Mandrin - yes to all of your points except the northeast part. Remember I am referring to the clubhead directon of travel. From the golfers viewpoint, the ball is north, the target is west, directly behind him is south, and to his right (for a righty) is east. The clubhead must move to the east in its path from top of backswing to P3 (actually a little northeast in reality as you approach P3) when the apogee is reached and the clubhead now stops moving east and starts moving to the northwest. Meaning it approaches the ball from slightly inside the target line. The apogee idea is the key. When OTT and the HIt Impulse are dominant, there is a strong impulse to throw the clubhead AT THE BALL, ie in the north to northwest direction. An on plane clubshaft means a clubhead path that must move east first. Which is a long-winded way of saying that any power that is exerted on the clubhead to speed it up before P3 is in a sense pointless, since the clubhead is moving away from the target in a good swing until P3 - not toward the ball and target direction!! This is always a huge lightbulb moment for my students when they really get it and a great way to start to inhibit the Hit Impulse. You want to Hit starting at P3 but with a fast Pivot Thrust - and not earlier. Top of backswing until P3 is a kind of “settling in” motion as Nicklaus described it and Johnny Miller also talks about. “Get Ready” is the backswing. “Get Set” is the Transition to P3 and “Go” is the fast Pivot Thrust power application from P3 until followthrough position.
This is another way of describing fluid rhythm but that is another and much longer post…
It’s great to see this area of the swing being discussed. Very well put, BPGS1. I like that you describe it from the golfers eye view as opposed to looking at them face on, it paints a much clearer picture…
Cheers…
This discussion on the transition makes me really appreciate how lucky I am to be on this forum. Wonderful stuff and so pertinant to my golfing ailments.
Good Stuff All: This site has become my morning newspaper …love it.
Now this is real off the charts perhaps, but I’ve always wondered if the method would have any usefulness. It concerns professional pool diving…a perfect dive produces minimal to no splash—perfect entry.
I’ve always wondered if we practiced the swing in a pool with water up to our chest or so, what effect that would have. I suppose the resistance of the water would compel us to find the path of least resistance going back- you’d have the roll the clubhead to knife through the water…but on the downmove if the shaft/head enters the water incorrectly there would be alot of splash from those two components entering improperly- and an OTT move would find alot of resistance as soon as the upper lever assemblies hit the top of the water. Now stop laughing but it kinda makes sense doesn’t it. Maybe someone has thought about this before but I’m not sure. Just another goofy way that us rats ponder. Maybe a jello image would work better RR
Range Rat - funny you should bring this up, I first played around with that very experiment many years ago in a swimming pool. I used to be a swimming coach and so spent a lot of time in the water. It is a very good training exercise because of the waters resistance. Today, I do a few minutes of golf swings in the ocean as part of my morning workout routine here on Oahu. I start with what I call Wave Yoga, which uses the small waves kind of like a Swiss Ball to force you to activate your Core for stability. The water is a zero gravity environment which helps your muscles to relax and the waters resistance provides incredible kinesthetic feedback from muscles to brain and you go through the golf swing motion.
Oh, no…the human race is doomed…make no mistake. However, we here at ABS can go to our maker knowing the truth. Perhaps I’ll even get a right hand seat next to God since I can hit a one iron!
I like it RR… picturing myself in the water with a club made me think that dragging it out with shaft and the back of the heel leading would be the most efficient way to do it. And then the re-entry then with the back of the heel leading again… kind of like having the rudder in the rear. Which made me think of the Jimmy Bruen conversation we were having a while back…
Cool idea…
I can imagine a student, listening to your explanation asking you the following question - If there is no point in generating power up to P3 and also since the initial motion from the top away from the target is counter intuitive, why not simple start from the ‘apogee’ and go full throttle from there ?
I think that indeed trying to be force full from the start, going east, away from the target, immediately followed by redirecting power flow towards the target is very difficult as there should be only one dominant feel/thought in a golf swing. But I do not quite agree with the idea that energy generated from the top being point less since club head motion is away from the target but will come back on that in some later post.
From a teacher’s point of view would you consider transition to be the most important moment in golf swing? Paul Bertholy in a seminar given at the Ferris State University, Dec, 8-9, 1990, mentioned : “Scratch a scratch golfer and you will find a hacker. For just beneath the surface of all fine golf swings lay the insidious Hit Impulse”. Is the moment of truth for the hit impulse at transition ?
The building up of momentum during transition and down into that slot is very important but would be a lot different to actual active forward acceleration. If you start in the slot there’s no momentum built up.
Not really polarized intentions, it’s more a matter of understanding the relationship between your hands and torso while in motion and how the angle you rotate on affects the angle of your hands and how you deal with the forces created. It is what it is to me.
Glad to see others have thought about water’s resistance…I can come out of the corner now.
What I like about it also is that if the clubhead is entering the water properly from the top by way of a pivot driven method, and maintains that relationship…once travel starts to leave the 4:30 line, the clubface will meet with so much water resistance that one will be forced to use everything they have to bring it through and up and out the other side.
Never wanted to be carted away in a straightjacket…so I never tried it before…going to have to do a midnight raid into our neighbor’s pool. RR
Mandrin - “in a sense pointless” meant to convey not literally true since clearly the Pivot action occuring from the Top of backswing down to P3 does indeed contribute to some of the buildup of clubhead speed. More of a way of thinking about power application to aid in inhibiting the Hit Impulse. You can indeed however start from P3 and take half swings. It is our number one ballstriking drill. Waist high to waist high swings. Great training! Kind of like Alan Doyles swing or Doug Sanders in a sense.
This is all about the clubhead motion however - again, useful as a shortcut to inhibiting the Hit Impulse or at least delaying it a fraction of a second. The clubhead is the tip of the dogs tail - I think it is much more useful from a general teaching of Mechanics principle standpoint however for the student to quickly move beyond ANY thoughts of the clubhead and to focus instead on learning how to activate the muscles in the body that actually create the energy. Most of those are the Core muscles, hip rotaters, muscles in the shoulder girdle and in the back, the glutes, etc. Those muscles are the cause - the clubhead motion is the last link in the chain and thus the last “effect”. Pilates is very good for waking up golfers who live in their heads to the reality of their body, especially their Core region - so important to a good golf swing.
Yes - most Hit Impulse is during Transition but you can also have it during Release as well, more commonly for better players.
Transition is the most influential in a direct concrete way of our Six Swing Segments, takes the most time to master and is the most complex mechanics. Takeaway starts the swing and the chain of cause and effect so I would rate it a shade higher in importance for that reason for most golfers. Meaning if your Takeaway is toxic, so is everything that follows - a chain of compensations. And most average golfers who shoot around 85 or higher make several Fatal Flaws during their Takeaway.
BP,
What are your thoughts on Hogan’s assertion about the right thumb and index finger being an issue as regards hitting it early. I seem to remember him talking about how powerful a combination they were through the muscles in the forearm. By gluing the base of thumb and forefinger together he seemed to eliminate their activating power. I’ve often wondered would we all be better golfers if we didn’t even have a right thumb(for righties that is- sorry lefties). Hogan talks about throwing from the side to first base a lot(shortstop in baseball idea). When you throw something the last point of contact with the object is the index finger as a general rule, with the thumb on the lead side. The thumb has nothing active really to do with the throwing or releasing action. Any thoughts on this area?
Bomgolf, here’s a relevent quote from Gerry Hogan’s great book, The Hogan manual Of Human Performance…my bible.
Page 36…“How does he prevent the club whipping through prematurely like a hammer? he does it by spreading and relaxing the (right, for right handed players) forefinger and thumb so that they cannot act as a pivot. In other words, he does not grip the club at all with the forefinger and thumb…Open up the right forefinger and thumb-let them hang loose. If you do, your golf swing will gain in freedom”.
Aussie bloke.
Bom - yes, one way to succumb to the Hit Impulse is to use the right thumb and index finger as a “hook”, a point of leverage, to throw the wrist cock angle away.
The index finger will leverage sideways or flipping/loss of hinge angle in back of right wrist and the thumb will leverage down or loss of the wrist cock angles.
…love it.
RR