Left Arm Alone Drill -- Transfer to the Full Swing 2

Starting with the left arm alone drill, I worked on several aspects of the swing. First, I wanted the plane to be correct. Next, I wanted to bow my left wrist on the backswing and at the top of the swing. Third, I wanted to bring down my left arm, following my hip and shoulder turn, and, last, I wanted to release with the left wrist deep into the swing and then continue all the way through the follow-through.

As you can see in the video, in the left arm alone drill, I have a good swing plane. Along with the bowed wrist at impact, the swing (when it works) snaps right at the bottom of the swing arc and continues all the way through and around over my shoulders.

It's getting better. Better all the time. And that's a good thing!

Several golf influences are shaping my swing and my swing thoughts. One is Shawn Clement, whose videos on YouTube are among the best instruction you will find there. His relaxed, rhythmical swing is a good one to try to emulate, and that's what I've been doing the last few days. Then, I signed up for Don Trahan's free 10 emails, and that turned out to yield some good information, two tips in particular. The first was about the takeaway. Don encourages his students to imagine a baseball catcher behind them and to swing the club back into the catcher's mitt. From there, Don says, "Swing up the tree," again, calling on our visual imagination to help us with the swing plane on the way to the top of the swing. The second tip was really more of a revelation to me. It's his email video with the topic of "Kinetics," and in it he says,

When we look at the motion of efficient golfers on 3 D motion capture systems or videotape, it appears that they are “holding” the club shaft in a cocked position deep into the downswing. Many amateurs, in an attempt to create more power, try to emulate this action. What you have to understand is that efficient golfers do not manufacture or try to hold this cocked position. The arms accelerating around the axis of the trunk on the downswing create this club lag or cocked position. When the arms decelerate before impact, speed is transferred to the club. The club accelerates and the angle between the arms and club shaft increases rapidly into impact.

If I had ever thought about the relationship between arm speed and clubhead speed, or the teaching tips I've come across often about hand speed compared to clubhead speed, I've definitely lost them. When I read Don's paragraph, I literally stopped in my mental tracks. What an idea! Of course, that's how it must work, I thought to myself. And for the last few days, that's become a practice goal: to start to get the feel of the clubhead lagging behind until my hands get in the hitting zone, and then letting my hands slow down and using the release to throw the clubhead around the swing arc at an incredible speed. My efforts to do this will be the subject of the next post.

And the last influence is that Ernie Els video where he talks about letting the club lag deep into the shot. He shows how, when you start to cock your wrists on the backswing, on the way to the top, a box-like shape forms among the upper arm, forearm, and club shaft. He shows how he likes to keep that shape to the top of the swing and then deep into the downswing. He says that it "Keeps you in the shot."

In the next post, I'll describe (with video) my attempts to get "deep into the shot."