Rhythm and Release

Realizing that I was making important progress on the swing, I went right back to practicing, studying some YouTube videos to help me out. One video in particular helped me with the rhythm of the swing, which you'll see in the video below.

As I practiced that drill, I came to understand a new subtlety of the release: how the follow-through traces the same plane as the downswing. I know this sounds obvious, but all along, I thought that the follow-through would take care of itself. As I practiced the rhythm drill and felt the relaxation in my arms, I started to sense how the club wants to return inside the target line during the follow-through. For some reason, I had never paid much attention to this before. But as I practiced the swing in slow-mo and thought about what probably happens, I began to think that when the left hand releases, the clubhead naturally wants to follow the arc that has already been established during the downswing. That arc takes the clubhead inside the target line. However, that's not all that happens. What also happens is that as the left arm snaps the clubhead through the hitting zone, the right hand, after throwing the clubhead, finishes on top of the left and both hands finally swing through, away from the target, and swing around the head, or top of the spine, as the swing concludes.

This is what I was seeing in the side-by-side video of Ernie Els and Michelle Wie. Finally, I started to understand how their beautiful follow-throughs happened. The left hand actually snaps the club through the hitting zone, quickly moving from a pronated position to a supinated position. Now, I have known about pronation and supination ever since I first cracked open Hogan's Five Lessons book, but until now, I never understood what he meant. The movement is so fast that deliberate control is impossible. The best I can do is think about where in the swing I want this snap to happen and then try to do it at some visual point in my swing. It's pure guesswork. If I get it right, then the shot is perfect. If I miss by a little, then either I block the shot right or I pull it left. So that release point is crucial. And I think it's the same problem for every golfer, even the pros. It's all about timing. Sometimes you're right on, but other times, you miss by a little. And that's why the pros find themselves in the rough or in a greenside bunker. This release point isn't the only fine point that my practice today revealed.

I also started to see how the left arm supinates from impact into the follow-through. It's an instantaneous kind of movement. At one milli-second, the left hand is pronated, but in the next, it's supinated, with the right hand seeming to ride on top of the left. I spent the rest of the day working on this feeling. At the range, I felt great. I could shape shots and hit with reasonable consistency. Now and then, I could feel my left arm working properly and whipping the clubhead around the swing arc. But I had too many swing thoughts: a relaxed swing rhythm, bowing my left wrist, letting the clubhead lag, coming through and throwing with the right hand, supinating the left hand and letting it go freely into the follow-through—all this was too much for me. But I know that I'm on the right path. More practice in the next few days will give me the results I'm looking for: a rhythmical swing with accuracy and distance.