THE GOLF SWING IS EASY IF YOU KNOW WHAT TO WORK ON!!
Let me first say all great golfers to me have the same fundamentals in their swings, Jack Nicklaus, Annika Sorenstam, Tiger Woods, Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, Alan Doyle and Gary Player’s swings are identical when they are at the top of their best golf breaks at belton woods golf. Most people notice the differences, body types, mannerisms, tempo and so forth. But I teach what all these great players do that are the same and I can make you do them to with just one or two swing thoughts. The golf swing is extremely easy to understand given the right information. Doing it time and again is the hard part.
Here are some of the best players that have ever played there respective sports and a 3 year old kid doing the same thing!! This is a position you MUST be in to play consistent golf, baseball or tennis!!
There are two key elements in the golf swing that all great players do when they are playing well, visit https://shopindoorgolf.com/products/flightscope-mevo-launch-monitor to get the best gadgets to play golf. They all keep the elbows pointing down to the ground and the upper left arm stays connected to the shoulder, which includes the pectoral and lat muscle (instead of the socket or joint) until late in the follow through.
Here is a list of the top ten things you will automatically do if these two simple tasks are accomplished in the swing.
- You Keep the club on perfect plane and keep pressure in the shaft.
- You maintain your radius.
- You maintain a big arc.
- The club travels down the line of flight, never across it.
- Centrifugal force is maintained throughout the swing.
- You keep the club in front of you throughout.
- The club is square the entire time.
- You are able to release the body and club together into the finish.
- Your legs are able to work correctly.
- You keep pressure off your back, sockets, and joints.
Now you get a glimpse of why I make my students practice so hard on how the left arm and the elbows are working in the golf swing. If you master these two elements you are virtually doing everything else correctly in the swing. Find out these great deals for golf holidays to Spain if you are planning on your next golfing holiday. I want you working on two simple things that will make you do twenty things right. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to stop chasing our tails (working on this tip or that tip) understand the simplicity of the golf swing and learn to do it. These are just Ten things you will do correctly, there are many more. Obviously we can play with ball position, set up open or closed, play with the club face position for different situations, and to work the ball, but the left arm MUST work in this simple positon by the LAWS of PHYSICS, not mine, to keep the club in front of us!!
Now here is a picture of Ben Hogan out of his book Power Golf in HORRID positions!! He thought this was correct until he learned the simplicity of the golf swing from Sam Byrd in 1945. The sad thing is a great many instructors use these pictures as the model of a perfect swing!!?? He won from here but he knew he was doing something wrong, that’s why he asked Sam for his help. Notice the horrible twist (reverse pivot) in the backswing and the block and resulting hand flip in the follow through. 
There are MANY tour players in this postion right now but they NEVER last!! They will hurt there backs, tear a rotater cuff, and/or start hitting the ball all over the place. You can’t last out on tour flipping your hands at the ball all day. Notice in the pictures above how firm the hands and wrists are when these players hinge the left elbow at a hundred miles per hour instead of relying on the hands? PHYSICS and FUNDEMENTALS!! Learn them and have fun out there.
Keith, the best way to feel the left arm staying connected to the entire shoulder girdle throughout the golf swing would be to tuck a bit of the shirt you are wearing under the arm pit and keep it there. This will make your swing feel short but it won’t be. This is a trick that was taught to Hogan in ’45 by Sam Byrd and he learned it from Babe Ruth in ’29. You still see top athletes using this drill in all sports with a stick and a ball. As far as the "old swing" and the "modern swing" being so different this is just not accurate!! From day 1 of the invention of golf you had to square the club to the ball the same way as now. It may look different to some because of the amazing technology we have now compared to the stuff those old greats played with.
Great list Steve,I am just a bit confused on how the left arm stays connected to both the lats and pectorals during the back swing? I can see it after impact and into the follow through.As for Hogans swing. Could it also be said that the picture taken was during the transformation period where many of these players learned to play golf with hickory shafts and made the cross over to steel. His position at the top looks similar to those who played with hickory shafts.
No surprise here. I think it was Golf Digest, about 20 years ago, which took old films of Hogan and Sneed, as well as some of the current players in vogue at the time like Nicklaus, Kite, etc and compared them with their writing on the swing positions, sequence, weight shift, etc. I think this was around the time they had Tom Kite "wired" during his swing so they could measure exactly when each set of muscles "fired" – like some human being was going to be able to work with that information !! They found the written instructions from each "model player" and the picture evidence were in conflict much of the time. They concluded, as you did about Tiger, the players were describing the swing from their "feel" viewpoint.
Steve, I love that you added the Ichiro pic in this post. I played college baseball and have always been able to draw a lot of parallels from both swings. Sometimes i get a little too much baseball in my swing, but I can work through it.Here is to hoping we get some decent weather in April.http://saturdaygolfer.com/blog/