Great Golf Swings: Johnny Miller

After thinking about the Jeremiah's comments (in my last post), I did some online research and came across a great article from Jim McLean about Johnny Miller's iron play. I haven't come across Jim before, but he's been a pro for decades and actually played some rounds with Miller when Johnny was at his peak. He's insightful and appreciates the greatness in Miller's swing, giving us a good chance to revisit a good model for those of us who are starting to learn a swing.

Talking about Johnny practicing with one arm, Jim got my attention right away. As you know from reading recent posts, I really like that drill and knew Miller used it, but I got the idea from another source on the Web. Jim filled in with some interesting background information.

The first thing I think about when I look at Johnny Miller's swing is that he's left-handed. And that's quite different. Most left-handers, I believe, should play left-handed. But Phil Mickelson is a right-handed player that plays great left-handed golf. Well, Johnny was a left-handed person who played right-handed golf.

One of the things that Miller can do that's really great to watch is hit balls just with his left arm and really hit the ball tremendous. He can hit a 6-iron 160-yards with one arm, quite incredible and something that he practiced quite a bit.

Johnny Miller (on hitting shots with one arm): "And what happens is when you're tall and you can play the ball close in, you get a very upright swing and the club doesn't rotate quite so much. Combined with a reverse-C, a lot of people "poo-poo" the reverse-C, but I had a reverse-C and it keeps the clubface square. It doesn't turn it over. But the thing that set my swing apart probably the most was that I was the first guy to have an early-set, and I got that from hitting balls one-handed. When you hit balls one-handed left-handed, you always set the club gradually. By halfway up, you're already at 90 degrees with the forearm and so you don't have to do anything until you're way down here and then release it."

Being a neophyte, I found confirmation that my recognition of the value of the one-arm drill actually has merit. It's one way of practicing that will help me hit consistently straight.

Then, Jim talks about Miller's grip, which he learned from looking at pictures with his dad.

Now, when we look at Johnny's grip, we really see the Hogan influence. In the evenings when he was a young kid, Johnny's dad would bring him downstairs and they would look at pictures of Hogan and Nelson and Snead. And I know he studied the Hogan book and that's the grip that Johnny put on, which was a very weak left hand grip.

That meant his left hand was turned toward the target, the "V" on the top of the left hand pointing directly up to the chin. So that's an anti-hook grip. But being left-handed and being a little stronger here, that might have something to do with being able to play so well with this grip.

A weak left hand grip tends to lead to an open clubface at the top for most people, and it did with Johnny Miller as well. Now that open clubface pretty much takes the hook out of the game. And I'll tell you one thing about Miller—nobody hit the ball straighter than this man! Now if he did miss it, he would tend to miss off to the right. And as his game went off a bit, he would miss a little too much out to right field and partially because of that weak left hand. But when he was on, he could hit that golf ball as hard as he wanted to and hit it dead straight.

A Hogan devotee myself, I use a similar grip, but Jim's commentary sheds some light on its pros and cons. It'll help you avoid hooking, which was Hogan's main problem, but you have to watch out for losing balls right.

Then I was interested in where Miller learned the steep backswing that was characteristic of his swing. Partly, it came from the one-arm drill, butalso from a coach named John Geersten.

Mr. Geersten also believed in certain swing positions. So that went right along with what John had already done in his career. And he was developing into a fine player.

One of the first positions was the Halfway Back position. Mr. Geersten liked an early wrist set and that's something that Johnny had in his swing the rest of his life. Setting the wrists early put the golf club really out in front of him. And that's a term that we hear nowadays all the time—keeping the club in front of you. Well, Miller really did that as well.

He had that club outside his hands going back, and he also had the toe up. Now to do that, he almost felt the left hand pushing down as you go back or the clubhead getting up. That gets the club pretty vertical going back, almost standing the club straight up and down. That's also a balance position where the club is very light. A lot of amateurs will get the club off to the side and it's very heavy and moves slow. But when that club gets up here, you have a lot of leverage.

You can see a good example of this swing on YouTube in the video "How to Handle Pressure - #17 at the TPC Sawgrass."

Jim goes on to describe Miller's swing at impact, with the left wrist bowed, just as Hogan advocates. From all my one-arm practice, I have begun to feel how important this position is, one that can't be repeated too often or emphasized enough. In my own study, I've read Hogan on this, and I always keep in mind that Hogan uses Jimmy Demaret as a great example of an accentuated left wrist. I also think of something I read somewhere about Camilo Villegas, who also stresses this bowed position.

And as he came into impact, that left wrist kind of bowed and went into the golf ball, I would say, almost exactly like Ben Hogan. Talking with Johnny, I know he felt that that golf ball compressed against the clubface and stayed there for a while as he went through.

He felt that wrist stayed in that position through impact without having the right hand flipping over at all. And that is probably one reason why he drove the ball so straight off his target line with every club. It was a great, great move, but a very advanced move.

When Jim says, "advanced move," he reminds me of the pro who introduced me to Hogan's book, calling it "advanced," too. Now, here we are, more than half a century after it was first published, and we're still calling this bowed left wrist an "advanced" swing thought. We must conclude that not enough people are reading

Five Lessons.

Jim ends with some astute observations, ones which, I happy to say, coincide with aspects of my own practice, one being the importance of visual models. For me, these are videos on the Web and the video analysis I do every time I practice.

What can you learn from Johnny Miller? Well, if you have young children, one thing you can learn is what Johnny's Dad did for him, and that was to show him pictures of great players. Have them visualize those players and copy some of their positions. It's a tremendous thing to do.

Then, what Jim says about getting the club up on the backswing reminds me of what Don Trahan teaches with his Peak Performance golf, the idea of swinging back into the catcher's mitt and then swinging "up the tree." It seems to be the same concept.

Now as we look at the golf swing, there are two things that I'd like you to look at or remember from this Johnny Miller lesson. Number one, when he took the golf club back, he really got that golf club up in his backswing.

So when you do that, you don't have to do it quite as much as John, but really try to get the clubhead up at the ceiling, up at the sky here, and that makes the club light. And when the club's light you can move it a lot faster.

One of the major problems that I see at all of our golf schools is the player who takes the club around his body which gets his swing too flat. That puts the weight out on the end of a fulcrum where gravity is pulling down on it. So it makes the club very heavy and throws the club way off balance. So that's a tremendous thing you can learn from watching Johnny Miller.

And when he talks about the angle of the shoulders during the turn, he echoes what my pro, Jeremiah, pointed out in my swing.

The other thing I would say, and this is especially true for tall players, is make sure that you get some angle or tilt on your shoulders when you go back. Again, I do see players who tilt too much straight down.

That's something I'm working on right now, that and keeping the flex in the right leg and continuing to focus on keeping the club lag "deep into the shot," in the fashion of Els, and then at impact feeling the bowed left wrist. In the last day or so, the results look pretty encouraging. I'm hitting fairly consistently and with a good degree of accuracy. And after watching that Miller video on #17 at Sawgrass, I'm mentally hitting for that island green. It's a good thing that I'm on dry land, though, or I'd be out of practice balls by now.