The more you hit down on the ball, the more you are going to spin it. Also, the more acceleration you apply the more spin.
In the balata era, the balls would spin a lot, so hitting down was not that desirable at times because you would not want to be spinning the ball back from the hole. While that looks cool on TV, it’s not great to be fishing them out of the water short of a green or sucking back into deep rough or bunkers. Moe was aggressive going through, but was not a digger. He liked the ball to land soft… as he would say “like a butterfly with sore feet”.
For the better players, the golf ball now is less sophisticated in my opinion. If it spins less, it is not as useful a ball. The new balls are obviously catering to the distance nuts, not the shotmakers. It’s just homogenizing the game. So now we see steeper swings, box grooves, milled faces and such in an attempt to combat the ball. It’s not working.
Today i had 130m (143 yards) to a front right pin. Wind from the right, and downhill to the flag from the right edge. Impossible with these plastic rocks.
If i had a balata, 7 iron, middle green, working back to the right against the wind. Such a cool shot.
Today, blast 8 right, hook back, 40 feet behind the hole. Felt handcuffed on the tee i tell ya
Thank you very much for your answers. Would be very interesting for me to see your launch data.
I don´t have swings of you when you play on real turf, only this one:
Maybe I adopted to my playing conditions - 60% of the year we have more than 15 knots of wind. So
a lower ballflight fits just my eyes more.
I do understand the intention, even in reality the dynamic loft for good players will be quite different.
The launch angle is a very complex thing with a lot of variables, it is not just static loft minus
AoA and forward shaft lean, but there are friction, moi, contact point, vertical gear effect,
club head speed etc etc…
I even think the flatter lie angles, heavier swingweight and static weight brings my ballflight down…
“I hit my right shoulder on my downswing, I lag so much. One day, I lagged so much, I hit my right ankle!” Moe Norman
The more I read about him, the more impressed I am. Sleeping in bunkers, working jobs at night to play in the day. I do think he was a genius of the golf swing, and do not believe anyone can just say he was instinctively good and just knew how to do it.
Some say he was a savant as if to discredit his work and dedication and to say he only got that good by his mental state. Making it something that he figured out because his brain was wired abnormally, not because of his intelligence and unwavering persistence. True or not, savants can do many astounding things but most do not know how or why. If the head injury was the reason he was great the why did it take that long to get there. Savants that play no musical instruments can hear something, pick up the instrument and play it perfectly. Moe did not do this with the club, took years for him to break 100 according to him. Moe knew how to do it and why to do it, and took years to figure it out. I believe that like Hogan, Norman broke down every part of the swing and knew how and why it worked.
I have been really curious on how you came to the conclusion to use the long thumb grip? I have been trying it out and it seems to me that you can torque the shaft better with this long thumb approach. Are there any old school great ball strikers that have used this approach? I guess if your going to SS you better clamp down on the grip!!
I decided that I will play only with Persimmon woods this year. I remember Lag recommende this
2 years ago to me…
I own a Toney Penna 9 degree X-100 - it is 45,5 long - I will have to shorten it…
Meanwhile I play with my laminated Hogan Speedslot 404 Set, Apex 4 - the 3 and 4 wood are
excellent performers - the 10,5 Driver has the same lenght as the 3 wood and is only D2, too short and
light for my taste… anyway I use what I have…
I’m excited to see a quality golf website devoted to great ball striking rather than who can hit it the farthest! This superslotting thing is on another planet compared to any teaching method out there. Sergio Garcia is one of the very few modern day ball strikers who can achieve this and he recently said that this can not be taught! If you can teach this than kudos to you cause this really is a lost form. (almost extinct!)
This video of Zach is amazing! I don’t think I have ever seen the club shaft as far under the right forearm as this. Great job!
Lag, I appreciate you for making your swing readily available compared to many other instructors who do not show any footage. I noticed that it has been a year since you last made a video of your superslotting on youtube. Has your swing changed? If it has changed do you plan on making an updated version?
Anyways, it has been a treat to read through the vast knowledge and quality teaching throughout this website! Keep up the good work everyone.
Shawshank, that is interesting. Do you have a link to that interview with Sergio, or can you tell more about the context of what he is saying? Obviously, he is “doing it”…is it just natural for him, did his dad teach him, or what?? If someone taught him, why can’t someone else be taught? I’m, not questioning what you are saying, I just want to hear more.
thanks,
eagle
That’s a great question Eagle. Garcia said that “it really cant be taught” and to some degree he is right when it comes down to modern day teachers. He always gives the usual spill about how his father taught him to pull the chain down while keeping his torso back. There is more to it than that of course! If you just pull down the chain you are still going to go over the top. This topic is interesting cause teaching this kind of move is unchartered territory. The youtube video below is where I got Garcia’s quote from. It would be great to further discuss the topic with you eagle.
We teach the Superslotting as an elective module for Mod 6 and beyond graduates.
It’s not easy, but it can be taught. I stumbled across an excellent technique for training how to do it by working on something
that actually appeared to be unrelated. Since then, I have developed several additional drills to help students achieve the SS methodology.
It’s very powerful stuff, and I think it’s part of the real holy grail stuff of the most elite ballstriking ideology. I would say it is not a necessity to achieve top tier ball striking, but if mastered, it’s the ultimate intention.
If you follow Grady’s (NFBANDON) thread on SITD, you can see how he has been progressing through the SS stuff. He has documented it well over there.
It’s not all that hard to do it. Getting it into your swing DNA so that you don’t know how to not do it is the end goal and takes some time and dedication.
I’ll say two things for sure… it’s not just a passive gravity drop, nor is it pulling on the bell rope either.
