The Science Behind the Swing: Part 3

Despite all the times he's been mentioned, I've never bothered to check out CJ Goecks' site, but certainly Bruce has shown us a lot of warmup exercises for our arms and shoulders to get them primed for all the lifting, and talked about intermittently swinging the other way to be sure the body is kept free and easy. Also, there has been discussion (and I'm not talking about the BS from the moron) about the fact that "vertical" in Surge Swing terms is anywhere from about 11 o'clock to just past twelve on a down-the-line view, so there is room for "slightly laid off." Also, I think you may want to check video of your swing to be sure you're not lifting too far (where the right upper arm gets past parallel to the ground) which would put undue strain on the right shoulder. I know I have a sore right shoulder from the way my desk is set up (and really, I'll get around to fixing it soon), and one of the few things that really helps is to get out and swing the club. So, it could be an individual physical problem (like Steve Smith's left foot), in which case do what you have to do to play without pain, or an individual error in the performance of the swing.

Thank you kindly

Dick,

I told you about treachery...lol. Good to see they brought it. Makes it more challenging for you. The most important thing is these are days that you'll never forget. You may outplay them, but fogies will match you every time in the "plot" department. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Played my best round today. Really windy so it was a challenge like you and Steve have been talking about. Never have been one for following my stats, but Surge mentioned it a while ago so I've done it this year. I had 6 one putts on the front nine and 3 two putts aand did not hit one green in regulation for 5 over on the front. Chipping saved me for sure. Back nnine was 4 over with 3 more one putts with 3 GIR. Best ball striking day I've had this year, but the wind made me nuts. Not too tough to do...lol.

Two birdies on the back, both on par 3s. Missed an ace on the first one by a foot and the second was a hybrid off the tee into about a 2 club wind from 140 that was rolling dead on line and stop 1 inch from the cup. Made my day. ;0)
Close, but no cigar. It's one of those shots that keep us all coming back.

Weather is iffy for the next couple of days , but we have the Masters.

Lynn42

Steve - Wow, you picked up on that? I threw in the "gave birth to" just to throw everyone off the trail. I'm pretty sure I didn't give birth to you. Right? Right? I didn't, did I? Uh-oh.

I can't understand why guys come on this site and then start commenting on other instruction sites. Everyone knows the theories of Surge if they follow the videos etc. After nearly forty years of playing golf and trying out countless other theories I have finally, at age 72, decided that Surge has a technique that suits ME. My only problem is that the seats in our clubhouse are so uncomfortable I end up with more back pain having a coffee after a round than actually playing!!!
Seriously, this morning I was faced with having to hit a good six iron into the green on the 18th to win the hole and square the match. I ran through all of Surge's instructions in my mind, let her go and hit it to within 8 feet. If only I could do that all the time!
All the best Surge, and all you other guys, from a very sunny Dorset (18 degrees) in the UK.

Oh, anyone who happens to be around their computer and has a fast enough internet connection, CBS Sports has Amen Corner live coverage. Ross Fisher just sunk a 65' putt on 11 for birdie. :)

My point is that I think you are probably over doing the vertical. I'd love to see your swing. The Surge swing is an arc. While we may like to think the swing is a Ferris wheel, it actually isn't in the true sense but more of one leaning towards it's left side slightly. The difference of being laid off or vertical is pretty much what you do with you hands at the top and whether or not you create the right triangle with the elbows. Laid off would require your right wrist to cock(bend backwards) and the left hand and wrist to bow over top. It would also mean that the right elbow is down and below the left elbow. By correcting this it would not stress the shoulders any more. In fact, in the laid off position, there is more stretch in the left shoulder muscle.

T.

I just got home and am attempting to use Google Reader. I got there okay and setup (sort of). It usually takes me awhile to figure out how to use things. I usually do that by clicking on help and reading. However, I don't see a help button anywhere. Is there one or do I keep asking you and Kim?

Janet, re your earlier post of being a criminal court clerk for decades
I'm impressed
Not one of your colleagues picked you were a criminal
Janet - you're good

EDIT
To JanetM below - I'm up here - woooo hooo up here - look up, I'm here
Erudite? - Does that make me a Greek God? - I like the sound of that
Articulate? - I like that too - Road train trucks are definitely me - macho

Glad it helped. Keep it vertical and down the middle. Have a great time in Mexico.

No worries Jack,

How did yesterdays joke go down?

WK....

thanks for your thoughts.

You are onto it : whatever works for each one of us.
A comfortable, FUNctional swing.

Will check Eric Jones book.

Simply Golf

T Medley:

AMEN Brother! Amen!

Add me to the list of those who have discovered "no back pain" with the Surge Swing.

Two years ago with a rotational swing, after 18 holes I almost needed assistance getting to my car - and defiinitley someone else had to the place the clubs in the trunk. And it took at least one day, sometimes two, to recover.

Now with the Surge Swing, I can play 18 holes ( occasionaly 36 when the course hass a "special") pain free and handle my own clubs.

With the Surge Swing, my scores have remained nearly constant - average around 89 or 90 -- with a "yearly best" of 80 or 81 when "all goes extremely well"

But regardless of the scores, the pain free aspect of the Surge Swing makes it all worth while and allows me to continue to play golf. " 'Nuff said"

Keep hitting them STRAIGHT and LONG

Amos

Harry,

Exactly wrong. Surge and DJ both have a one-piece takeaway that lifts the club very quickly by rotating the arm while they turn and lift, but the wrists remain firm. They move so fast that it appears that they must be flexing their wrists but they do not. The angle between the thumb and the forearm of the left hand and between the back of the left hand and the forearm does not change until a slight flexing at the transition caused by the club still moving back while the arms start to move forward.

As far as the club shaft, it should ideally be on the toe line from about midway through the back until midway through the approach to the ball on the FUS. This is done by keeping the hands perpendicular to the ground and limiting the turn to about 70*, which will get you to the toe line and up.

Ok guys, here is the after action report.
my game today resembled what usually dribbles out of WK, (and no it wasn't 30 extra yards)
I hadn't played the course before so had no idea what it would be like, and being a short 9 hole $20 for 18 public course, wasn't expecting any thing flash, Well...
Having no level ground on the par 4 1st tee box makes for a difficult start. Hit it fairly well..... dead left into trees, but had a lucky bounce leaving me with a clear approach.
No distance markers is another interesting feature of this course. 4 putted for double bogey, on a green which had more dirt than grass, there was no way you could putt on a straight line let alone read the break.
Thankfully the rest of the greens were in playable shape (some only slightly better), but tee boxes were all uniform, resembling upside down woks,
parred the next hole,
The most interesting feature of the course was the bunkers that rather than stop the ball, fling the ball out into the worst possible lies you can imagine, It happened 4 times during the round,
First on the 3rd greenside bunker, Ball kicked out to the foot of an old Pine, unplayable lie.
On the 5th, rolled into and traveled the full length of the bunker and hit the back lip at speed, launching it into a large bush to the left, another unplayable lie.
The other two, on the 7th and 8th were flung out and into 2' long grass,
half the bunkers had Grass growing in them, and all looked as if they hadn't been raked in years, so hard that you could walk through them with out leaving a trace,
The course had broken my spirit by the 4th hole, and things got ugly, (Jack, Im looking at you, I want my swing back! lol)
Thanks to a group, three groups ahead of us play was extremely slow, adding to the frustration,
Ended up in the club house, drinking beers after the first 9, and waiting for the course to clear
Its sad to see a course in such a state of neglect, (but teh clubhoush was luffely)

The back 9 didnt get played, so score was 45 off the stick.

Dick, I'm sorry to hear about the recent bad news. My thoughts and prayers are with you and your family,

LIVE in South Dakota finally got to play 9 holes after work today even with a few snow drifts still on the course in a few spots.. Rumor has it their going to put in holes and trim the greens .tommorrow so friday if its nice will try to ventor out again. Hey everbody keep it verticle

The key to performing a one-piece golf swing is to make sure the V of our shoulders, arms and the club all start together. This is what the one piece take away is.

This means that the club head stays at the apex or point of that V. The shoulders, arms, all the way down to the club head start back together and there is no movement of the hands. As you turn your left shoulder and the right arm starts to fold, the left forearm is still in the same position as it was at address if done properly. If I really rotated my left forearm as I turned my shoulders and as I reached the toe line with my hands the club head would be behind me. As the club reaches waist high, the V is still in place and the shaft all the way to the club head are still in a straight line.

If you watch DJ as he begins the take away, he sets the hands really early and the club is almost at parallel to the ground as he begins the turn and lift. If you watch Don, it all moves together and at the same pace.

Albert, let's remember that Mr. Wilson has his own facility in Las Vegas at which to tape his demos. The logistics for Surge are not as convenient.

It depends on you Internet browser. If you are using FireFox, you'll have to switch to Google Reader format at the RSS page. If you are using any Internet Explorer version just click on View feed properties and adjust. IE will allow up to 1000 to be displayed.

Hey Kevin
Your are right about my lack of turn
I have been working on getting a bit more hip rotation and finishing a close to my ear of late, and have seen some good results.
My problem is I have a tendency to get lazy and finish wide, which is causing pretty bad slices,
Will be posting more progress videos as soon as my video software stops playing funny bugg@rs. ....Damn computers.
Cheers

Surge, your intro to part 3 was " then why do all of the tour players use a rotational swing except DJ" was not addressed. I think it would be an interesting discussion. Ed Hiebert

Glad that helped. You may want to go back and reread the Foundations Manual (or get it if you don't have it), which has wonderful pictures and diagrams of all of that and of the mitt and tree images and lots more.

And, just so everyone is clear, I'm not holding my swing up as a perfect example of a Surge Swing. I post those videos so that others can see my work-in-progress and possibly see something about my swing that I am missing. There is exactly one perfect Surge Swing, and that's Don Trahan. The rest of us are working on getting as close to him as we can. I'm happy to have anyone comment on my swing as, even if I disagree with them, it gives me something to look at and think about.

Just to continue on the theme of confused terminology

Oz definitions
Fourball best ball (4BBB) - 2 players - best score on the hole counts - play your own ball from its resting position
(yeh I know - 4Ball = 2 players????) Invented for male players only??

Ambrose - team of 2,3 or 4 choosing which ball is in the best position to play the next shots from

Foursomes - Stupid waste of golf time (probably invented in San Diego)

Scramble - Get your pants on, my husbands home

Thank you Lynn,
The golf gods have given me the masters to watch on the telly, What an amazing course! I never really followed golf on the TV before this year, so had never seen what a beautiful place Augusta National is.
and surge made me the star of the blog two days running. It really has been a great weekend.
And for anyone who is interested I have been putting highlights of The Masters up on my youtube channel. they are located in the playlists, enjoy

Ninety five percent of them give the rest a bad name!

Bob

Amen Janet, but, aren't you supposed to be at work. It should only be about 11:30 your time. Maybe you're on a lunch break.

For various reasons, I have to tell you, CervezaFria, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being a great lawyer.

To WK,

If I were to follow your advice, I would be back in the hospital where I was before I learned the Surge Swing. All the things you advocate are what caused me to give up golf for 5 years. Do yourself a favor, please? Don't address any of your comments to me. I am not now nor ever will be interested in anything you might choose to espouse.

Have a great day and enjoy the rest of your life as far as possible from me.

Kevin

More scientific proof that the Surge Swing works for me came from the manual handling component of the safety training at work. If you were to lift and move an object say 90* from your standing position then the correct procedure is to turn the body, keeping the hips and shoulders square, and not to twist the back. I have a lower back condition and this one tip has saved me from a lot of grief.

In the Surge Swing I turn my hips and shoulders together taking the club into the mitt and up the tree, I make a slight lateral shift with my hips as I approach the top of the backswing (feeling the big laterals muscles of my leading side stretch a little), as my arms fall into the slot and I swing them around to impact I square my hips and shoulders together. As I swing into the forward mitt and up the tree to the T finish I turn my hips and shoulders together but at a much faster rate (pop tart).

In the rotational swing advocated on the old PP site, Mr Wilson says that to create power you have to coil and uncoil by twisting your back. If I did this with my lower back condition I would have to pull out of a round of golf after maybe four or five holes.

I hit my golf shots with plenty of power with the Surge Swing, hitting them solid and most importantly straight!

My hero as a young junior (other than my Dad) was a guy who won the Club Championship at my home 15 or 16 times including about 11 or 12 straight. Most of those were won after he hurt his lower back as a young bloke working as a sheep shearer. He was always a classical vertical swinger with high hands on the back swing and follow through (straight back and straight through). He turned his hips and shoulders together and could only get to 3/4 on the backswing but was one of the longer hitters in the club. People remarked about how much further he could hit the ball with a "full" backswing and a friend of his replied that it would be highly detrimental in that he would lose form and start to spray the ball and more importantly it would hurt his back. If he wanted to ramp up on a shot he would swing his arms through faster (where have I heard that before?).

Regards, Craig S

Robert

We use tough love on this blog because we care enough to do it.

I sure do learn a lot from the back and forth on here.

Dick

Have you videoed your swing? If you're still getting lower back pain, it's possible that you're still using too much hip and body rotation. It's really tough to try taking lessons from a pro who won't support the ideas of the Surge Swing, as he's likely to want to get you to do things that are completely against this swing theory and can worsen the back issues, particularly trying to increase lower body rotation. Be sure that you're getting the LATERAL bump going, not rotating your hips to transition. They will rotate, as they must to get you to a proper T Finish, but you don't want to START the transition with rotation of the hips.

Dear Don
On the 24/01/11 I Wrote on the Blog:-
“Been working on the PPGS for over a year now and shown little improvement in the long game.
Balls consistently going left, pushes to the right and lack of distance. Had some great scores recently, but this can be attributed to my short game when it's hot, due to heaps of practise. Have videoed my swing countless times and can see two problems, 1 is my head lifting vertically which changes my spine angle and 2, soon as I get to 12 o'clock on the back swing, my club lays right back in the SGB. Ihave no feeling of either of these during the swing and tried many ways to change, any suggestions out there”

Today I write:-
Hallelujah, Yesterday I shot a 37 ( 9 holes - 36 CCR ) 4 pars and two birdies, things are
starting to happen at last. For the past 15 years I’ve paid thousands to PGA professionals,
spent unmentionable hours of practice and dropped a couple of strokes. Had some doubts
about Surge’s swing last year, that has all change now with some fine tuning.

Reasons for the Change:-
1. The Grip – Check to see only one knuckle as recommended in Surge’s PAL analysis.
2. The Kick Start – A press on the club & locking of the hips to maintain balance & stability.
3. The Takeaway – Push with the left arm, brings the club automatically over the toe line.
4. At the Top - A little in the SGB, but much more vertical than rotational.
5. The down Swing – Dominant left hand, squares the club at impact.
6. The Upswing – Finish to the T finish facing intended target, makes the swing so easy now.
7. Tee Off – I use a three wood, if I don’t make the green, my short game can get the par.
8. Short Game – Practice 20% on the range, 80% chip and putt.

Not all people are physically the same, so I introduce some variations as my body is very
supple, some were by accident, some by trial and error. The above points may help others.

Don, you’re a champion and it only cost me a set of videos and lots of attention to your
daily blogs, NeilofOz.

To Kevin:

As to "According to my trusty square (brand name withheld), my shoulders are at 57* " ... same here. Derek Hardy has suggested NOT going vertical at the toe line and that really helps create a full turn to 70 degrees. Going mostly vertical at the toe line prevents back pain and Derek's idea places your hands a bit further back than Don does but not nearly as far back as a rotational swing.

And if a person ever has a problem coming over the top or nor finishing the turn -- Derek's modification to Bon's basic idea is something to test. See if it works for you if you have those problems.

I have been trying to master the Surge's swing for two years and had been getting much better, after five trips to the driving range this year all my shots pull left, it is getting very frustrating.I can not figure out where the flaw is in my swing.....any ideas

Steve,

I beg to differ. When I hit my best shots, like one of my drives today, my arms stay in front of my body as I turn to the toe line, and then my arms go straight up from there. If I attempt to get my leading arm parallel to the toe line any sooner, then I am "crushing the cigarette pack," as Surge would say, and go way into the SBG.

With the assistance of two other people and a couple of clubs, I just checked where my shoulders are when my leading arm is parallel to the toe line. According to my trusty square (brand name withheld), my shoulders are at 57* when my left (leading) arm is parallel to the toe line. Turning another 13* to the 70* angle, puts my hands directly over my right (rear) shoulder.

I do as close to a one-piece takeaway as I can. When I do it any other way, as I do way too often, I lose all control of my swing. I know it is very difficult to get the Surge Swing correct, But Surge is not wrong about the angle. You can rotate your forearms without pulling your left (forward) arm across the body and without turning more than 70*.

Kevin

A question to fellow SSGS.

I am only able to avoid slicing my drives by having the Right Elbow pointing along the toe line as address vs. what the PPGS manual list the right elbow position as pointing up (page 34) :

"As for the right elbow, I agree with Hogan that
it should point straight up (Figure 18). This position
will cause your right arm to crook or bend so that it is
lower than the left, in a passive position. When you are
set in this position, your left arm climbs over your right
as you start the backswing"

Any thoughts? any body with the same problem?

thanks

dean

Ncollier

Go up to the search bar at the right of the page. Type in "good shots to the wrong place" and hit the search button. That lesson should help you. It helped me a lot.

You can look up just about anything there.

Good luck in the tourney
Dick

jamdan

Good to have another smoke eater on this blog. When every one else is running out of a burning building, smoke eaters are running in.

Make sure we hear from you from time to time. Let us know how you game is doing.

Thanks for your service.

Dick

Mousdem and Albert. If you guys would learn how to properly navigate the site features and use the search engine, along with other available link sites. You both could find what you are wanting to see. Plenty of swing videos are available. Good luck

The person asking was named Harry T. The answer came from T Medley, I believe. As far as Truman and keeping the right elbow in, I think T confused it with Bobby Jones' advice to Eisenhower (only one president off) to start the downswing by bringing his right elbow into his hip, which Eisenhower did so assiduously that he bloodied his elbow on his belt buckle, which in common military fashion he wore turned toward his right hip.

For help with shanks, also try searching "Cure for Shanks" in the search box on the top right.

I'm turning up with a Mariachi band with Jimmy Barnes as lead vocal

As I mentioned to another pull sufferer the other day, get video of your swing and pay attention to how you use your lower body. Does your right knee straighten up as you take the club back? Do you begin the downswing with your arms and/or rotating the hips causing an out-to-in swing path? Is your weight shifting from your back foot to your front foot to START the forward swing motion, or do you find yourself pushing your weight onto your front foot AFTER you hit the ball? Like Kevin says below, be sure that your shoulders, hips, knees, and feet are all aligned correctly on the aiming line. If you have video of your swing, you can post it as some of the rest of us have (click my name for an example) and we'll gladly offer any help we can.

UberMitch, This video will explain the mitt and tree analogy. Good luck

http://www.swingsurgeon.com/Ho...

Steve,

The light bulb just came on and I think I understand the confusion now.

1) Those who think they can get hands and club head to the toe line without rotating the forearms have missed one of Surge's key points.

2) Those who know that the arms have to rotate have a terminology problem as you point out.

The key to the whole issue, which I hope everyone can agree on is "Perpendicular Palms." With that in the discussion, I believe we can all talk using the same terminology. As the body turns to 70* AND the palms are kept perpendicular to the ground, THEN the arms MUST rotate. The problem is that some do not equate keeping the palms perpendicular to the ground with rotating the arms. There is, I believe, a reason why Surge does not emphasize rotating the arms - the tendency to over-rotate into the SBG. Concentrating on keeping the palms perpendicular is the key to avoiding over-rotation.

I hope this helps to clarify the discussion and ease any hard feelings.

Kevin

Kevin:

You Win! I never thought about reocding the events - so people say I talk to myself too much already! LOL

Keep hitting them STRAIGHT and LONG

Amos

Sweet