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No, I think he does mean "reverse C". It is something you saw Jack or Johnny Miller use in their prime but has dropped out of favor.
http://www.golfsamurai.net/gol..

Listen to what he says from 0:43-0:47 about starting on the right heel and moving to the left toes (forget the rest of the video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v..

This is a very specific anatomical emphasis that is more precise than merely saying shift from right to left. Works for me.

Jim, first of all congratulations! Your understanding of how things are connected and the chain reaction of events that can happen in the swing will serve you well.

Three things:

1) Have you tried the Gary Player walk through drill?
2) How about the drill where you bump your weight to the front side so that the hands automatically drop? (Typically done as a bump three times and then swing through.)
3) Look also at a new topic I'm going to post later today called "Try This!" It addresses several swing faults including this one.

P.S. About 80% of the recreational golfers I see are mostly on their back foot at impact, so this is a very common problem. But as you have dissected it leads to a bunch of problems. So this thread will be of benefit to many.

P.S.S. You probably do have a reverse pivot, most players do. Reverse pivots come in many shapes and sizes. They are as much about an improper backswing as an improper downswing. More on that later.

My friend Mike Maves, a fantastic ballstriker and teacher from Canada, has a few great videos dealing with this stuff. He's a Hogan and Moe Norman disciple, and the groundwork of his teaching is about the effective use of the pivot. These videos are done informally in the cameraman's back yard (he's hitting balls into Lake Ontario)...the cameraman is a bit of a doofus when it comes to golf, but Mike still gets his point across.

The Move pt. 1 - Talks about firming up the right side and how we rotate into it on the backswing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v..

The Move pt. 2 - Talks about how we get to our left side most effectively: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v..

The Navel - Talks about how we use the center of our mass to help control direction and velocity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v..

These (and other videos he's done) changed my golfing life. Seriously. When you start putting these things into practice, it really is amazing.

The secret is in the dirt...literally. It's all about your connection with the turf.

Good ideas, but really futile because you can't learn the golf swing by reading or watching videos. That because you can have little real concept of what you actually do as you try to imitate those swings.

The answer is lessons, likely a series of lessons interspersed with drills and playing the course as you improve.

Basically, I think most teaching pros realize that the correct downswing is triggered by the correct top position. The correct top position is arrived at by a correct grip, setup, and backswing. So they spend their day teaching students to grip, setup, and backswing.

It is both simple and complex. If you reach a fundamentally correct top swing you will make a nice pass through the ball and hit it long and straight. But go to any range and watch the carnage. MOST amateurs are out there ingraining horrible swing faults.

Amazing to see amateurs with expensive equipment yet too cheap to learn how to use it.

Larry

Hundreds of millions of golfers will have a bone to pick with you as golfers have benefited from Harvey Penick's Little Red Book and Ben Hogan's Five Lessons to Phil Mickelson's Secrets of the Short Game.

I know dozens of amateurs who are out there giving themselves lessons-- Many years of going to the range or playing the course and finding another miracle every day. As Johnny Miller said, those are nearly always "WOODs" because the complex series of compensations they discovered don't work the next day on the range or on the course. "Worked Only One Day" is the most common phenomenon of those trying to teach themselves.

So we need both the books and videos AND the eyes of a professional as we develop. I have had the repeated experience of asking my teaching pro about what I read in a book or saw in a "golf tips" video. He always rolls his eyes and says something like, "well, that's true, but it is only part of the solution and it fits people with different faults than yours!" So if I had acted on that tip, it would have triggered another careen through the weeds.

Overall, I really do believe that for late beginners learning a golf swing that performs well enough to CONSISTENTLY play single digit golf takes two ingredients. FIRST, lessons to learn and ingrain solid setup fundamentals. Hogan correctly said, "almost right is completely wrong!"

The grip alone might take several lessons because most amateurs will "adjust" and mess it up while playing and practicing after the lesson. They revert to what feels "comfortable." When they return, the pro has to fix it again. Eventually the correct grip becomes permanent. Same with the clubface. Most amateurs setup with their clubhead closed EVERY SWING. They are not aware they do that. So the pro fixes that and fixes that and fixes that until the student sets up with a correct grip and the clubhead aligned correctly. That may take several lessons.

Then the backswing to a correct top position. Same thing. Repeated returns to the pro to get it right after the student keeps making his own bogus adjustments. Finally he gets it right every swing.

Then if the student is really serious, he must learn to swing with passive arms and hands, to DO NOTHING with arms and hands before impact. To ALLOW not make the club "flail" through impact, to quote Percy Boomer. But doing nothing, powering our swing with hips and ZERO "HIT" is very difficult to learn. But all really good players do that because there is no way a deep wrist set and late release can happen with active arms and hands. And active arms and hands means the golfer is trying to steer every shot. Can't be consistent.

So I believe the Hogan (and Leadbetter) "L to L" drill holds the key to that the passive arms and hands skill. And it requires long persistence and patience to finally feel what Hogan taught. IF the student persists for long minutes several sessions, eventually he feels his hips power the swing, feels his shoulders and arms and hands being moved by his hips. THAT is the key to the deep wrist set and late release that hits balls consistently long and straight.

And that is the reason kids learn it almost immediately and most adult late beginners never learn it.

Larry

I disagree. I've never had a golf lesson. I've played for a long time, but only seriously for the past 5 years. In those 5 years, specifically through reading Nicklaus' Golf My Way and Ben Hogan's Five Lessons, hitting lots of practice balls, and watching/studying tons of footage of the great ballstrikers, I went from a who-knows-what handicap down to my current 1.6 GHIN.



Sure, if you find a GOOD teacher. But I see a lot of bad swing information being thrown out there by PGA "pros." And if you knew what the playing requirements were to become a PGA pro in the first place...they're not that stringent. I know that being a great teacher doesn't necessarily mean you have to be a great player...but come on, I've played with quite a few of these guys, and I can beat a lot of them.



Not really. A correct top-of-backswing position can help, but if you don't perform the downswing correctly, I don't care how pretty your backswing is. You don't hit the ball with your backswing, and a "correct" backswing does not in itself ensure a solid pass at the ball. A correct transition move, on the other hand, can gather up almost any conceivable backswing, however unconventional it may seem.

I say this from experience. If you look at my videos, especially my most recent one, you'll see I have a pretty conventional, on-plane swing with a good top-of-backswing position. (I don't really think about positions much, but either way.) For the most part, I hit the ball pretty well. But I still hit some squirrely shots if I don't make the proper moves in my downswing. If my legs, for instance, are tired and not supporting me through the hit, invariably I'll come over the top and wipe it.

Again, this isn't to negate the importance of the backswing. There are certain things you should do on the backswing that help to automate the downswing. But I think the most important part of the swing is impact. What do you want your body to be looking like at impact? What should the club be doing, and where is it headed after the ball is struck? When you establish that, then you can start to really build back from there.

Impact-first teaching, however, is not something I'd prescribe for the average weekender. Guys like that need to just be taught to swing the club and forget about it. But if you're past that point and looking to improve more, you're not really gonna get there just by having a great backswing.



Agree with you there.

LOL I did that and came across some interesting results. I'd recommend others do who haven't already.

I have been using this forum for several months. NOBODY has ever launched a personal attack or me or anyone-- until Alan Baker started. I am outa here if you let him stay.

He has been KICKED OFF of at least half a dozen golf discussion forums for this behavior. He posts a personal attack, the moderates warn him, he does it again, they warn him again, and he is gone from another forum.

Larry

I do the Gary Player "step through" thing a lot. Especially with the driver. I tend to stay on plane and hit the fairway when I do it properly. Good luck!

In a recent GolfFix episode on the Golf Channel, Michael Breed was helping a 12 yrs old junior who was hanging back a bit with his weight transfer. He gave him a drill to do: with a 6-7 iron, set up normally and have the ball moved forward a good 6 inches (i.e. just inside the left toes), and then try to hit it from the same setup position. Think about what it is that your mind is telling you to do in order to hit that ball: for example, move the buttons of the shirt to the left. Keep that swing thought in mind when playing. With just 2-3 swings, the difference in the kid's contact was amazing! And it was not bad at all to begin with... :)

Teaching pros tell us that this is among the most common faults in beginners (and it continues for most of them). The problem is our natural tendency to decelerate before hitting anything. It is involuntary. So good players have learned to conquer this tendency by NOT looking at the ball itself. They look ahead of the ball, actually planning for the clubhead to extend there. Some focus on the divot they intend to make. The Swing the Clubhead people focus on the clubhead path from the ball position to over their front shoulder, the second half of the golf swing. They envision that and make it happen, the ball just happens to be there.

The best way to practice the golf swing is to hit balls at a fraction of full speed. Focus on form instead, exactly the way we teach ourselves to play a piano or guitar. First play the notes correctly but slowly, then play them at tempo when you have them memorized. Same with the golf swing. It is nonsensical to play musical notes in any old order but fast--that is just noise. And it is nonsensical to swing a golf club any old way.

Larry