The Golf Swing

I am about to give you the gift of distance wrapped in a parable tied together with a ribbon of comedy. Not only am I going to help you hit it father, after reading this article you will be hitting it "striaght as a farmer". The greatest tool you have on the golf course is your mind. Bob Rotella calls it your 15th club. The great Robert Jones said golf was played in the six inches between your ears. Many people interpret this quote to mean that you control your emotions and keep cool on the golf course. While this is good advice, it misses the point. Jones was saying that golf swing doesn't just happen, your brain tells your hands to swing the club up over your right shoulder (for a right-handed player) and then swing the club toward the target and all the way to the finish with your arms (by arms I mean your upper-arm or humerus bone for all you osteology student's out there). There is no such things as muscle memory; your muscles don't have brains. If they did, there would be no "dumb jock" stereotype. Unless you are aware of what you are doing, mentally, you are bound to make mistakes. It is like driving a car, you have to think about where the car is going and turn the steering wheel and press the gas to get where you want to go. Even on your commute to work, a route you have driving thousands of times, you have to have mental purpose to drive the car. We all learned to drive a car with relative easy, some of still struggle from time to time, and the golf swing is no different.

The golf swing is a swing, not a leveraging action. There is no pulling, or pushing of the club since there actions move in a line- the golf swing is a circle. Anytime the club is parallel to the ground, it must also be parallel to the the target line. This is geometry of a circle: according to the legendary instructor Manuel de le Torre, "Anytime there is a circle, it is on a plane. All the horizontal cords of that circle are parallel to each other and to the tangent on that plane that represents the target line." But a swing as no good unless it has direction. The club should be swung at the target. If you want to hit it father, swing your arms faster from the top of your backswing all the way to the finsih. The body will respond to the swinging of the club, all that is required is the mental image of the club swinging in a circle as described above and the body will assume visually pleasing positions. It sounds simple, but that's because it really is. Golf is a game that really should be enjoyed more than it is. So is backgammon, if anyone is looking for a game.

~Black Bear