Hello All:

Probably the most talked about issue on the forum......to swat or not to swat?....has a nice ring....

As a beginner with no lessons at all, I had very good hand to eye coordination and golf seemed very easy. My swing, if you could call it that, made Trevino's look long and languid. It was short, fast and 99% swat. I could hit it pretty long and I was about a 12 in my first year playing. Fortunately I played often and this helped keep my handicap respectible considering the short amount of time I had been playing. I swatted because by all means, it seems the logical way to swing. Looking at the anatomy and design of the wrists you can move them in the swatting manner with a good range of motion and speed. In all other sports where you are throwing a ball and even the tennis stroke require the swatting movement of the right wrist. So with absolutely no knowledge of the correct mechanics and proper total body movement required in the golf swing, I set about having fun playing with my swat but mysteriously not getting any better after playing golf for several years.

Then something really bad happened.....I got a job and had to stop playing golf five times a week. In fact it had gotten to the point where I was lucky to get out once a week and then once a month. Along the way another very bad thing happened to my golf game....I started really getting afraid to hit the ball. Why? because the lack of time playing started really effecting the timing of my very incorrect golf swing. Some times the timing was OK and I'd play to a 15 but the next time out I had no idea where the ball was going..no clue. No clue = Fear. Golf not fun anymore!

There is a happy ending to the story because out of adversity, with a little knowledge, determination and a plain fascination with this great game, I set about to learn the swing correctly from the bottom up. One of the final pieces of the puzzle to come together was the concept of the correct hinging and unhinging of the golf club. This is not a swat. It is a very limited range of motion (that's the good part) of the right and left wrists. The right wrist in particular has to move very little but with the correct action of the feet, legs, torso, shoulders, head, arms, fingers etc...that right wrist can deliver a very effecient blow to the ball. You are able to keep the left wrist flat at impact which last I checked is the case with every good ball striker. Somewhere on this thread, I saw a comment about wanting to get rid of all lower body movement? I do not recommend this. Learn the correct wrist action starting with the short irons. Get a training tool to help you feel and memorize the correct right hand action. I made one but the Greg Norman Secret, Wrist Tack, or Swing Glove are good options. Check out Greg's Right Hand Drill and Impact drill on this site as they must work in conjunction with each other.

When driving a golf ball the head of the driver can be moving in excess of 100 miles per hour. You want to find a way to minimize the amount of rotation needed in general during this action. The object is to deliver the club head in as straight a line as possible at the 100 plus MPH. By setting up the large easier to control and slower moving muscles in the correct swinging action, you can eliminate nearly all of the rotation from the wrists. Yes the arms will rotate somewhat but again, this is far easier than trying to manipulate the split second timing required of the wrists in a swat when the oject you are controlling (club head not the ball) is moving at that rate of speed.