Kenny Perry does something similar with his swing also…by turning the left heel towards the target at transition…see video below I took at Pres Cup 2009
I believe Perry does this to block the hips so they don’t rotate open too soon in the swing…and it helps him find his inside path into the impact area…Perry has an entirely different footwork process than Norman but keeps very grounded for some nice pivot rotation through to the PV5 position
I played with Perry probably 20 rounds out on Tour and he was a phenomenal driver of the ball. Reasonably accurate and extremely long…I think the newer equipment helped him immensely as his swing was very much a strike up on the ball…giving him a high launch angle with minimal spin for optimum distance…but his action gave him the necessary control also
Perry is a weird one, alright. I tend to agree that how he swings it was enhanced by modern equipment. Did you play with him prior to the big drivers? A buddy of mine was down at TM a while ago and the techs were saying that Garcia was head and shoulders above everyone(except Perry!) in terms of ball striking. They said that Perry was a beast too. I speculate that that was in terms of driver launch angle, and not necessarily iron striking. Maybe?
I reckon with GN, he was basically utilizing all his body had to offer to move the club. This is why studying ‘golf swings’ or thinking that moving a golf club/ball is somehow different to moving anything else, is such limited thinking. Looking at what Tiger is working on with this Foley guy, is sad to watch in tis regard.
This foot action and pivot action is so vital to quality ball striking and club acceleration, yet it’s deemed ‘unstable’ by the thinkers who value the wrong things. I do think that the foot action is a reflection of something else, though, and not something in and of itself. I think the left side has a massive part in it- you going straight to your left hand to open the jar is a big deal, and speaks to what you were doing through impact, in my opinion. Norman too, I reckon. Any thoughts on that?
The feet are moved by the legs as in walking or you can twist your ankles by rotating them and so forth. If I tossed you a sand bag that would also put more pressure into the ankles and feet as well as other parts of the body. I think what we are saying here is that the feet can do more than just passively sit on the ground being flopped around by the motion of the body.
We use them as a tangible reference point for verifiable sensations in the body.
For example, you could twist your right foot clockwise, twist your left foot counter clockwise all the while tearing a sheet of newspaper between them as you pulled them apart. ( this is just a speculative example of a possible option, not necessarily what you should do)
This is easier to wrap the head around as a descriptive sensation than trying to describe which exact tendons or anatomical muscular diagrams with names of ligaments that only a podiatrist would remember from college lab classes.
I’m not saying this is where you are going … but a lot of the motivation for the golf swing can be instigated by directly applying certain combination’s of foot pressures such as grinding, pushing pulling, tearing, squeezing, twisting, and so forth. Ankles, calves, thighs, knees all play a part in footwork.
Twomasters–seems like this is a conscious move by Kenny Perry. I’ve noticed this move by Knudson and Casper, though much less pronounced and it looks like effect, not cause. Is this something a good pivot produces, and/or is something like Perry’s move a good idea to emulate? Or good only for those w/fast hips that spin out? Interesting nonetheless…
Without really knowing Perry’s younger swing it would be difficult to say for sure…as to the where, how and why this left heel move became pronounced like this
IMO…It blocks his hips coming down, so he will not come OTT and helps him stay behind and find 430 coming down and gets his pivot activated through the shot…spin the hips soon and the upper body and club can then come with it…so he may have started doing it …feeling it…to eliminate a problem he was having. I don’t know. From my playing with him I honestly never picked up on this move in the late 90’s early 00’s, so it may have come along later in life?
The good news is it seems to help him really stay down with his right foot/leg for a long time into and post impact. This would in effect mean he has to rotate his body through the shot…which he does nicely here on this swing.
The tendency by staying down so long on the right side however and not pushing off it earlier would be to speed the club up with the hands thru impact and beyond if you got uptight or the tempo of the swing was off. This is in hindsight what happened at Augusta on hole 17 and on the 2nd playoff hole (#10) with Cabrera & Campbell a couple of years ago…Pressure made him speed up…he did this with his hands however and the body didn’t rotate through as nicely and both results were long left snap hook shots that lost him the title.
The foot pressures are a great thing and everyone’s feel is different…I would never recommend one thought over another to a particular person as better than another thought or feel, but so long as something is being felt down below there in the ground and aiding the pivot then that is much better than nothing at all.
I really like this 1994 version of Ernie’s swing…much better than the version we see today in my opinion. He keeps the club behind his body better and has no throw off through impact…really good
What are your thoughts on how Norman’s left knee action compares with John Schlee’s thoughts ( a professional who is reputed to have been coached by Hogan)…
Schlee states that the left knee describes a circular orbit, pointing at the ball at the top of the backswing, then the left knee moving to feel as if its weight is outside the left foot which in turn creates the layoff at transition ( he even describes this layoff as the world class move), then the left knee continues to describe a level left circular motion, leading the hips then the shoulders on a level left journey, the more knee flex, the more powerful the move…enough to knock someone off balance if they were standing back to back.
Interestingly, creation then preservation of wristcock and a ferocious post impact move is a massive part of the method that he describes.
aiguille…I have never really thought about all that…but if I go back and watch the first swing video of myself posted on page 1 of this thread…I would assume Schlee’s observation is relatively correct.
I can’t say I ever felt that or worried about it…but viewing the swing again seems to show that was my intentions
I haven’t read Schlee’s book but does he promote rolling to the outside of the left foot into finish?
I don’t think Hogan liked that idea, and Knudson apparently spent about a year working that out of his swing.
However, Johnny Miller was a great left foot roller in his prime.
With a wider stance I think it’s difficult to get to the outside of the left foot… as that was Knudson’s apparent lightbulb about it.
Lag, Schlee said the left foot was the “turning piont”. In Maximum Golf he says it 6 or 7 times. He explains it further by saying “the turning point is the base of the spine over the left foot”. In the full swing sequences in that book he appears NOT to roll the foot. It looks flat…stable.
I have just finished reading John Schlee’s book. He describes that the hands really only grip and cock the club…no sideways movement, consistent with what LCD talked about but perhaps also consistent with the forearm rotation into the ball as he does describe the laying off of the club at transition.
Basically, he is very big on the ‘turning point’ through the ball which revolves around the left knee…, the left knee describes a little level orbit, creating quite a violent amount of power as it allows the hips then the shoulders to follow and turn level left.
He thinks that most amateurs hang back on the right side never allowing the generation of power which comes from a free rotation around that left knee…and he reminds us about the elastic band that Hogan illustrates in his book and how the hips revolve really fast into and beyond impact. At the moment of impact, he thinks that 90% of the weight should be on the left foot and that only the big toe of the right foot should be on the ground.
There’s more detail, like how the one knuckle left hand grip is basically the same as holding a hammer as if to tap downwards to the ground and the right hand is a much more gentle tack tapping and equally weak grip.
Certainly, his trigger for transition is the circular motion of the left knee outside the left foot which lays off the club and tightens the arc of the hands and the club inwards.
I would say this is the concept of the ‘feel’ versus ‘real’ train of thought… It feels like we drive forward but the knee and hips and shoulders start to clear left-- keeping the spine tilt
AND the MAJORITY of the weight still on the right side at impact…as evidenced by the totally telling Greg Norman photo with the scales in the background and also these two pics of Trevino and Hogan.
You can draw a line up from the impact area or up through their body center and it is very easy to see that whilst you feel you are driving left and you see the right heel up and off the ground…the right side is still bearing much more weight than the left at and around impact.
This ideal of the swing as posted above…keeping weight over the right side— even though we feel a drive to the left is one of the souls of the swing.
It is why Stack & Tilt ideas just don’t work- especially as the clubs get longer in length. You can’t be centered over the ball or have your weight left with long clubs
because it gives you no opportunity to keep the club coming around the body from the top of the swing into impact.
It makes you steep and eliminates clubface and arm rotation into the shot and beyond.
Tiger’s new coach Foley has been lumped into the S & T camp even though he states otherwise but Tiger is certainly heading that path. You can see it in his practice routine and in his swing. If we watch a video of Tiger from the Tavistock Cup yesterday if it painfully obvious his weight is way too far centered and in front of the ball. The hi speed view shows just how steep his angle of attack is and the body forward and way too much forward shaft lean. I heard the commentators say this was good because his hands lead the clubhead. Again…they are making it up as they go along. This was a 6 iron.
From this approach you have a few options…chunk trap the shot…roll the hands over to try and keep the club moving…or just try and rotate the chest out of the way and either leave the face open and carve it right or flip the hands and hook it to death…if you hit it straight you have lucked out.
This awful steepness into the ball has really become apparent in Tiger’s distance control and variety of shots.
He now hits pop up skies with his woods…he now hits duck hook smothers with his woods… he hits his longer shots all over the place and I have never seen him have so poor distance control on his iron shots…long…short are becoming much more frequent… It is a mess and whatever people say about …“He’ll be back”…“It’s just a matter of time”… I don’t see improvement coming soon. Too many poor things are happening that he has to make alterations for.
If you look at Tiger’s stats he is inside the top 5 from 125 yards and in…that’s ok…the shorter the shaft the steeper you can get and have bounce work to your favour. His stats from 150 yards and beyond are terrible for his normal standards. It’s been 7 months and he shows no signs of getting better, it has even filtered into his short game and putting also now. He has entirely lost his feel for what makes a decent repeatable controllable swing.
That video is just scary. If you’re doing that at all it’s going to bleed into the overall action, so it’s hard to contemplate how bad he could get with the driver over time. It sort of explains a few shots he hit last week- I’d read that he’d topped a drive 170 on one hole? Looking at that video makes that seem quite reasonable.
The ironic thing about what they’re trying to do, is that the shift to the left plays a big part in letting out some angles into impact, and accelerating the club. Being over there all the time and then going further over means that he’s going to have to work like a dog to hold the angle and slow it down in order to prevent him hitting it fat. And he’s SO fast at the top too, that he’s using all that strength he has to actually not swing the club. His golf swing is basically back to front. There’s only so much bad motion that his talent can overcome.
As ever with discussing him, the disclaimer has to be added- but he’ll still probably clean up doing it
I made this sequence up for no other reason other than I’m essentially obsessed with Greg Norman’s golf swing at the moment Though there is a reason really. I love his sequencing through impact, I get the sense that as hard as he’s going with his pivot, he’s going sequentially harder up and out all the way through his arms and hands, until their just ripping through there. Hogan talked a bit about the shoulders catching up with the hips at the follow through(though I think he’s said contradictory things in that regard) But with this kind of action I reckon his torso rotation is getting past his pivot, or at least trying to through the zone(though not through stalling the pivot at all, it’s through greater speed) I’ve used that feeling to great effect a good few times and it leaves the club with very little option through the zone but to go hard, and in turn, also the ball.
Just to throw a new dimension into the mix, I have always found the commonly accepted tour tempo ratio of 3:1 for time taken for the backswing/ time from the top to impact as being quite fascinating simply because the downswing to impact for pros is so much quicker than amateurs and I think this has a lot to do with the correct sequencing.
That’ what so cool about PV5…or just getting vertical with the shaft. When one thinks about it, the harder one goes with pivot acceleration past the ball, there is no way for the club to roll and get behind us leaving P4. The club has only one place to go: vertical.
Sorry to sidetrack the discussion but what really is the pivot. Bom talks about the pivot and torso separately, so hips may be?? Is the term really required?? Or is just me recovering from my flu.
Though there is a reason really. I love his sequencing through impact, I get the sense that as hard as he’s going with his pivot, he’s going sequentially harder up and out all the way through his arms and hands, until their just ripping through there. Hogan talked a bit about the shoulders catching up with the hips at the follow through(though I think he’s said contradictory things in that regard) But with this kind of action I reckon his torso rotation is getting past his pivot, or at least trying to through the zone(though not through stalling the pivot at all, it’s through greater speed) I’ve used that feeling to great effect a good few times and it leaves the club with very little option through the zone but to go hard, and in turn, also the ball.
