Why?

I was helping out a good friend of mine at the weekend.

We took a video of his swing and had a look at it on V1. When I put it up next to Snead and Hogan he was insisitant that I put it up next to Adam Scott or Henrik Stenson.

Now, I have no problem with that, but why is it that the old masters are pretty much ignored in modern examples of wonderful golf swings to copy?

Snead was as natural as they come with a technique that would win many a major today and Hogan , although not as natural, made it look natural and was deadly accurate from any disctance.

Yet there is only one swing on the current top level circuit that even comes close to resembling either of these legends techniques.............................guess who???!!!

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Luke: I don't believe it!
Yoda: That is why you fail.

Maybe it's their hats

Thanks Bri

In the spirt of civilised debate, I’d ask a different question; why do we try to copy anyone’s swing?

I have no problem with a coach teaching the fundamentals as used by the greats of this or any other generation; but using a video to get me to mould my swing? A money making scam.

Do I seriously think that, in my fifties, I could learn to dunk a basketball by watching Michael Jordan, bowl a doosra by watching Mutiah Muralitharan, swim by watching Ian Thorpe, or dribble a football by watching Georgie Best?

I’d suggest that I’d actually accept the differences between us: For example as I’m stepping towards the basket, the strides of my steps are 4 feet apart; while Jordan’s are 7 feet apart. As I jump to the basket, I jump from 3 feet away; while Jordan takes off from 12 feet away. When I jump, I bend my knees at a 65 degree angle and Jordan at a 90 degree angle. As I jump my posture is bent over about 10 degrees more than Jordan.

Will watching and copying Tiger help me make up for the 8 hours a day he practices, make up for the millions more balls he’s hit?

The Pros taking our money though tell us that video analysis and comparison will show us what we are doing wrong in comparison with our heroes. So what?

Does seeing everything you’re doing wrong in your golf swing help you to hit the golf ball better or does it make your next swing worse because now you’re thinking of everything you’re doing wrong?

What I’d like to find is a coach who takes my swing, my body, my limitations and works on my swing to make it as good as it can consistently be – and leave his camera, his software and his videos in the cupboard.

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I firmly believe that we should try to experience all that life affords, except, perhaps, bestiality and of course Morris Dancing.

I have to agree.........


Why would we want to copy anyones swing they are all different anyway.

For the use of explaining to a beginner, what a swing looks like on plane etc fine, but never to mimic a swing.

We all know by now 'all' pros only have three things in common, the rest is not important.

Alinement and set up is the most important thing although over the years pros have proved this is not that important either, Couples for example........should be a slicer!!!

I would use a pro of similar build and height etc for the V1 match as shorter players to tend to swing flatter etc.....it is not much use having Stenson or Tiger next to me as they are tall and thin..........I am not...say no more.


Ian.

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Once you learn the swing, your next step is mastering golf psychology................

Looking at a high performer as someone to emulate is a most natural thing to do.

Even if you found a coach that didn't use a camera or TV, what's he getting you to do in his lessons? He's getting you to swing like a pro. The only difference is he's using his mental projection of what he wants, rather than showing you on a TV screen. Just because you can't see someone performing what he wants you to do, doesn't mean he's not using a model to base it on.

I'm not advocating using video to the degree that I end up getting skin pigmentation and a Swedish wife to "be like Tiger" but what I was getting was the fact that, among the elite golfers of the world, there is only one guy that exhibits traits that Snead and Hogan had in their swings, and he's top of the tree. By a long way. I think coming away from Harmon was the best thing Tiger ever did. It seems Mr Haney has a liking of the old-fashioned stuff. Tigers swing has clearly evolved from what other players have now as the swings that they rely on, into what resembles the old-fashioned way of doing it and he's reaping the rewards. Sergio's close, but he can't putt right now!! When he does putt well, he's awsome!

In a nutshell, the current best in the world uses old-time golfers as his model. So why don't more?

__________________
Luke: I don't believe it!
Yoda: That is why you fail.

Ah but my point would be that while it may be natural it might not be effective and that for most people if your coach is trying to get you to swing like a pro then he's wasting your time and money - far better to get you to swing like an improved, more consistent version of yourself.

Usings Ian's point; if you are Woosie's shape but ahem more so then there's not much point trying to emulate Tiger.

Moreover you can practice getting into the same swing positions as Woosie for hours upon hours – yet there are more factors that go into hitting a golf ball any where near his level.

One – practicing swing positions has nothing to do with improved swing motion – you can’t practice positions and think that it’s equivalent to swing motion;

Two – are your golf muscles as trained as Woosie’s – he may not look like an athlete, but his muscles have been conditioned for the how many years to work with his swing; are your golf muscles going to learn to work like Woosies’s by watching a video of his swing;

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I firmly believe that we should try to experience all that life affords, except, perhaps, bestiality and of course Morris Dancing.

Quote: Two – are your golf muscles as trained as Woosie’s – he may not look like an athlete, but his muscles have been conditioned for the how many years to work with his swing; are your golf muscles going to learn to work like Woosies’s by watching a video of his swing;[/quote]

I have come to this conclusion also, to spend months/years trying to perfect the swing so that it looks good doesn't say the performance will be good, you are simply learning to look good.

I agree a good set-up and decent swing plane will help any golfer improve, but without starting a 3SKs debate, it is better to teach the importance of a good consistant contact with the ball, however achieved.

We re not all built the same hence a massive array of swing versions on the tour, I learn't one thing a long time ago being a county dart player for 10 years...................Anyone looks good when they are going in,

Same with golf when Hogan was the 'god of golf' we all looked at him for insperation examining every aspect of his great swing, If Furyk was world champion for the last 5 years then loads of club golfers would be trying to swing the same as him.


Great thread by the way.


Ian.

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Once you learn the swing, your next step is mastering golf psychology................

And what are we to measure our improvement against? To improve we must know three things: where we are, where we've been and where we're going. If we only know two of the three then we're perpetually lost.

However, whilst I am enjoying this little aside, I will state again that I'm not talking about becoming a carbon copy of X Y or Z, nor am I debating the merrits of video technology. I'm talking about incorporating into a swing traits that are common in the two best ball strikers of all time, neither of which are modern pro's. Both Snead and Hogan had them. One was short and thin, the other taller and robust.

So if we are so inclined to look at examples to help us, why not those more than any others?

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Luke: I don't believe it!
Yoda: That is why you fail.

Ian,

I do agree. Honestly I do, but that's not my point!

Please see above!

I could say that Furyk isn't, and we haven't, so we don't, but I won't.

Fair enough Neil, if someone could draw on the greats to improve my golf swing by incorporating critical ball striking skills then I'd be pretty pleased and I guess Hogan and Snead would not be a bad starting point

I'm still not convinced about video technology, copying, positional analysis, comparison and all that goes with it - in fact I think, like a lot of technology, it's a get out for poor teachers - but that, as you say, is a different argument.

hi Neil
you said the two best ball strikers were Hogan and Snead but i have to disagree with you, both wonderful golfer but Moe Norman and Lee Trevino are reported to be the best strikers off a ball, both i would say have been copied by very few people. i do copy Trevino and play with his system and i can say it works as does the Mindy Blake system, i do know there are a few Moe Norman sites and there are some that copy his way of playing but i have never tried it. i think there is a diffrence in copying a golfer and copying a system of hitting the ball. it a bit like the 3sk system you could say it copys some pro golfer and use them to show it works but thats not copying the player that copying a system. i think hogan book was the first that showed a system rather than copy a golfer, he had as he said 5 fundmentals that made up his system and if you copied them then your game would improve and Hogen even said in his book, "do as i say and not what i do?"
i hope you see what i mean about the diffrence from a system to copying a golfer.
cheers
bill

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ping zing2 metal driver
ping zing2 metal 3 wood
ping eye2 1 iron
ping zing2 3/9 irons
ping ist 47% wedge
ping zing2 52% s/wedge
ping mb 56% wedge
ping c10 G2I broom handled putter
top flight "T" golf balls
white ping bag

Robin,

Hmmm!! I understand exactly what you mean with the use of video if its aimed at trying to make you swing exactly like Tiger or Ernie but I have found other benefits with it. There have been world class golfers with just about every frame type so it is possible to swing a club well if you are short, tall, fat, thin etc.

Most club/recreational golfers who have problems playing the game tend to suffer from a small class of errors that hamper their ball striking and ultimately pleasure of playing to a standard they realistically desire. Some of these are things like poor setup, spine angle, swaying, flippy wrists, reverse pivoting, and one or two more. They are real problems in the swing though and unless fixed will hold you back, no good player however quirky their swing will play with these faults. Even 3 skills will only benefit you if they can remove these errors, be it in the systems own unique methodology.

As someone who took many lessons I think the reason most people don't improve significantly even with lessons is that they don't really understand what they are doing wrong, even if it is explained to them. I know when I was shown a video of my swing where the Pro could stop or slow the action and mark on the screen where the fault was and what I should do to correct it, the whole thing made sense to me in a way that I could clearly understand.

Pictures can be worth a thousand words.

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Best Regards
Brian

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Funny o'l game!

hi
Lee Trevino. Moe Norman, Jim Furyk, Sandy Lyle with his 3/4 backswing and Nick Faldo. all had diffrent swings to other players of there time and Trevino and Norman had no swing coach and Lyle was selt taught with help from a local pro at his club, Furyk was taught by his dad and Faldo changed his swing when at the top of his game but all knew there swing inside out and knew every flaw, now with video we can see our flaws and with help put them right but first we have to understan OUR swing and what happing if we do this or that wrong, Video can help in finding what you do wrong but its dont help in putting it right, that down to you and down to understanding YOUR swing so you know your swing better than any one else.
cheers
bill

__________________
ping zing2 metal driver
ping zing2 metal 3 wood
ping eye2 1 iron
ping zing2 3/9 irons
ping ist 47% wedge
ping zing2 52% s/wedge
ping mb 56% wedge
ping c10 G2I broom handled putter
top flight "T" golf balls
white ping bag

Bill,

Those are good points. If you don't know whats wrong then you wont know how to fix it. Lets face it the great majority of handicap/recreational golfers don't understand their swings, that's why MOST of them slice the ball, have reverse pivots, flip their wrists and the average handicap stays in the mid 20's, even with all the new technology. These so called quirky swings from a very few professionals are not so different when you get to the impact zone.

I would hamper a guess that if most golfers learned to maintain spine angle, improve balance, swung on plane and spent a little more time on their short game the average handicap would tumble significantly.

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Best Regards
Brian

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Funny o'l game!