide-open-facing-the-sky…. learning to strike the ball consistently, squarely, repeatably from there …… is not only very useful and comes in handy on the golf course, it’s really satisfyingly fun once you figure out how to do it!
For me as a mid-handicapper, Magic Trick is where I will be focusing for some time to come. I am slowly learning to hit 1 iron Magic Tricks any distance between 20 yards and 100 yards, seeking to reliably repeat the same trajectory for each distance. I already noticed this kind of 1 iron drilling has caused a (remarkable for me) improvement in my ability to hit varying distances with all my other clubs. Thx to ABS 1 iron Magic Trick, I’ve been experimenting on things like gear down hit a driver accurately / reliably onto a green on a 140 yard par 3. Comes in handy, causes my golfing buddies to roll their eyes, and really relieves pressure when I have to “manufacture shots”!
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5 Mr. Hogan doing Short Game / Magic Trick
If you’ve come with me this far in this overly long thread, you are just as nuts as I am.
That said, I recently came across this YouTube of Ben Hogan’s short game swing - rarely studied! This is some of the best videos I’ve ever seen of Hogan doing his version of “ABS Magic Trick” drilling / short game.
Ben Hogan videos of his short game
While watching it, focus on the ABS/Hogan Module fundamentals that Mr. Hogan is clearly employing. Look/listen deeper beyond the commentators “position-focused” teaching comments - while their comments are perfectly valid, they’re discussing positions…… positions that we know in ABS are “vapor trail results” of the ABS internal body pressures / skills of ABS Modules 1, 2, 3. It is these internal body pressures, concepts, and skills that underpin, are the cause of, are the “hidden invisible-inside-the-body”, “you-have-to-know-they-are-there-and-needed” pre-requisites, to truly achieve and execute everything that Hogan is doing in his short game (and long game).
What’s valuable about these often-overlooked Hogan short game videos is to see how all the ABS/Hogan Module concepts we work on, are clearly present in Mr. Hogan’s short game.
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6 Summary
I am very grateful to ABS giving me and all of us, these really workable, approachable, gems of golf knowledge that we can all work on. The more I practice ABS and ABS Magic Trick repetitions, the more often I find new feelings that cause me to go back and review each and every one of the base ABS Modules and Hogan Modules….. in those Modules the hidden gems keep on revealing themselves ………… the Magic Trick repetitions deepen my understanding at a physical and sensory level, raise more questions that I can then go back and re-study in ABS modules, and then seek to apply in more Magic Trick drilling.
The coolest thing about ABS and Magic Trick, is whatever age/skill level I/we are at (I am age 66), I can do 200+ Magic Trick drills to test and develop ABS skills, in the same amount of time that it takes to hit one (expensive) one bucket of range balls, and I don’t have to leave my side yard. I still hit range balls, of course, but those range sessions are more fine-tuning and testing my Magic Trick skill at higher speeds and fuller swings. All of this sets me up to continue to learn how I could appropriately apply Modules 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 into Magic Trick drilling as well.
I’m just another enthusiastic ABS student. Thank you to Lagpressure, TwoMasters, and our ABS community for gifting us all immensely. Thank you all for being here.
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John, I really enjoy your posts on the forum, your enthusiasm is infectious.
Doing the magic trick drill with a 1 iron!!! I haven’t advanced to that yet, lol.
Your swing is looking great. If I could only critique one thing, your clubface on your backswing looks a little closed. Maybe a little more forearm rotation and making sure your left wrist remains a little bit cupped going back would help, then you could get even more aggressive with your post impact pivot.
Great work so far, love your insights always.
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Sawfeat, thank you for your kind words and thx for your sharp ex-tour-player eyes, appreciate the suggestions, sounds good to me, I’ll put that to work in more Magic Trick drilling .
I appreciate all your posts very much as well - it’s great for all us mid-handicappers to see what a ex-tour-player like yourself is doing with ABS - inspires us all very much (in case you didn’t know!).
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John thanks for the write up. I enjoyed reading it as well…Keep at it. I like the sound of contact and motivating me to get our there and do this.
I’m working on post impact stuff and like to do it off the bag like Bradley does. Really slow and feel the left side/shoulder do the work to P4 only. It’s a left oblique workout. It’s a good way to start to feel it. I’m off to do some magic tricks because I have been sadly lacking in that department and agree it is the best way to learn. I’m coming up on 3 years of ABS in August and loving it. I have one method to work on and keep improving at age 59!
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Thanks for this great post John!
It’s always inspiring to see students improving with ABS techniques that have been time tested with so many of the great strikers. Hogan was pure ABS, even in the pitch shots. It’s all there and you don’t need to look very hard!
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