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ОглавлениеTHE LAZY GOLFER’S SWING TECHNIQUE
Whenever a real golfer gets a new anything to do with golf (new clubs, a special wedge, the ‘ultimate’ secret from the latest book, whatever) he can’t wait to try it out on the course. But before you trot briskly off to the first, satisfied that at last your clubs and balls really suit you, there are some basics to consider and ponder about. Not least, what type of swing have you been using over the last ‘x’ years?
You do already appreciate that everyone has an individual swing, very individual as you will see if you scrutinise the line of players at a driving range. The world’s top Tour pros are also different, if not so divergent, in the overall appearance of their swings. Nick Price, for example, has a decidedly brisk tempo. Fred Couples, on the other hand, swings almost drowsily, lifting the club with his arms, turning his shoulders late and looping the club inside to be on plane at impact. Ian Woosnam seems to stand a long way from the ball, yet he smacks it with very little apparent effort a long way down the fairway, as does Greg Norman, who seems to stand almost on top of the ball, which he assaults with a vigourous, gut-wrenching action.
These four are instantly recognisable by their swings, even at the distance of a well struck drive. Yet they all have in common a sound swing technique which maximises their physical abilities and they are, to a man, top-notch exponents of the ‘modern’ swing. This is something of prime importance to really understand. For there are two distinct basic types of swing; the classical and the modern.
The Classic and the Not So Classic Swing
Misunderstanding the different principles of the two types (and worse, using bits of one with parts of the other) has wrecked the swings of many golfers – and even a few Tour pros.
The classic swing is more of a hands and arms action (rather than the ‘whole body’ movement of the modern swing, where the arms follow, rather than lead). Dating from the days of brassies, spoons, cleeks and mashie-niblicks, it was exemplified by the flowing movement of Bobby Jones, who started his swing with the hands leaving the clubhead behind, contrasted to the compact three-quarter action of Sir Henry Cotton.
The classic grip was more in the fingers, promoting a faster hand action, and the classic golfer typically aligned slightly right of the pin and positioned the ball further back in his stance (centre for the 5-iron and even nearer the right foot for the short clubs).
Foot action was also more pronounced, with the left heel lifting high off the ground in the backswing, basically because the thick tweeds the players wore restricted easy movement. The arms were also kept close to the body, the right elbow tucked in at the top, the left on the follow through, and the overall action was quite rotary on a flattish plane. The classic swinger also hit against a ‘firm left side’ which, with his set-up and swing shape, produced theoretically a right to left shot, hopefully a draw.
The modern swing, in contrast, has much more emphasis on body movement. The legs drive, the hips turn, the arms follow and, in theory, the bottom of the arc is extended through impact, keeping closer to the ground for longer and hitting the ball further.
The modern grip is more in the palm of the left hand, more neutral, and exponents talk of “taking their hands out of the game.” They align square or more open to the flag and generally position the ball for all clubs (except the driver) some two inches inside the left heel. With lighter, less restrictive clothes, modern swingers roll their left foot on the backswing and stretch their arms a little further away from the body, creating a more lateral and upright swing, with the clubhead travelling more down the line to the target. All this tends to produce, particularly with modern clubs, a higher ball which flies left to right, hopefully as a power fade.
CLASSIC OR MODERN: BOTH CAN BE RIGHT FOR YOU.
Now what you as a club golfer must further appreciate is that using a hands and arms swing, a classic action, today is not wrong because it is outdated. Equally, it is not imperatively right to use a leg driven modern swing just because most top Tour pros do. The classic swing developed because of the whippy shafted clubs used in earlier times and the need to hit long, low shots under the wind on the firm turfed links. The modern swing is an evolution based on the technology of much stiffer, lighter shafts and the need to hit longer, higher shots, particularly on the stretched, lush courses in the US.
Some top pros appreciated this evolution and quickly adopted it, one being Tony Jacklin. When he started to play on the US Tour in the late 1960’s, he had a classic hands and arms swing. But then he studied the action of fellow pros like Jack Nicklaus and Tom Weiskopf and was soon convinced that he was not making adequate use of his legs to suit the courses they played. The change for him, which simply meant bending his knees a bit more and driving with his legs, took quite a time. Teaching pros today advocate practising a swing change sixty times a day for three solid weeks to groove it. For Jacklin, it involved hitting thousands of balls on dozens of practice areas and he believes he ended up with a slower, more rhythmic action which hit the ball further than he’d ever done before.
Doug once tried to change his swing in a similar way, having read of the ‘new’ Jacklin swing in his favourite golf magazine. He did it in a desperate attempt to cure his hook and hit a few balls on the practice ground one day, taking his remodelled swing onto the course the next. There he found to his horror that he had developed a pernicious push-slice, the ball flying right at forty five degrees to his intended line and then curling even further right, to end usually out-of-bounds, almost level with him. When, in desperation, he tried to revert to his ‘old’ swing on the eighth, he started to take deep divots, advancing the ball only thirty or forty yards forwards at a time. It took him a month in the end to cure his ‘cure’. What he should have realised from the start is that any small swing change, never mind a major reconstruction, demands practice, practice and yet more practice before it can begin to work. Doug, as a club golfer, should also have consulted his club pro before he started and have been guided by him throughout the change.
With the basic differences between the classic and modern swings however, there is one thing you must be very clear about. The hands and arms alone do not solely create the motive power to propel the ball. The whole body plays a part, while the legs are certainly active, not frozen as some would believe. Equally, with the modern swing, while the lower body drives, the arms must swing down fast and free. Both actions are essential motive forces that add power to the swing, be it classical or modern.
Body power is generated by coiling the upper torso against the resistance caused by a flexed right knee and solid feet – a good foundation is all important. These are released automatically on the downswing. The hand and arm action supplies power to the shot by working as a swinging unit and with both forces, good leg action is essential for rhythm and balance during the swing, but perhaps it is not such an important source of power as some have argued. Try hitting a few balls with a 6-iron with your feet together, knees touching. Seve Ballesteros can hit a ball well over 200 yards on his knees.
So what every golfer should be aiming for, whether he has a classic or modern swing, is a balanced combination of hand and arm action and body action which results in the club face hitting squarely through the ball with maximum speed directly towards the target. It is in trying to get this balance, this timing, right that the club golfer can go disastrously wrong.
Too much body action is the major factor that wrecks the timing of many golfers. Often swinging back too far with their hips, with no resistance from knee or feet, they think about using their lower body action too much on the downswing and consequently don’t swing their arms freely enough.
A SWING CHANGE TAKES A LOT OF PRACTICE.
CUTTING EXCESSIVE BODY ACTION, WITH KNEES TOGETHER.
One reason for this may stem from TV programmes and videos that analyse the swings of top players in slow motion. The couch golfer watching Couples or Woosnam, say, may note that their lower bodies move towards the ball before their arms seem to start the downswing. Not appreciating the natural fast hand and arm action of the top pros, the golfer copies the body action alone. Worse still, he may copy bits of the swings of different pros, dovetailing some of Couples’ technique with parts of Woosnam. In that case he should realise that if Couples tried to copy Woosnam’s swing and vice versa, they would probably both have handicaps in double figures.
Copying the top pros without understanding what they are really doing has befuddled golfers since the earliest days of the game. There’s an inevitability about this search for ‘the secret’, shown in P G Wodehouse’s writings on Sandy MacBean and his book How to Become a Scratch Man in Your First Season by Studying Photographs. But today golfers often pick up some very bad habits from trying to copy their favourites – like taking too much time over their shots. They see the Tour professionals preparing to drive, discussing club selection with their caddies, teeing up, putting on their glove and then stepping up to the ball. Then just when you think they’re getting ready to strike, they stop and walk behind and check the line again, throw some grass in the air to check the wind and study the tops of the trees before finally taking up their stance. And then, sometimes, lo and behold, they have a few more practice swings just in case. It’s even more protracted on the greens, some professionals stalking the line of their putts clockwise, counter clockwise tapping down pitchmarks, plumb-bob lining up the hole. Several practice putts, another look here, another look there, all adds ten, fifteen, twenty seconds per shot to the round of golf. It’s no wonder there are so many five-hour rounds played today.
SET A PERSONAL TIME LIMIT FROM THE START OF ADDRESS.
One of the worst problems today is that people think that if they take a long time, they must be concentrating. That is not the case. This is especially true on the tee, where the club golfer is usually afraid of fooling (something the pro can hardly conceive of). Setting up, the longer he takes, the more likely doubting thoughts can pervade the concentration and wreck the swing. The best advice is to aim for a personal time limit: take twenty seconds say from the moment it’s ‘your turn’ to the moment you pull the trigger. It will clear the mind of random doubts and your probably find you will play a lot better.
Club golfers also copy the way many pros tee the ball low. The pros do this to promote a powerful fade and a low tee is definitely not for the player who slices. Nor is a ball position that is off the left heel for all clubs. This is fine for the Tour pro with his strong leg driven modern swing, but with the average golfer it only leads to excessive body action and problems.
If the golfer is to copy anything from his favourite pro, aside from enjoying his play hopefully, it should be his free arm swing. This is the unbalanced motive force in the majority of golfers’ swings, especially those who slice. Yet most fit people can swing the clubhead fast enough with their hands and arms to play reasonable golf.
This does not imply that club golfers should adopt a classic swing technique, hitting against a firm left side. Nor is there any suggestion that if you have been playing for quite a few years and have a middling handicap, you should try to change your swing radically. However, it may be beneficial to consider a sound swing technique that would suit the average golfer. If you adopt some of its elements into the golf swing you already have, you could see some very positive results. It ought to be said that all golf swings are like finger prints, every one is different. You can mentally feel that you’re copying somebody’s swing: the tempo’s the same, your walk, your every mannerism, is a carbon copy of your hero. But in reality it’s not like that at all, you’re born with your own rhythm of life and that is carried through into the game of golf.
To start with, every golfer must have a pre-shot routine, where he takes a grip on the chosen club and sets up to the ball. If you have a grip that’s right for your swing and a comfortably correct set-up, you are 90 per cent on the way to hitting a good golf shot. But if your grip and set-up are faulty you are virtually guaranteeing a bad one.
Pros can tell at a glance if a golfer has a low, a middle or a high handicap just from his address routine. The low handicapper, having taken an easy practice swing and checked the line of the shot, moves positively to the ball. He aims the club face, aligns his body and settles comfortably for the shot. The high handicapper, in contrast, usually looks tense over the ball. He fiddles with his grip, aligns his body and aims the club, peering down the fairway several times. He may then even take a practice swing or two before shuffling his feet again and tensing up for the shot. Above all, he has no consistent pre-shot routine.
To give yourself a chance of getting it all right and to develop a sound routine, you could use a simple aide memoire, the word GASP. G is for grip, A for aim, S for stance and P for position. In routine, you take your Grip, Aim the club face and align your body in a comfortable Stance with the ball Positioned correctly. Let’s look at these essentials in more detail.
First the Grip. Now you seldom see a low handicap golfer (not to mention a pro) with a bad grip. He seems to hold the club firmly, naturally in his hands. But a ‘natural’ hold for him could seem very uncomfortable and unnatural for you. For there are many ways to hold a club and at least one of them is correct for you, within certain parameters. You must find it and apply it, because if you have been a high handicapper for a number of years and show little sign of improvement, there’s a five-to-one chance that your grip is causing your problems and holding you back.
THINK ‘GASP’ FOR EVERY SHOT.
However, while millions of words have been written by golf instructors on the grip, most of which is good advice, it can be a little confusing for the club golfer. He or she is advised to place the club diagonally across the left palm and keep both palms facing each other, with the ‘Vs’ of thumbs and forefingers pointing to a spot half way between the nose and the right shoulder – for a neutral grip. The problem is that most golfers do not look at where the ‘Vs’ point and probably couldn’t judge where they were pointing anyway.
For a club golfer, to keep things simple, you will not go too far wrong if you:
hold the club just above the roots of the fingers of your left hand, so that you see only the thumb and the knuckles of the first two fingers of the hand when your right hand is off the club; and
when you grip the club with your right hand alone, you see only the nail of your right little finger, but no other finger nails.
From this neutral position, whether you feel more comfy with an overlapping, interlocking or two handed grip (because of the shape of your hands, length of fingers, etc.) it’s easy to make it stronger. It doesn’t matter which of these grips you use. The great thing is the hands should work together. Golf is a two-handed game and you should feel comfortable. It is important that the grip should be in the bottom of the fingers, not running through the palms.
Beware though that you don’t hold the club entirely with the fingers. Bob once tried this ‘grip’ in an effort to get more clubhead speed and distance. He found however that he could not hit the ball consistently in the same direction twice running and abandoned the effort when he started to get blisters.
THE RIGHT GRIP FOR THE RIGHT HAND.
The correct grip for you can only be found with a little experiment, but there can be no variation in the pressure with which you hold the club. It must be firm and light, not squeezed tight. Unfortunately many golfers, judging by the white knuckles and rigid forearms one sees, throttle any chance of a free release out of their swings. You should hold the club lightly at first, for your grip automatically tightens as you accelerate on the downswing. It’s rather like driving a nail in with a hammer.
Next in a sound pre-shot routine comes A for aim and alignment. Forget what you often see on TV, where Greg (and other Tour pros) grounds the club behind the ball, holding only with his right hand, before taking his stance. A pro is concentrating solely on aiming the club in this way; his alignment has become second nature to him, mostly from practice. You however should form your grip firmly on the club and try a practice swing (not taking a divot on the tee) while deciding the line of the shot. To help you line up, choose an aiming point some four or five feet from the ball, a leaf or blade of grass. Then, moving to the ball and looking down on it, you should put the club face behind it squarely along the target line, using your aiming point. To align your body correctly for the shot, just ensure the line of your feet and shoulders are parallel to that line.
Matt, like many club golfers, fails to check this aim, or alignment, of his feet and shoulders with every shot. Then, if his feet point right of the target while his shoulders point left, he develops an ugly shank. It is even more exasperating as Matt doesn’t know why it happens, not why it mysteriously disappears (when he aims his body correctly again.) You must always check that your body is aimed in line with the clubface for every shot.
With S for Stance, you have to consider where to put your feet, how far apart they should be, your weight distribution, how straight your left arm is at address and how you stand up to the ball.
Feet first. As a club golfer, you should never stand with your feet square to the target line as you swing. They must point a few degrees out, otherwise they could lock your backswing and restrict your downswing. They should be as far apart as your normal walking stride, for if too widely spread (as some golfers favour when using a driver) it restricts the hip turn and locks the left knee. This causes a tilt of the shoulders on the backswing, leading to fat shots and slices.
Everything in golf should be 50–50; the tension in both hands, the weight on both legs. Stand evenly balanced. If you start with the preface that everything is 50–50, it makes life much easier.
Your left arm should be stretched out comfortably as you set up and your right elbow relaxed. If you try and force your left arm ramrod stiff (to try and copy the pros in the backswing) your left shoulder will be set too high, impeding a full shoulder turn and probably leading to a reverse pivot.
