Good question actually. I would see the pivot as essentially the action of the legs, much like walking it’s a heel heel/toe type of a motion that drives the action. I see things above as connected obviously, but because they have a greater range of motion, they have more potential for acceleration. I would talk about them separately because of that range of motion/acceleration disparity, but ultimately they are connected.
Btw, I was wondering where you’d gotten to. I hope you’re feeling better.
Whatcha think of these two SHARK swings Bom…it’s a joke how good he was especially with the driver
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/13710652[/vimeo]
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/10625258[/vimeo]
That is just pure body rotation with feet staying grounded (connected)…hence the foot slide… that throws those arms upwards when he accelerates and has nowhere else to go
How about that sound! Fook sake! If for no other reason than hearing that noise made again by a top striker, golf needs to go back to Persimmon and balata. Absolutely savage, and you have to do that all yourself. No part of that ball flight is created artificially- you could either do it, or you couldn’t.
Level shoulders are mentioned a lot, but that upper body/shoulder acceleration had to have been at an angle. Just taking the left side of his body coming around the corner leveraging out of the left leg and foot, what angle would you say his left shoulder is coming out of there in relation to the ground? Do you have a feel for what I’m talking about?
Greg wasn’t playing off flat lie angles, so his rotation could not be as level as a player who was working flatter planes.
It’s a classic example of a swing evolving from the gear the player used probably right from the start. Nevertheless, Norman’s
swing and pivot rotation post impact was about as level as it could be given his equipment set up. There is no doubt one can hit
the ball straight from more upright lie angles as long as you have a natural ability to drop it into the slot and don’t have OTT anywhere
in your swing DNA like the rest of us mortals.
That’s some motoring for sure by Norman. I see the shoulders as a little steeper, but who can argue with going through things with that much authority. I still don’t like that L foot action spin out stuff which you can see clearly in the video at about 52 seconds.
I think holding the L foot in place and going hard around it has perhaps more merit. Why do you think he does that? Is it because he appears to me to be a little more upright at the top and is a little steeper coming in? That’s my sense of it.
Nice to be strong isn’t it 
To me it looks like his post impact pivot is so strong there that he has no choice but to let his left foot spin around like that otherwise he’ll snap his knee.
At the risk of being the downer of the group for the umpteenth time we need to interject a bit of realty here. Greg Norman had talent and loads of it but come on now it was never refined or disciplined and because of it he absolutely earned the crowns of biggest choke and disappointment in the history of the game. If he had flat gear there’s no doubt he would have widened his stance and eliminated some of his worst misses at the worst times and would have won at least a half dozen more majors minimum. Also everyone needs to remember that no other single player is more responsible for the ridiculous state of the game than Norman. Tiger Woods doesn’t even come close. Greg Norman is the single worst short iron player of all time. He spent decades bombing 8 irons a mile high from 180 wrapping the club around his back and landing hole high and drawing off the front of the green over and over and over again; that is when he wasn’t blocking it a mile right into the gallery. He never learned to trap it or knock it down and all the TV commentators oohed and aahed over every one of those terrible approaches. Right there was the beginning of this stupid facade with the strong lofts with the short irons and the big heads with the woods so everyone could imitate Greg Norman. So please keep in mind the difference between talent and skill here.
I disagree with Norman making the game bomb-n-gouge. He was a great driver of the ball and that can be proven statistically. He hit it long, but he also hit it accurately. Put it this way, he had been around for years hitting it deep and nobody followed his suit. DLIII was much more of a bomb-n-gouger and nobody really followed his suit either.
When I look at the current state of the game with the bomb-n-gouge stuff, I would probably blame:
Daly was almost a spectacle to himself. Whereas DLIII hit it really long, Daly would bomb it bye him. And it got to the point where Daly would’ve made an ultra lucrative career if not for his behavior. While Daly was talented, his skill wasn’t all that refined. So Tour players looked at that and saw an unrefined player winning a major and had the potential for an ultra lucrative career.
Tiger used to be pretty accurate off the tee and his game forced the pros to start doing things to hit it as long as he did. When you’re bombing drivers at Augusta and having 9-iorns into their par-5’s, the rest of the field has to change or they will become obsolete. Eventually Tiger got longer off the tee with new technology and became inaccurate. But as long as he was hitting it deep, even if he couldn’t find the fairway, it didn’t hurt him too bad. Other golfers saw this and followed suit.
Angel Cabrera was the first player I recall who just wanted to hit it deep and really didn’t give a damn if he hit a fairway or not. But Vijay was the first very popular, big name player that I recall with this idea. Then Mickelson started following his lead because he felt he couldn’t compete with Vijay if Vijay was knocking it 30-40 yards past him.
Anyway, my recollection of Norman was that he hit it a mile and was quite accurate off the tee and was a great putter. I do recall him having a major issue with spinning the ball too much at times. He actually hit one of my favorite shots of all time, a driver off the deck into a par-5 that hit the green, took a big hop, then a skip and somehow, stopped on a dime after that.
3JACK
Welcome back Macs. Good question.
What is the correct mental model for the pivot? If the body were a cylinder like can of beer, is it viewed as a whole, or in segments, and how many, and where is the divide/ divisions? For instance, I have seen some who see everything from the sternum down as a whole, whereas a popular European teacher advocates a spiral image…with everything connected but separate. I am not that familiar with Jimmy Ballard, but it would seem he would be in a different camp, having the model of the torso, hips, legs all functioning as one unit.
There have been plenty of people who choked or couldn’t get it done, who used flat lies, so I don’t see the lie angle of his clubs having anything really to do with his major winning issues. I suppose, theoretically you could break it down to certain wedge shots here or there, but I tend not to think like that. When he won he tended to be unbeatable, and when he didn’t win, he tended to look like he had no chance after a particular point. To me, that speaks to something in his overall personality, and if you look at his life, he’s that kind of guy it seems, all or nothing. He made an interesting comment in that US Open footage that Lag posted, something to the effect of seeing signs during a week that indicated he was going to win. I thought it was very interesting because if you see signs that suggest you’re going to win, there’s a certain certainty that comes with that ‘meant to be’ kind of purpose, and he did look unbeatable sometimes in that ‘meant to be’ kind of way. But on the flip side, if you’re seeing signs that you’re going to win, then there’s a good chance you’re going to see signs that you’re going to lose, or not seeing the signs that you’re going to win might suggest that you’re not. Maybe that’s a bit of a deep dig, but it made some sense out of his career in my mind. We’re in the swing analyzing business, but winning golf tournaments, and big golf tournaments, has more to do with other stuff ultimately.
I think of the ‘pivot’ as everything from the hips to the shoulders…
The legs and feet are ultimately attached to the hips…so they are the spokes on the wheel.
The other spokes are the arms which are of course attached to the shoulders.
If I have good footwork and strong legs to build the foundation…then it helps my hips to shoulders area (my pivot) have something to work against… my arms because they are attached to what is moving fast should move along with that ‘pivot’ motion.
I don’t really want to see my hands or arms work too much independently of my ‘pivot’…until the very end…
I do want them to do something (which is all the module 1 work) but they then come along with the pivot (module 3 work) and don’t outrace the aggressive pivot.
When they do outrace then we see the flip…which is a result of a stalling pivot move.
It’s all very simple when put together, but difficult for most people to put into motion when trying to concentrate on each area whilst swinging.
That is why the module work is so great…it works the body into guitar chords…A,B,C,D and so on and then you learn the chords and then learn how to piece them together as one unit.
Try playing new chords you just learned all at once…well it would spell disaster to a musical tune and also in golf in that we see terrible co-ordination or chain of events of the swing from that mindset every day when we look at people swing on the range or on the course
I think I will start a separate thread on the “the pivot” so as not to hijack this one.
Well - some people might call it choking other might call it bad luck. How would you feel if you are in a playoff for your club championship and your opponent chips in from an impossible lie - next year same thing, but this time he holes out from a short sided bunker, and it goes on and on. This will chew on you quite a bit and i bet you, your game would suffer from it.
Look at the timespan from 2000 - 2008 - Tiger was Top Dog and kept everbody in place by making the impossible happen - it only took one guy and the party was over - they saw that he wasnt invincible and they went after him. I would go as far and say, if he hadnt encountered all the other stuff along the way, he would be in the same position as he is right now - that is right in the pack.
People learn to win - and people learn to loose - it goes both ways, all it needs is a trigger!
Man, I don’t think was ever part of the pack, and I don’t think he is now either. His dominance was right out of the gate too, from 1996. He won 3 tournaments in his first month or so, then won the Masters by 12 shots and the money list in his first year. If he didn’t take his life off the rails, I don’t think there’d be much competition at all. I don’t think the Yang thing is as big a deal as it’s made out to be to be honest, it’s more to do with the clearing out of all the guys who he scared the daylights out of. He single handedly created this next generation that doesn’t fear him, because he created a new golf that they all grew up watching and learning from. How many times do you hear the refrain, ‘I go out to win every time I play’? It’s a dime a dozen at this point, and they believe it too. I think that’s the real guts of why people don’t back down from him as they did- they’re different people in the fields. The older guys never seem to get him, which is telling. And he invented that idea too, and it sounded ridiculous when he first started saying it. There’s a great interview with him and Curtis Strange when Strange gave him the old veteran’s ‘you’ll learn, you’ll learn’. And in fairness to Strange, he redid the interview with TIger after his first year and ate humble pie. And Tiger just had this big ‘I told you so’ grin on his face. It’s classic stuff.
What I think people forget is how bad the golf has been that Tiger has used to be the best golfer in the world over the last four or five years. That’s the thing that amazes me. He hasn’t stood over a driver in that time and looked like hitting a fairway, and he’s putted poorly by his standards, yet he was still winning, and more importantly, competing up there in all the majors and maintaining his number 1 status- it’s madness(though not now, but that’s only after not playing for basically a year) Even now, doing what he’s doing and he’s still where he is is absolutely remarkable. If he manages to find a way to get the driver in play with some amount of confidence, regardless of how shocking the technique might be, he’s going to leave them in the dust without breaking a sweat. Though with the stuff he’s working on, that’s going to be very hard, which is a shame.
I’m always surprised to hear how easily people have written him off, and I’m not speaking directly to you with all this btw, Kafka, this is just some of my general wonderings on him. It was almost as if people were waiting for it end, it’s a weird thing. It’s only really been a year of really bad golf, and he didn’t play for most of it. Even though it was self inflicted, I can’t even imagine having to deal with the crap he’s had to deal with and then to go out and perform- all that stuff is still really fresh and very much a part of the how he’s been playing. When all that settles down and he finds a new normal, I can easily see him being dominant again. He’s only what, 35? And he’s at 14 majors I think- I think he’s a pretty safe bet for at least 5 majors in the next 10 years, and you’ve got to think they’re his sole focus at this point. And that in itself plays into his performances week to week- what’s his real motivation? I reckon he’ll be up for the smaller events in the next while just to get back on track, but it’s really only the majors where his form is assessable based on knowing that his motivation will be maxing out his game.
I don’t know, I’m a Tiger fan, so maybe I’m a little biased with how I see it all- plus I haven’t yabbered on for a while. But I honestly don’t see him being an also ran at any point, regardless of how bad he’s playing. There’s been just too much going on in his life for the last year or so to look at his game just as his game, his whole life has been a mess and that’s no small thing and doesn’t change over night. His game didn’t go bad overnight either, so it will take a bit of time to get better.
The problem is that Tiger is not doing anything right, and even seems to be messing about with the one aspect of his game that bought him an 8 shot advantage before a ball was struck. I would personally love to see him back to his best or at least winning but it does not look likely. The Masters at Augusta is actually his best chance of getting back to winning ways.
If one takes the “Tiger-Goggles” off this is something you realize - his margin got slimmer year by year - no more 12 stroke victories or huge comebacks - heck, he even had to fight off Rocco Mediate (on one leg though) 
!
But lets not forget - he is getting older - his knee isnt in great shape (last i heared he is supposed to be slightly injured again?) - look at Jack Nicklaus, at which age he collected most of his majors - the older you get, the more difficult it gets to win these things.
I´m not saying he´s never going to win again - certainly he´ll manage to do this - just at a slower pace - like all the other greats before him did it.
Speaking for myself, it’s not a case of Tiger goggles, it’s more a case of understanding the game on various levels and understanding how good he is at it. He’s just never going to be a guy in the pack. He had a good old tussle with Bob May back in his supposed dominant period, and he was an unlikely contender to say the least. Perspective is always important in these things. My take on Tiger is that it takes the A game of any member of the field to take him on, while he goes at it with whatever he’s got whether it’s A, B, or C. Or even D on some occasions of the last 4 or 5 years. ‘Never’ is never a good word in golf, especially with Tiger.
I think Kipling said " A tiger doesn’t know its a tiger until its tamed".
One would think Tiger would have the best shot at becoming the “old Tiger”…since he’s done it before. But if he has lost his “Mojo” , are there examples where one can get it back? …and not just an occasional odd win when he accidentally find himself in the Zone…but the 2 majors & 5+ win per year Tiger we used to know and expect.
Good question, Eagle. In my opinion, kind of like I was saying in that post up there, his form will be measured differently with more of a focus on the majors. As limited as his schedule always was, I reckon he’ll play a lot less all things considered, which will put his potential wins down in regular events just based purely on odds. The other aspect is needing an example of something that happened to make us believe it can happen again, that’s a human trait that’s limiting in my opinion. I always thought it was funny how we always said with total certainty that nobody will ever break Jack’s record, it seemed insurmountable based on how competitive the fields were. Then Tiger comes along, and right away, everyone said, man, there’ll NEVER be someone as good as Tiger. I think that’s funny, because what people don’t learn from that is even when we think we’re at the peak, we’re not. Instead they believe in the infallibility of the new peak. It’s a weird thing. I think there’ll be someone better than Tiger, no doubt in my mind. It may not happen in my lifetime, but someday somebody will say(assuming the world survives- which is looking dodgy these days) man, and we thought Tiger was good?! That’s just the way it works in my view. So with TIger now, it’s not possible to put limits or even really predict what he might do. But having already done things that we’re supposedly ‘impossible’ in most, if not everyone’s mind(the US Open at Pebble is essentially the epitome of what was previously considered ‘impossible’ I would have to say) who’s to say what else he could do. I think he’ll almost certainly be a different golfer in terms of numbers, but he just wont be a guy in the pack trying to get a win here and there. I just don’t see that being the case.
I reckon this is too soon, Aiguille, in terms of defining whether or not he’s ‘back to winning ways’. it seems that every time he tees it up, if he doesn’t play the best he’s ever played, everyone thinks he’s done. Even for Tiger it’s going to take a bit of time. Obviously he’s set his own bar very high, so he’s judged by that and rightly so. But at the end of the day, it’s not possible to go back anywhere, so I don’t look at it as going ‘back to winning ways’. That may seem nit picky, but it’s how I feel about things in general. The whole concept of ‘the old Tiger’ is not real as such, and I would imagine he’s not thinking in those terms either. It’s a whole other discussion possibly, but the idea of regaining form is not real I don’t think. It’s understood as a concept, and it’s spoken about, but it’s not actually real. We’re always doing something different with the skills that we have. If you embrace that things are being carried over and stored up and brought along, then they probably will be. But there are other ways to think or to approach things. I don’t look at a golfer and think he needs to regain form or be as good as he was. I see that talent present and accessible at any point, assuming the physical things are in place(his golf swing is going to be a problem in that regard) Maybe that’s a whole other conversation, but it’s relevant in terms of how I view the Tiger situation.