Every six months to a year there seems to be a “new” swing thought or theory that quite a few coach’s latch onto and start to advocate in their teachings.  Swinging left has to be one of the worst, never has there been a great player that swings left after impact that has lasted.  And by the way it is not new, this crap has been around for a hundred years.  The best players in the world past and present go down the line, not across it.  Also working on this will destroy your body, just look at Tiger, he has been working on this now for quite awhile with Foley and his back finally gave out.  I predicted this a couple years ago, and it was about as hard to predict as the sun rising in the East.  If you swing left your never going to your target, your spinning and twisting across it.

First of all, we all learn the first day of a lesson or junior camp how to align ourselves to a target.  Here is a picture of Fred Funk doing just that, this is a simple, crucial fundamental position that has been taught forever.

Now once you understand how to set up to a target the club must go down the line of flight, or your outer rail.  How the heck are you going to do this when you try to swing left of your target.  Many instructors are fooled by video of a player from behind and think the player is swinging left, or they are just using video and pictures of somebody swinging poorly.  Even Hogan was taught to swing left way back in the 30’s just look at his poor swing out of his first book Power Golf.  Mr. Hogan was simply given bad information from people that were taught to do this as well.  Here is a picture of Hogan from behind out of Power Golf.

Notice the left arm…….you NEVER see the left arm from this angle with great players swinging well, his left arm being visible here is proof the club has come across his body and he must flip his hands to hit the ball straight, good luck.  If a player is swinging correctly, down the line, you would only see his back in this picture, never the left arm.  If Hogan kept swinging this way and never learned the correct information, we wouldn’t know his name.  And he never would have come out with his correct book, Five Lessons.   Here is another picture of a guy swinging left and falling for crap instruction.

Look at his left arm way above the right and how much pressure on the back swinging left does to the human body.  The sad thing is the guy could be fixed in an afternoon with the correct information.  This is how far away some players get from the proper fundamentals and correct information and it just kills them.  If this guy ever starts getting this in his short game as well, good bye……Ben Hogan came out on Tour with a crappy swing and changed it to pure perfection, Tiger came out on Tour with a perfect swing and has screwed it up.  Many, many stories like this over the years……

Now let’s look at these guys releasing the body properly, which releases the club.  Or going down the line of flight, not across it, same thing.

Now, these are pure, and identical, the club is going down the line of flight and the body’s are unwinding correctly putting no pressure on the joints and the body. Every great player when they are swinging well is going down the line, not left of it……with NO EXCEPTION…. You always see bad players swinging left the best, why the heck do you think ninety percent of amateurs see their divots going left and the ball going right?  And another thing, all great players chase the ball down the line, if you are doing this correctly as you finish you should feel the muscles in the small of your back, swinging left you can NEVER get this feeling.  So if you have an instructor that wants you to finish or swing left, RUN, before it’s to late and find someone that advocates simple pure fundamentals and work hard on perfecting them…..