Golf Swing Lesson

Golf Swing Lesson - Bum Concept # 1

The golf swing is like a pendulum-ke back and forth motion. The most common view of a pro’s swing is captured with a camera facing the pro. This is the view most often reproduced on magazine and book pages or tv screens, all two-dimensional media. This presentation makes a golf swing look very much like a back-and-forth, swinging motion. One of the definitions in Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary of the word ‘swing’ is: “To move to and fro”.

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Please look at the third row of photos of Tiger Woods’ swing in the Treasury. These were taken with a camera that was almost overhead. As you run your eyes over these pictures from left to right, ‘back’ and ‘forth’ no longer seem to be the most accurate descriptors of the motion represented. Rather the dominant motion appears to be club, arms and shoulders whirling around, first clockwise then counter-clockwise.

The two circles below show the clubhead positions in these overhead photos. Blue lines connect the clubhead positions from the backswing, red from the downswing through two photos after impact:

These circles show vividly that a golf ‘swing’ has more to it than back-and-forth. It is also very much an around motion.

Perhaps subconsciously, that common, two-dimensional, face-on view of the golfer on magazine pages and tv screens creates in our minds a sense that the action of ‘swinging’ a golf club is back then forth, all within a rectangular plane:
Please entertain giving primacy to around as Swail develops its concept of how Tour pros hit the ball, and relegating ‘back’ and ‘forth’ to secondary status.

Moving from the clubhead in toward the body whose parts are creating this rotating motion, we come to Tiger’s hands. Still using that nearly-overhead view, the dots in the figure below left are the positions of that point in Tiger’s hands farthest from his body in the photos that cover from the top of the backswing to the finish.