More comfortable than what if I can ask?
If you grip the club you will create axis tilt automatically in the backswing, by virtue of the right hand being lower on the club…
The longer the club, the more tilt you will see, right?
More comfortable (for some) than just tilting to the right from a standing/erect position, or sliding the lower body towards the target at transition a-la stack and tilt, or any other means. There are many ways and different times that you can achieve axis tilt. Yes, you get some of this by just gripping the club but you need to add more at some point in the swing. For ABS students, I believe this is discussed in the M1 supplementary vid.
makes sense, thanks.
Couldn’t help but notice the “V” on the soccer ball…and the deja vu implication to Hogan. 
RR
Great stuff (as usual) BOM,
The foot being the club… (or the club head?!)
This could be the football equivalent of a nice (power)fade:
Good stuff, IOZ, it’s always interesting to see how a ball is treated to make it move the way we want it to…
What’s this got in common with a golfer?
ground pressures…bent right elbow… and a bald head !!
Hitting a white ball across a green surface with a wooden stick sounds familiar.
The descending blow /angle of attack, putting backspin on the ball…
How about stick plane flatter than shoulder plane.
Also liked the “V” hairline…what is it about “V’s” RR
Funny! Poor Steve, all that glorious ginger turned to bald… he’s still a hero though…
In my opinion, snooker is similar to golf in that it’s a side saddle game that requires correctly directed linear force. The tip of the cue hits the ball in whatever place that it needs to in order to shape the ball. But by and large, the force comes from directly behind the ball. In golf, we look down on the top of the ball so it’s an awful lot harder to envision the required force being applied to the ball. If you imagine how a quality golfer sets his eyes or intentions down behind the ball at the correct point during acceleration in order to apply the desired force, then you can see one of the ways that snooker is similar. You could argue that Steve is in a sort of 4:30 line position as you guys call it, but the reality is that he has the cue on the correct level with the point on the ball that will result in it being propelled to the desired effect.
There’s a lot more to this story and these thoughts, but it’s so important, in my opinion, to isolate or define the actual goal of force application to the ball. This speaks to some of my thoughts about inside vs. low, and direction vs. propulsion.
Lots of thoughts…
CHeers…
BOM
Very cool. This thread highlights perhaps the single biggest bugbear in all of golf: why skill at all my other jock activities, especially baseball and hockey, don’t seem to ever transfer over.
Take for example, that bird’s eye view picture of Pujols pulling one over the left fielder’s head. Would be willin’ to wager that, if that’s a pix of a tater, the ball flew 430 or more. One of those “It’s outa here” moments.
Most decent hitters, myself included, don’t ever get around on the ball that much. That’s what pitchers are for, to make sure you don’t.
But if you had a system that would induce PERFECT repetition, and could dial up ball speed, height, position over the plate, it might take 20 minutes before everyone was a “look at me, ma” level pull hitter. Pretty sure anyone who hit better than .280 on a decent high school team, given all those parameters (and, yes, it would never happen in the real world, it would be a Star Trek kinda thing) would be ripping the ball with power in a matter of minutes. Once you trusted that the ball would always be in the same spot (which you can do easily in golf) you would be thumpin’ it.
In golf terms, you would be stripin’ it down the fairway. Slice be gone.
In baseball, like golf, most players slice. You end up coming across the ball, because you are late initiating the swing. Slow the pitch speed down marginally, and no one slices any more. And take away the possibility of the pitch coming at your ear, and the batter can REALLY commit.Hence the scenario above.
Now, lets transfer back to the real world. To me, a golf swing, when I pure one, feels EXACTLY like connecting on an outside slider. It’s a rare, but it happens. Ya wanna see hips turn after impact? Any pix of Reggie Jackson, especially after a swinging strike, will suffice. I don’t even pretend to be anywhere even remotely close to the hitter he was, but I do know what it feels like to rotate hips after impact swingin’ at a baseball. But why won’t that transfer the the golf swing?
In golf, we get to manage all the parameters; how far we set up from the ball, how fast we swing, the weight transfer. And yet, with all that control, only a very few ever get consistent contact.
A better example is T-ball. For those unfamiliar, it’s a training game for little kids, where the ball is placed on what amounts to a giant rubber tee, not unlike the ones at a driving range, but three feet high instead of three inches.
I guarantee given a bucket of baseballs, and a t-ball tee, I could give anyone with average athletic skills repeatable, trustable, tuneable swing in about two hours. And that includes water breaks.
But change that tee back to a golf tee, and change the ball to a golf ball, and bat to a golf club, and all bets are off.
And that’s what’s soooooo frustrating; in all the other “hitting an object with a stick” sports, the timing, weight transfer, hand eye coordination are all there. But in golf? Kablooie.
Even more frustrating? The martial arts training doesn’t seem to transfer over. Timing the focus of the hip snap with the hand(s) at impact, which is a point a couple of inches past the target,equally describes a chocko zuki as well as a golf swing. Which makes one of Lags early posts describing how a (Tai Chi if memory serves) master watched him swing once, and honoured him with recognition of his skill, all the more poignant; I know exactly what he’s talking about, and know it’s true. But why, oh why, won’t that truth transfer into my golf swing?
Anyway, thanks for reading.
And please, indulge me in one more silly newbie question: was there ever a thread about interpreting divot shapes? Tracks, like divot’s, don’t lie.
hawg1
divot thread: advancedballstriking.com/forum/v … 16f773a017
Thank you Ironofzion. Clicked on the link though, and my id is not authorized to view that link.
Maybe that’s incentive enough to join (pay) in the student area.
BTW, I picked your side to win the world cup, about a week before the festivities started. The punter litteraly laughed at me.
Wasn’t laughing when they made the final though.
And that’s another thing that makes golf such the great game it is: Ain’t no hammin’ it up for the zebra. The rules are the rules. No amount of crying will change the fact that you just chunked it in the water.
And on a completely different note; does anyone here know what the fan REALLY said to Greg Norman? Can’t remember the exact year, but it was very close on the tail when he lost it going down the stretch.
Anyway, he’s lookin’ at the same shot that began his downfall the year before, and the fan allegedly yelled out “Chunk it in the water.”
Security removed the fan, but he claimed what he said was “Chum is in the water” referencing Mr. Norman’s nickname, and that chum is what a fisherperson uses to start a shark feeding frenzy.
I’m guessin’ their might be one or two folks here who A: were standing there and heard it, or B: are sufficiently versed in Oz lingo to do the mythbuster thing. Is “Chum is in the water” really an equivalent of “Get in the hole?”
Regards
hawg1
This is just an all round great post and exactly what I’m trying to get at. The T-ball analogy is just great and one that I’ve thought about a lot, and maybe speaks to some sort of perspective issue in the different sports, and maybe life in general- if it’s easier than we think it is, then maybe it is easier?
Thanks for your thoughts, hawg1… great stuff… I’ve got no doubts that you can transfer your athletic knowledge over if given the correct picture…
BOM
BomGolf,
Thanks for reading, your comments are appreciated.
Another thing that caught my eye was the post regarding pool and snooker. Two seemingly different, but very related, games.
But with one HUGE difference between them: By the end of this post, you will know the key to being a world class snooker player. No way one post could do that for golf… .
As long as I’ve played these two games (both started when I was a wee lad of single digits) pool / snooker / nine ball has always reminded me of putting. That sense of reading what’s what, and then stroking a white ball with the correct line and weight… . All the kids I grew up with kinda felt the same way, at least the ones that used to retire to the pool hall after golf, or in the winter… .
And here is the best pool advice you will ever, ever get. It will also fatten your wallet, should you choose to do so. This, er, uhm, hustle will work against anyone but a through and through professional. You can use it to shut down a blowhard EVERY time. And I mean EVERY time. Anyone who can beat you at this hustle is NOT, I repeat NOT, making his or herself known to you. You are not a big enough fish (unless a certain legendary basketball player is reading… .)
Step 1. Place the queue ball on the head line. (Scratch line, or an arbitrary line between the top two dots on the long sides of the table.) It doesn’t really matter, as long as the ball is at one end. Where you place it to break is perfect.
Step 2. Remove all the object balls from the table.
Step 3. Place the wager.
Step 4. Request the (soon to be) payee to strike the ball down table, and have the queue ball come back and hit the queue tip (without it moving after it strikes the ball) three times in a row.
Yes, you read that correctly. You want the guy / girl to hit the ball down the table, have it bounce of the bottom rail, and come back and hit the queue stick, three times in a row.
Unless the person you are betting is On-T.V. good, you will win the wager. And if the person IS On-T.V. good, ask for five in a row, not three. Odds are you will still win. But the odds are even longer that anyone who can win this will ever show their stuff. But every blowhard, loudmouth know it all will. They KNOW they can do it. But the they can’t. Ever.
Why? Simple physics.
While golf is the hardest game we have yet invented, striking a queue ball with a queue stick without imparting torque (hitting it clean, or puring it) is the hardest task in all of sports. Period.
If you miss by even a milimetre, the torque generated by a shot hard enough to make it up table and back will be enough to deflect the ball, as it comes off the cusion, far enough to the left or right to miss the queue stick.
Even if you do manage to hit the centre of the ball with the centre of the queue, if your bridge is off at all (again, that elusive millimetre, or sixteenth of an inch) you will impart torque on the ball.
Same goes if you have anything but a primo, no foolin queue. House lumber will flex, albeit imperceptabley, and generate squirt (think watermellon seed in fingers) an thus alter the line.
So, if you wanna become a world class pool player, find a snooker table, put the ball in the middle of the D, hit it into the foot rail, and have it hit your queue. Do that over and over and over and over until you can actually do it.
Steven Hendry might get 50 in a row. But know this, he spent hours, days, weeks, years doing this drill. And he likely did it today.
If you can do it 15 times in a row, regularly, you are ready for the pool equivalent of Q school. Period.
If you can do it 15 times in a row, pool / snooker / nineball becomes only a head game. Can you stand the pressure? Can you keep the concentration up long enough to grind with someone shooting as straight as you are? Because the weak part of everyone’s game, the stroke, is no longer a factor. To keep the golf metaphore, you really are puring one irons off a deck. Two with fade. Then two more with draw. On demand.
Now, to be fair, I’m not that level of a snooker player. Far, far from it. But there is trouble in River City. And many a winter’s night was spent at a buddy’s house, watching his professional snooker player brother practice.
And that’s the thing bout golf, There isn’t (or at least this poor sod hasn’t found it) a similar set of instructions, which, if completed, will generate a world class swing.
Maybe that’s why this site is so compelling: maybe Lag can spell it out that simply.
From what I’ve read so far, it has the ring of truth.
Again, thanks for reading.
Cheers,
hawg1
Thanks for supporting us hawg1 
Too bad we couldn’t pull through in the final. 
I didn’t realize the divot thread was in the student area of the site.
If you need some more incentive 
I do know that besides world class instruction, there is loads of other good stuff on ‘the other side’.
For example there is ‘The Vault’, which holds an enormous amount of high quality vids and pics of lots of great players…