To follow up on my last piece, "The myth of casting the club," it needs to be said that there are many of us that just don't understand the rate of rotation in the golf swing.
Some of us teaching the game still believe in holding on to your angles on the down swing. Teachers often use other expressions to describe how holding on to the angles hurts a student. The student will hear, "you're getting the club stuck behind you and the solution is to get the club out in front of you."
The only way to get the club out in front is to cast it out there or spring it from the top. I think the rhetoric used to describe the golf swing has started to confuse even the instructors of the game to some degree. There is nothing wrong with casting the club, as long as the top of the left leg and right leg are moving the hips and the left knee is straightening.
If you visualize the distance that the clubhead has to travel on its round circular path, it is so much greater compared to the amount the lower body turns through the hitting area. You don't need to be like Tiger, with a very fast turn through the impact zone, for this to become an area of the golf swing to focus some of your attention on. This has more to do with the actual distance that is covered by these two separate motions.
If you're between the ages of 40-60, you might feel it is senseless to listen to any instruction that is some how linked to Tiger's swing because of his youth and strength. Your position is valid, however this motion is based simply on rate of rotation. Your motion during your swing has its own rate of rotation. This concept will work for you as well. There are shorter knockers on tour that are applying the same principals with great success -- David Toms and Darren Clark just to mention a couple of great swings to watch. Some of the other long hitters to watch cast the club are K.J.Choi and J.B. Holmes. Holmes has something interesting going on at the top of his back swing -- he barely has his wrists set.
This leads me to my description of creating effortless power that I like to call the, "Smash Factor". There are five possible angles that are formed by the top of the swing:
- Left wrist is hinged
- Right wrist is bent
- Right arm is folded at the elbow
- Left arm is also folded slightly at the elbow
- The left knee is bent
These five angles are your power accumulators. At the start of the downswing the top of the left leg, or point of coordination, leads the center of the body's weight. This is about where your belt buckle is, toward the left heel. As soon as that motion starts, these angles all together start to lose their angle and if they start together, they will all be flat, snapped, unfolded and straightened at ball contact with the result being the, "Smash Factor".
With all the words and phrases that have been said to dismiss casting, even the finest instructors are struggling with presenting a swing of less effort. The explanation of getting the club trapped behind you is really holding on to your angle on the downswing.
The fix is getting the club to swing down more in front of the chest on the downswing. That would really be casting. The way Tiger describes it, "getting the club head as far from my body as possible."
Here's another axiom: width. You need to get wider on your downswing. Is there anyone capable of holding on to the angles and getting width? No wonder the average golfer struggles with swing mechanics. The people teaching, even the gurus, can't seem to get clear in terms of what happens in the swing. They just reinvent a different way of saying it. The big problem with that is mechanics become a contradiction. The teaching professional is just as guilty as anyone for making sure handicaps never change.
The fact is someone holding the angles could experience a blocked shot to the right and follow it up with a big old snap hook on the very next shot. Holding on to the angles causes both of those shots, it is a diseased swing thought. If you would like to see video that will show this in detail visit 7mythsofgolf.com.
