Chiming in to say this thread is awesome but I have nothing to contribute at this time other than a smiley 
Edit: Yes I do actually have a question for Bradley - where do you consider yourself now? Between the two extremes that you have shown or closer to one or the other? Or closer to a 3rd, alternate paradigm?
That last photo of Tiger is just shocking- it’s exactly the reverse of what it should be.
Btw I was rereading my post from earlier and I used the word ‘connection’ when talking about Tiger vs. the great strikers. That word such a loaded word in golf lingo, that I really should’ve said something along the lines of ‘they have zero in common’. After reading it fresh, I felt the urge to clarify that point as it sounded slightly ambiguous.
My pics of me I just posted I really hate and didn’t have an idea it was so awful…in reality I was doing exactly what Tiger is doing in that bottom picture.
Deep down no matter what I was being told and how to swing I [size=150]KNEW[/size]something was wrong so I couldn’t hit the ball with any aggression with that action, so I toned down my swing speed
Tiger makes a similar release (not all the time mind you, moreso with his woods)…but he is flat out with his wood swing with lightweight clubs compared to his irons, hence he has the ability to hit absolute wides from the tee because he flick rolls with speed, so the face can point absolutely anywhere at anytime…which we see…with him heading left, right and sometimes 
straight
I recently saw some video of el Tigre from 2000… 15 minutes of him on a range warming up for an event. Such a good looking, powerful but controlled motion. Surely he has access to reams of footage of himself and I’m always so surprised he doesn’t look at some of the “older” stuff and say to himself “you know that was pretty good”!
I wonder if his extreme focus on getting stronger wasn’t (in the long run) part of the problem. It’s as if he’s gotten SO much bigger and stronger and he’s absolutely infatuated with putting that strength to work on every tee shot he hits! I would think the benefit of being stronger is that you can make a much more controlled motion with less effort rather than looking at it as a license to go full-bore on every driver as he seems to do, particularly when he’s spraying it.
robbo
Two,
Based purely on your feel, not on logic or understanding, was your general focus on creating speed or keeping up with it? Does that make any sense?
I was looking at-- Creating speed–
especially when you look or think about the Norman of old (the swing below is close to when I first started watching him and copying him)
(See video below)… I bet not that many people have really seen his swing from 1980…it was slower in tempo and ripping later into the shot…a little different than most may remember…he certainly looks more rounded in this swing…that’s how I remember originally viewing it and based my swing on this action more than what we really think of Norman as swinging like
wide…drop with not too much hurry or worry…and then wham it to the finish from hip high (p3) up till I ran out of room to go (pv5)
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/8981690[/vimeo]
Robbo----He may even have that glove on that you were talking about with freddiec?
Bom & others—What do you think of this pivot rotation thru and beyond impact?
If you are unsure who it is he has credentials… won a US Open , lost 2 playoffs in a US Open, came 2nd in the Masters twice and 3rd in the PGA twice…Hall of Fame member and had the course record at Augusta for 46 years
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/8985560[/vimeo]
can you imagine the gallery being that close ringing the green in today’s day and age…we would have to give out hardhats at the gate and there would be 103 lawsuits per week
Nice!
Let me take a look at those vids…
Cheers, man…
BOM
This explains why I see your swing as a better Norman swing than his- and I don’t mean his from the Harmon era…
You’re so much more rounded and through than he was in his ‘classic’ swing. He’d have never hit it right on the last in the 86 Masters with that 4 iron if he’d had your more rounded shoulder action. Jack told him his problem was a too tight left hand grip- but you can see why he thought that or why that assessment may have made ‘sense’.
I don’t know who the other guy is, but he’s got a lot of that left arm action that I was talking about in the Small World thread that everyone thinks means ott- even though it’s actually the polar opposite of it.
He’s got a TON of right leg/foot pressure through the strike, and great inward leg thrust through impact that I see as an inward pulling that actually produces an outward CF/CP acceleration- I see this as connected to the Tiger stuff and your guys ‘pv5’ that was talked about earlier on…
I’m more interested in your views to be honest… this is your thread after all…
What do you see?
I also like this thread, as it tells us what you were thinking back in those days of forming your successful swing.
It’s like that old saying again…“Litter…it starts in your mind, and ends up on the streets.” Like litter, it started in your mind, only in this case it’s the opposite of litter in terms of beauty and functionality.
So we could say the “starting in the mind part” was your image of Norman’s swing, along with thoughts you used to mimic it…and your swing formed from these?
Didn’t Norman says his swing formed from trying to copy Nicklaus. So could we consider your swing a Nicklaus “grandchild?”
The B/W film is of Lloyd Mangrum. I love how he was deliberate back (but not slow)…deliberate down ( but increasing his speed slightly) and then once the ball hits the club he goes wild all the way from impact to his finish, just turning his body and powering his hands and keeping his feet down to help with this occurring…It is really good, and again most people would look at his swing and dismiss it because it looks weird in some sort of way…but beauty of a swing should never be judged on what it flows like or how your finish balances well…
His stance was narrow which I am sure was why he toned his backswing down. He left his right foot down longer than many would say is correct and sometimes even looked back on his right foot at the finish, another no, no according to many…but he dropped the club in the slot, hit hard with his hands and outraced all that with his pivot rotation and speed past impact with ground pressure to help resist against the speed he was creating…this kept him in balance even if he did look right sided in the follow through at times.
Can we say his swing was awful?..Can we say Trevino’s swing was awful? How about Allen Doyle?..or Furyk?
These guys had the dynamics and the correct things in place to make their swing work almost day in and day out. It may not have looked pretty to many but when you know what to look for they were things of beauty.
The world is all too much into aesthetics…if they didn’t have a solid functional swing how come they won so many majors and tournaments between them? It certainly wasn’t luck…and we can’t just dismiss it as “Well they have a better mental approach to golf and think well”…sure…they might??? but not necessarily…all great players have good mental approaches yet society wants to dump a good brain onto golfers whom they think have a poor looking swing.
Doug Sanders was always mocked for his swing…I am going to interview him soon to ask him just how that swing evolved…to me when you win 20 PGA events, how can you have a bad swing?.. I think his intentions of his swing were fantastic. I caddied for him up close and saw how the ball reacted to his swing…it proved he knew what he was doing.
It’s frustrating…my advice to young kids who do find their swing early in life…is to avoid the temptation to alter much and really find someone who understands your swing and don’t want to change it just because it may not be the norm or fad.
I learned that the hard way, because to many my later swing may have looked good but my dynamics went out the window and I never felt comfortable doing it…it was a daily battle. And as these photos show from this thread it ended up as a flick roll dump right arm nightmare…I was just lucky I knew how to time that stuff and could still play reasonably well doing it that way. Many can’t.
With my younger swing…it was…lets go wide, drop and wait and load and then rip…not as much to think about there and I was hitting the right spots or positions along the way anyhow
I will come back to Lipout and Eagles’ questions in a little while
I would say my backswing is back to somewhat that wide range of motion (1teebox actually sent me a message and said he witnessed that with his own eyes in Vegas by viewing my before & after swing pattern)… I would say my throughswing is still a bit rolling and flicky…but I know what module to grind on to help fix that.
So I am probably somewhere in the middle of the two right now…it still may not look like it did when I was younger but boy it feels better 
and just like Lag I don’t hardly ever practice or play but now my swing and game seem to be fine whenever I do go out on the course, so I am obviously headed in the right direction …I just haven’t videoed my swing for 6 months or so and looked at it, because I have gone away from worrying about the look and just worked on the feel and what the ball tells me
I guess so 
I am (was) a Norman/Nicklaus lovechild…a “hybrid”…even though I hate that word in golf but can deal with the automobile type
Two,
Great story and love your advice for young players.Whats amazing as kids they try to mimic others but amazingly have no idea the whys so its all trial and error so when they find something that works they stick with it. I think its the goal of the teacher to stay out of the way sometimes and like you said find out what makes it click.The problem now with the internet,you tube,monitors etc etc there’s too much info for kids so the natural abilty of hitting a golf ball goes away.
I had one mom come up to me and ask me to change her daughters swing to make it look pretty? I asked is she hitting hit straight and effective and more important scoring and the mom replied yes but it dosen’t look like the rest of the girls? This is the problem of progress its about looks and positions and because so and so said it on the golf channel and he teachers so and so its suppose to work that way!
I have the privelege to watch a college team practice at the club i’m at and i love to ask them what they work on and all of tell me, somethings are good and some i think are meaningless. But amazingly the one with the awkward looking swing but effective is the best ballstriker and best player!
Actually, he can’t. Elin owns it all now. I also think she has his left nut and keeps it in a nutmeg grater in the spice cabinet. 
Captain Chaos
Two, I find this really interesting because it seems that you may be saying that the generation of these big angles with the clubhead up near your shoulder was an essential prelude to your action…I suspect that you ‘generate’ these angles better than most on the planet…and I wonder if you could elaborate a bit more on the generation of these angles such that the clubhead was up around your shoulders while your hands were effectively down at their impact position.
Interesting also that you felt that you had to get the clubhead ‘down’…rather than around.
I’d never seen his swing before, cheers…
Wasn’t he part of that Hogan/Demaret/Bruke/Middlecoff etc. group that hung out and played together? I can’t imagine that was any good 
This is so true. And not to harp on about it, but this is another fallacy of the modern teaching- quiet legs and feet. That whole idea of steady legs and feet/solid base makes everything look like it’s solid, but the reality is that it sends all the action and motion out to the hands- it’s such a joke. It’s a big generalization, but you could basically guarantee that the more solid or stable a golf swing looks, the less stable it’s going to be where it matters- in the hands through impact.
I think I kept the clubhead up because I waited to turn the power on until late in the swing…I really like Lag’s analogy once when I think he is quoting Ben Hogan “saying that Hogan tried to make his clubhead reach maximum velocity at a point-PAST- the ball”
This sums it up beautifully.
everyone may look different because of what speed or velocity they can sustain…but post impact is so key to the swing and yet no-one hardly ever talks about it.
I guess I learned that the ball went farther and straighter for me (as it really should for everyone) when I worked on speeding up late with all of my body parts using my base as the foundation so it wouldn’t crumble and fall to ruins as I was doing it.
So I was never in a hurry until very late in my swing…yes I may have pulled down my hands but I never pulled down the club head. I learned to pull the hands down but drop the head or re-route it behind me even if it wasn’t pronounced that much…this gives the appearance of the head staying UP if viewed from face on or caddy view. Sergio and Hogan did this remarkably well and they are two of the players recognized with having tremendous lag in their swing.
Here is the same point of the swing of Sergio from 2 different views…see what I mean?
It’s a fine line to walk doing it because you need the speed later, thankfully I had that…but you certainly don’t see it so much today because of the lighter more upright equipment.
I see Tiger trying to create Lag by forcefully pulling the clubhead down…and this is why he gets ‘stuck’ as he calls it…not because he gets the club stuck behind him and too flat like all the commentators and teachers on Golf Channel try and say…he gets stuck because he pulls the head down too hard and too fast and has nowhere for it to go through impact except flip at it…he’s an easy fix if he calls me up
Thanks Two…thats a brilliant explanation, I really like the description of the hands dropping but the clubhead staying up…this is where you need the supple wrists so you can allow the club to drop behind your back in to that slot…module 5/6 stuff…to enable that tremendous lag. From the DTL view, it looks like Sergio is dead on plane to strike the ball, its only when you see the caddy view that you realise how much travel/lag/distance and hard work is left to get the club back to the ball.