"Overview of the modern, total body golf swing"

The title is from Jeff Mann's valuable Website. On this page, he talks about "the kinetic sequence of biomechanical events in the modern, total body golf swing," involving the pelvis, the shoulders, and the left arm. Jeff has the research and the technical understanding that confirms and explains what I've been learning lately.

I've started to appreciate how good players get maximum clubhead speed. They do it in two parts. The first is turning the hips. This rotation brings the arms down to the "hitting position," where the clubshaft is parallel to the ground and target line. Then the second part picks up from there. This is the rotation of the upper body and shoulders. This speeds up the momentum that the first part already created and it concludes with that great finish position that the pros have, with their hips facing the target (or past that point in some cases) and the shoulders turned left and almost parallel to the target line. It's all one accelerating movement, though. In theory, or in teaching, it's two parts, but in practice these two parts are the swing, from start to finish.


Here's an excellent video analysis of Steve Allen's swing that captures what I think I'm learning. The instructor is Lawrie Montague from www.GolfConfidence.Org, but I think that what Lawrie misses as a teacher is what happens in the hitting zone. All he repeats is "swing through to the finish." But what drives that is the acceleration of the upper body and shoulders. I'm the golfer he talks about who thinks of hitting the ball, rather than swinging. What will make me more of a swinger is the idea of continuing to rotate the upper body and shoulders. It's just like doing "Around the World" with a yo-yo. In order to get the yo-yo to continue down and around, you have to speed up the finger that touches the string.

Now this is all easier said than done. It's one thing to analyze the swing and see how it probably works, and it's completely another thing to go out and try to do that. To put all this together requires breaking it down into parts and practicing those with drills and slow motion, and then, gradually, trying to put it all together. That's what I'm doing each day at the range. But it's very difficult. I've slowed down my tempo and tried not to think about distance at all (that, in itself, is very hard to do!). But I need some drills.

You see, there's the hip movement, which is hard enough -- Do I start with my left knee? Am I rotating level left? Has the transition happened? Am I just holding onto the club and dragging it? You get the idea. So you have to think about all that. Then, when the hips hit their 45 degree angle to the target line, that's when the upper body takes over. Well, how exactly do you make that happen? I don't know. It's a mystery to me. But I know it when I see it.

It's like Geoff Ogilvy's swing on YouTube, one of my favorite videos. It's great when he finishes his swing and you can hear a spectator say, "Wow!" There's also a great Ernie Els swing that ends with a similar reaction from some onlooker. These are the swings I want to emulate. They are prime examples of "Effortless power, instead of powerless effort."