The best way to clarify this is to realize we don’t hit the ball on the backswing…
I can take the club back… loop it around like a rodeo cowboy, and still make good contact. Once you learn the proper impact, and post impact sequencing… you have a lot of viable options for taking it back… and this fact is backup up by
endless historical references to great ball strikers.
Sergio Garcia circa 2006
Cutouts from same sequence…
Sergio’s awesome at it …love his swing
Amazing how all the funky swings according to the ‘experts’ are all showing unbelievable dynamics…Sergio, Furyk, Trevino, Doyle etc etc
Eagle, I don’t do the modules btw, I’m a bit of a searcher myself trying to hammer out ideas… I’m a bit of masochist too- destined to learn the hard way! Though I read an interesting quote by Einstein where he said ‘the secret to creativity is hiding your sources’… gotta love it… always learning from somewhere…
The left cup idea is definitely something I’ve thought a lot about. In many ways i see it as a kind of fuel in the swing, as proportional to our ability to use our pivot on the way through, or to accelerate. Acceleration has some link to loft, and the cupping keeps the loft on the club which encourages a delofting at some point through the downswing and impact zone, which is a positive intent I think. If you’re adding loft through the ball you inevitably have to do some sort of decelerating or backing up. So when you whip the club in like you were saying Eagle, you remove loft and prematurely flatten out the left wrist. I see the flattening of the left wrist/removal of loft in a way, as one of the last links in the chain of internal to external acceleration. In reality it’s not a dramatic delofting as much as the spending of the left wrist cup is an accommodation or is representative of the unwinding accelerating torso leading from inside the motion…
Two masters,
Amen… you have no dynamics … you have no golfswing… Sergio is pretty good there a few minor areas he needs to fine tune and there will be no stopping him although he is pretty close…
Once he gets his putting back look out
The 2 highest ranked players as far as Major Championships are concerned- head to head swing sequence…Tiger versus the 60’s version of Jack
Hogan from the 50’s
Pics of Tiger and Nicklaus…Gary Player was on the Golf Channel a few years ago, and showed pictures of Tiger at impact, and compared him
to Hogan ( may have been someone else). Player said great ball strikers had their right elbow at their side at impact( 4th frame from last).
He said Tiger could improve his consistency if he would do that.( Tiger has a space visible)
Tiger has some time now…maybe he’s in his basement, doing the modules.
correct Eagle…It is amazing how many players of today do that same similar move …is it coaching?..is it technology (graphite shafts or length of shafts)?..is it the course design?..is it not enough study of the greats?.. I don’t get it. Now that we all have become very studious of the game and the greats, I can’t believe these players can’t see it when it is all there in plain view…I guess I couldn’t see the trees for the forest myself for a while, but it is so obvious as to what is/can/will hold some of these players back from precision on a much more consistent basis I am surprised people haven’t strived to improving it
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfT88wW2cJ0[/youtube]
What does ABS call the fifth pic in the Hogan sequence posted above by TwoM? Is this the orbit pull or the 5th Accumulator? Hogan looks well into his follow through but
the club looks far from being in a vertical position. The right wrist is bowed downwards. Greg Norman looks similar at this point in the swing. What must go on
to get such extension through the ball?
Here’s a great pic of a different sequence— that’s the vertical position in the final pic
There’s my guy. Thanks TM for the Hogan photo’s- could watch that guy all day. Near the palm tree, picture #8 is pure money as one is basically on auto-pilot from there. Anyone disagree with the notion that the downswing is only less that an inch long?
Picture 9 = module 5 for those who know it (and perhaps module 6 when I get there). A really important part of the swing that hackers like myself have never felt before but now beginning to understand. So important for setting up the hit through impact.
One big thing I finally noticed, even though it is implied in Lag’s description of his swing ideal, was the position of the right shoulder (for right-handers) at impact. In all of the pro sequences posted so far in this section, the shoulders as a whole are parallel or only slightly closed to the target line. This is a direct result of what Lag describes as letting the arms drop to P3 before firing. It took me quite a while to get that this really means that the shoulders have to wait to be fired as well. And for someone like myself who tends to rotate them too soon in the downswing sequence (like most hackers tend to do), holding back only the arms would leave them stuck behind me. Tiger does this move really well with his irons, especially. So for me, this was a pretty major lightbulb moment. Looking at swings on video that were fairly well hit compared to one’s that were pulled or pushed, the position of the shoulders at impact was the difference between the “hacker” hits and the acceptable ones. It goes to show that someone who knows (Lag in this case) can spoon feed the knowledge to you but if you aren’t ready for it, then… 
Here’s what i mean. Notice how little his shoulders move even after his intial weight shift (between frames 3 and 4). His hips square a bit and his club gets pulled toward the target more but his shoulders are dead still as far back as they can go. So at impact in frame 6, his shoulders are basically square to the target line. Slightly closed would be what I would shoot for but I have to really feel like I hold EVERYTHING back just to end up slightly closed at impact. Lag ot twomasters, any thoughts on this one? 
This sequence is an example of why Tiger hits it off the Map with his driver. It’s a good mental image in a way for someone who over uses their body because he has totally killed it in his swing- or you could blame Haney. His upper and lower half are completely disconnected and his arms and hands do all the work- for a guy who’s body is built like an olympic athlete he should really use it. A lot of the damage is done early but you can see it in frame 5 with the hip slide that has sent him too far into his left leg/beyond his left leg. At that point the only thing to save him are his hands, and because he is so good, they do save him- but because it’s such a lateral/steep move it’s very difficult to save the driver.
He brings down a pretty good arm, hand, club unit into the slot but then doesn’t use his body to carry it through. He remains flat footed and just rolls over his hands to square it up AND produce power. If you contrast pic 5, 6, and 7 to the Hogan sequence in the same positions you can see that Hogan brings a similar unit down into a similar position but his left hip doesn’t get out beyond his left foot like Tiger’s does. it’s a wood versus an iron which plays a part but not that much. Hogan allows his right foot to release which is integral to unwinding around to the left and torso rotation/acceleration. Tiger remains flat footed and sliding relying solely on his hands and arms to do all the work. To me Tiger’s swing is an example of recreating or trying to recreate a swing aesthetically instead of from it’s core principles. His left hand ‘looks like’ Hogan’s but it’s not happening because of the reasons Hogan’s is happening. It’s purely aesthetic. Because his right foot stays down it ‘looks like’ Hogan’s but it’s empty with nothing loaded into the leg which can be seen by where his left hip is. Again, it’s aesthetic. I’d love to see the following frame after impact of the Tiger sequence to compare it to frame 9 in the Hogan sequence- that would probably show the difference in even starker detail. But he’s so good he could hold it between his knees and still win!
But having said that, it is a pretty good mental image for someone trying to quieten their body and use their arms…
Ooops, that should read frame 14 of the Hogan sequence- I hadn’t counted the 5 photos on the top line…
In many ways golf swing analysis is about checks and balances, they’re like equations where you need balance on both sides. As a simple case in point take a look at the following two photos from the Tiger and Hogan sequences. It’s important to note that a lot has happened up to these two points that made both frames what they are, but taking them as they are it’s cool to observe the differences…
The two major differences are basically the positive and negative of eachother: the right elbows/arms and right feet/legs… Something has to move and in these two cases different things do. With Hogan the right SIDE fires hard off the launch pad of his right foot and leg and delivers the punch like a fighter with his right arm still braced and holding it’s flex. With Tiger, his right foot stays down because he slid off it early leaving it with no punching power, therefore the only thing he has left to use is his right arm which has already fully extended in a fairly weak by comparrison version of the full potential… Interesting stuff…
My take Hogan v. Woods in a general sense: At the top Hogan moved the clubhead away from the target line like no other. Tiger makes a nice move to the ball but on a much steeper angle (especially when he was younger- he’s flattened it out alot since). Tiger is somewhat over the top coming down because he doesn’t move the clubhead away from the target line like Hogan did. It’s a tricky move up there but if done correctly one is on auto-pilot from there and comes to the ball in a spot-on plane. When the first move from the top gets the clubhead farther away from the target line it pressurizes the right foot with stability for later use in the swing.
Ya know, Hogan told us that he studied baseballs plane and its applicability to golf and he found many similarities. Somewhere else on this site someone posted comparative pictures between golf and other sports. If you guys want to see something real cool check this out. In the U.S. in the 1950’s there was an old television show called Home Run Derby. If you can find an old copy of one of their weekly shows check out their logo. I know, here goes Range Rat with that logo stuff again 
. But the logo is like some of the comparative pictures previously posted. Check out the logo and compare that with photo #8 of Hogan by the palm tree. Look at the angles. Magnificent!