Slinging the Ball

Dreaming that I finally had the answer that would give me a good swing and all the distance I wanted, I woke up the next morning to misgivings. This swing really wasn’t what I saw the pros doing in the Swing Vision videos on YouTube, and it wasn’t what my books described. Confirming my suspicions, the YouTube video comparing the swings of Ernie Els and Michelle Wie provided me with the hint I needed. Watching them in slow motion, I noticed how quickly their right hands came through the hitting zone. At impact, the right palm is square to the ball, but immediately after that, you can see how quickly the hands are pronating. So my idea of a long arc where the hands supinate and pronate was erroneous. No surprise there.

Then I wanted to see what the pros do with their arms. The day before, I thought I had discovered that reaching out toward the ball, like Moe Norman, worked best. It felt good and reliable, but I remembered my first pro, Mark, telling me how close to the thighs players like Furyk swing the arms, and I also had a mental picture of pros, in a down-the-line shot, swinging the hands through a spot vertically underneath the chin. And that’s what Adam Scott does in the video I watched next. His swing reminded of a passage I had read months earlier in Swing Like a Pro, which I found and read again.

As important as the act of producing power is the ability to direct it properly. By driving the lower body toward the target, you move the hips out of the way so that the arms can swing on an inside path toward ball contact. Our research has shown that the clearance between the arms and the body is so small that, if the lower body is not moved out of the way, the path the arms and club are supposed to follow becomes blocked. (p. 153)

When I went out to practice, I had two swing thoughts (usually, that’s one too many and leads to ugly results)—quick supination and pronation of the hands and keeping the hands under my chin. I thought of Tom Bertrand’s “secret” again, and how it related to the quick hands I saw in Ernie Els and Michelle Wie and realized that far from being a slow, methodical, and long turn toward the left hip, the movement was actually the quickest part of the swing, almost instantaneous. Suddenly, I realized that this was where clubhead speed must be generated. Whatever the speed before, it is no more than highway speed compared to the mach-1 acceleration that happens at impact. This is the speed that Hogan talks about in Ben Hogan's Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf.

IN THE CHAIN ACTION OF THE SWING, THE SHOULDERS AND UPPER PART OF THE BODY CONDUCT THIS MULTIPLYING POWER INTO THE ARMS…THE ARMS MULTIPLY IT AGAIN AND PASS IT ON TO THE HANDS…THE HANDS MULTIPLY IT IN TURN…AND, AS A RESULT, THE CLUBHEAD IS SIMPLY TEARING THOUGH THE AIR AT AN INCREDIBLE SPEED AS IT DRIVES THROUGH THE BALL. ALL THIS HAPPENS SO QUICKLY, OF COURSE, THAT YOU CAN’T SEE IT TO APPRECIATE IT. BUTTHIS IS WHAT HAPPENS. (p. 92)

Until now, I never understood how this multiplying effect happens. I certainly never had the remotest feeling that my clubhead was “tearing through the air.” As I continued to practice this new discovery, using a shortened swing drill (see video), I saw that it also cured the problem I had of grounding the clubhead in front of the ball.



The reason for that, I now guessed, was that I was trying to make a long arc as I turned my elbow “level left,” instead of this quick, lightning-flash turn I was developing now. Two other aspects of the swing became clear, too. One was the aim of delaying the release until the last possible instant. All this time, I thought the release began way back in front of the right hip and followed a long arc around the body. Now, I had the sense that I could let the release happen much later, at a point where my hands felt very close to the ball, much later that I had ever thought possible. Months before, I had tried a release like this but couldn’t make it work then, probably because of other problems earlier in my swing, such as casting or coming over the top or swinging outside to in. At this “Eureka!” moment, I realized what “slinging the ball” meant. Tom Bertrand refers to this in The Secret of Hogan's Swing when he describes “Capturing the Ball.”

When Hogan began to understand the workings of a repeatable golf swing, he realized that all his energy should not be directed toward a violent encounter with the ball. Instead, he envisioned his clubface capturing the ball and slinging it to the target. Thus the downswing energy is released toward the target and not at the ball. I believe this is what created a unique sound to Hogan’s golf shots as he connected with the ball.

“Slinging the ball” is exactly what I felt I was doing now. Finally seeing what had been so hard to imagine for all these months, I laughed to myself. I knew I was on solid ground now. Starting to make my new “slinging” swing repeatable and consistent is the subject of the next post.