Is it fair to say that the flatter one swings, the more the force vector of the arms and hands becomes parallel to the force vector of the pivot, as opposed to one one swings upright, in which the vector of the pivot and arms move more closer in perpendicular planes, such that only the resultant horizontal vector from the arms is concerted with the pivot and the vertical resultant is basically ‘wasted’ energy in lifting and dropping the club?
I can imagine then how laying off the club and flattening the swing can suddenly create a pressure in the hands as the arms/hands drop into a position that moves them from a largely separate power structure from the pivot to a synergistic power structure.
Nice. I keep thinking that there really is no good angle to view a swing from, this speaks to that. It’s kind of abstract, but do you know what I mean?
Some interesting quotes (re increasingly flat lies – could have put this in an equip thread, I guess) from two posts from “fats” – an accomplished, now senior player I believe – over on Gwrx:
When I played on tour, my wedge play was by far my weakest link. I had my wedges upright, and loved the idea of hitting down on them to get spin…but I had poor distance control also because they were too light, and I would get OTT often and find myself with downhill left to right putts way too often.
The great thing about how I have them set up now is I can stay aggressive without fearing left… and I can really “Hit” them now without that fear. The aggressive action leads to crisper contact and with an accelerating clubhead… I get spin that way.
The heavier heads create more resistance that I can now feel in my hands so it takes an effort to hit the ball farther which gives me much better distance control than before when I couldn’t feel the clubhead, and sometimes it would just zip through impact and send the ball 30 feet past the pin without me being able to feel that. That would lead to fear, and I would often quit on a wedge shot and leave it short. I could mask all this with lots of practice, but who wants to grind golf balls for hours after you have already played a 5 hour round of golf and are playing 6 rounds a week on tour? I did it…
but I also burned out quickly and had trouble playing with proper focus more than 3 weeks in a row.
I think Hogan played every chance he could when he was younger, but from what I understand, as his game became more refined he played fewer events than most of the other guys. Not all the guys on tour can do that… or be that selective, but you either have to love playing 6 days a week or you really know how to pace yourself. I would guess Hogan enjoyed the process of preparation almost as much as the events themselves. He could be disciplined but under his terms. Life on the road is not easy for the most part. Some people just love it, and thrive on it. I did more as a wide eyed youth… but found it less enticing as the years went by. I think had my technique been better while I was on tour, I could have made the entire experience more enjoyable, and spent the afternoons touring the beautiful cities we visited and taken in more culture and other life experiences than just airport, rentacar, hotel, golf course. I looked forward to weeks off where I could do that, but I was still having to ball beat to offset my swing flaws, and gear that was not set up correctly to my benefit.
I’m really pretty shocked at how well I play now with zero practice, no balls before I play, and only playing 2 to 4 rounds a month. I don’t always go out and light it up… but I didn’t on tour either. I think having advanced technique is the golden gateway to making the entire process much more enjoyable, whether you stay home and play on occasion or are playing out on tour every week.
Fats is an awesome guy. He is a retired PGA Tour/Senior Tour player who got started out there in the 60’s I believe. He and I have had some very good conversations via golfwrx messaging system. Fairly successfull player in his day, and has a lot of good information he’s more than willing to share.
I like the footage starting around 5:00 minutes. I clearly see a slight steepening of the hands with a corresponding flattening of the shaft as he starts transition. It kind of goes with the picture I posted above.
I’ve been working with that without problems really. It kinda makes sense to me that in order to get low and left past impact via rotation, the hands and shaft play a reciprocal role during transition so that the pivot pins everything in correct order while going hard. Here’s the deal…in order to get low ( or shallow ) on something, there has to be a steep somewhere…you can’t get low from starting low and just that fractional move puts the shaft in lag status with pressure because of the opposing forces just introduced into the equation.
Good stuff Two…shouldn’t you have a southern accent by now.
Well…I wasn’t aware that Lag used those words, at least I don’t recall reading them. But I would most certainly agree. It is only fractional in feel, but that small increment serves, among other things, to compress the R arm inward while laying the shaft backward. From there you are good to go provided you keep up the acceleration piece absent which would then be over the top.
My cryptic stuff in Rat Droppings may have given it away…a song by the Yardbirds…Over, Under, Sideways, Down.
BTW…look at their name in that post…do you see any golfclubs.
My new avatar is my reward. I started with a helmeted rat seeking cheese…changed to the sunbust logo with RR within the center as things were becoming more clear…and finally a Chinese symbol for a Rat, as I have awarded myself a black belt in hitting.
Great photos! Does anyone know whether he weighted his clubs based on measured swing weights or based on swinging the club and adding weight to his “feel?”
The picture of Ed Furgol in that Bradley Hughes clip takes me back 54 years. In 1957 (at age 14) I spent two weeks hanging around Mr. Furgol at Montauk Downs Golf Club. He gave me a lesson or two and I spent hours watching him practice, perhaps the best golf education a kid could get in those days. Furgol had a withered left arm, could not have straightened it under the influence of torture. He was a tall man, but he leaned from the hips, established a lot of knee flex and swung flat like Hogan. He braced his right leg, started his left shoulder around his spine, swing the club back with his hands. His backswing was really fast. His hands created clubhead momentum going back, and the resistance of his brace cocked both his left and right wrists as the brace was also moving his body left toward the target. To hit the ball he held his hand angle as hard as he could and fired his right knee past the ball. Today I understand that ground reaction force produced a dynamic extension of his right arm and released his right hand through the shot, creating that fabulous flat left wrist, bent right arm impact position. His shots went off like rifle bullets, rose gradually and dropped straight down. Most of them were dead straight. This took place three years after he won the 54 US Open, during the only week he putted half decently in his entire career. For fifty odd years I have believed that Hogan did exactly the same thing, and that the only reason people remain confused about his swing is that Time Life insisted upon making a 150 page book about it and turning the writing over to Herbert Warren Windbag. You could write an entire book about the errors and inconsistencies in that one, but the truth is that Hogan braced his right leg by trying to keep his bent knee still. He swung back flat, cocked both wrists as his brace moved his weight leftward, and then fired his right leg past the ball while retaining his wrist angles. Just watch his leg action. It happens so fast and is so powerful that it would have been impossible in the time available for him to do anything voluntarily to release his hands or arms. Knudsen in his book confirms that hand and arm action played no role in his forward swing either.
