Passive arms.

Not using the arms does not make sense. Either on the backswing, the downswing or at any other time, it does not make sense. We hold the club with the hands, the hands are attached to the arms, we use the arms all the time.

Don't take my word for it, try it for yourself.

Practice with passive arms, look at the results.
Practice with active arms, look at the results.

The ball does not lie. Ever.

Then again, if passive arms works for you, do that instead. Whatever works, do it. Whatever does not work, don't do it.

Perhaps you are scared of learning something bad? Perhaps you are scared of learning something you can't get rid of later on?

That's ridiculous. If you can learn something, you can learn something else. I read somewhere that Thomas Edison tried 10,000 times before he succeeded in making a functional lightbulb. Now that's a whole lot of learning something bad before learning something good.

How many times did you try something only to find out it didn't work? How many times did you try something until you found something that did work?

It took me a bit over a year to find what works. Oh I tried passive arms, active arms, passive wrists, active wrists, over the shoulder, over the head, snap the wrists, cast the club, short swing, long swing, wide swing, narrow swing, flat swing, steep swing, weak grip, strong grip, head down, head up, forward press, lateral move. Oh my.

Now, I only do what works.

What if I forget? That truly does not matter. If I can learn once, I can learn again. I can even shortcut the process because of all that knowledge I accumulated as I tried out this and that.

Anyway, once you find what works, practice it until you are confident that you can do it the way you want to do it, then forget about it and focus on what really matters.


Martin Levac