Type in the words "golf instruction" in any online search and you'll see a ton of swing methods claiming they've got the swing that will transform your game. Many of them even say they've got body friendly swings that will get rid of all your pain. However, there's only one swing that has actually married the physics of a golf swing with the physiology of the human body: The Peak Performance Golf Swing.
One method that I've been getting asked about is the Square to Square golf swing. Howard Gary wanted to know whether or not keeping the clubface square to the ball throughout the swing had any merit. So, I'm going to provide you with an analysis of the Square to Square golf swing and why I believe the PPGS is head and shoulders above the rest.
I have been following your excellent Peak Performance Golf Swing videos for a long time, but I do have one interesting theoretical question. Many instructors advocate attempting to keep the club square to the ball throughout the swing rather than using a toe up club position on the back swing. Logically, keeping the club square seems to make sense. What is the problem with using the square approach? Is it loss of distance? Orthopedic issues? I know you have researched this.
Get any of my full length videos or instruction manuals from Surge's Shop and you'll get the complete story behind the PPGS and the many years I spent developing the 3/4, limited turn, vertical swing that is the ONLY 100% body friendy golf swing being taught today.
Keep it vertical!
The Surge
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Comments
square to square
I watched the video and in particular the arm rotation at "square". I think I have identified a problem that has been with me both in rotational and in PPGS. My arms do not rotate back to square and I most times have the club face open when I get back to the ball. This either results in a straight push or in most instances either a fade or banana slice. What am I doing or not doing that doesn't allow me to get back to square.
Why
It's hard to know exactly why you're having this problem without actually seeing you swing, but here are some possibilities.
First, the club and your body may not ACTUALLY be square to the line you think you're aiming on when you set up. If you're aimed right, you may start by hitting perfectly straight shots that go right of where you THINK you're aimed, so your body tries to correct by pulling your shoulders open faster, but your hands return square to where you were actually aimed, resulting in an out-to-in swing path with an open club face and a big old rightward heading banana.
Second, you may be aimed correctly, but you start your FUS with your shoulders rather than your lower body, which gets you ahead of the ball as SGW describes, leading to pushes and slices.
Get good video of your swing with the camera about chest height and facing you perpendicular to your aiming line. This angle will give you the best view of what's happening with your upper body in the transition. Second, get video with the camera on your toe line. This will show you if you're properly aligned parallel left (or right for a lefty) of your target and also show your swing path to see if it is going outside the aiming line before impact.
square to square
cpafrank, I'm a CPA as well. Howdy! I have had the same issue (squaring the club face) that you have had. But with PPGS, the thought of palms perpendicular to the ground has been the missing component I needed. If my palms are perpendicular to the ground at impact, the club face has to be square (unless I have made some kind of manipulation).
Guess it won't be too long before tax season rolls around. Cheers! JK
rotate back to square
The first thing to look for is to check and see if your head and upper body moves forward before impact and pop tarting. The pushed shots fades and banana slices that all start to the right are an indications that the upper body has moved toward the target before impact.
square 2 square comments
I believe that you have an excellent method for swinging the golf club, and it is demeaning to you to try to justify it by criticizing other methods. Yours is so good that it speaks for itself when you try to use it. Let the public try them all - cream rises to the top, and your method will too.
Elliott Hoffman.
I agree with you. Sorry Don
I agree with you. Sorry Don,just poor form on your part.
Many, many readers here have
Many, many readers here have requested Don's opinion of square-to-square method. So he has provided it. He's not going to lie about it. But getting two and three emails a week for the last five months asking about the square-to-square method we decided to answer the question publicly here on the blog.
Hybrid & 3 Metal woes?
Hi fellow Surgites, Let's say a guy we know that ascribes to the PPGS goes to a range at a course and works on his swing. This guy is working on a couple of thoughts that,somehow, he had forgotten over the last couple of years. One being riding the skinny horse,by making sure to keep his trailing leg and all attachments more in line with his right shoulder. Secondly, he is trying to make sure to look at the beautiful sunset on the horizon,he pictures in his mind,while the black gnats are biting the hell out of his bare legs. Lastly, He is remembering to be prayerful for all things good bestowed on him.
As this guy works his way through his bag, his irons are spot on and longer than he remembers them being.His misses,if you were to call them that, when they come are slight pull fades that start about 5 yards left of the target but come back to the target.
This guy,btw, isn't having any swing thought conflicts while in the process of his swing, he happens to be singing The Temptations song "Wish it would Rain" to keep his mind clear and let his inner-self swing the club.He waggles during the song's intro and begins the BUS on Sunshine and finds the slower he sings that word on the way back,the better his shot. He likes the way his shots are sailing until...
He drops a ball on the ground and pulls his hybrid out and goes to hit one off the deck. Then after contact,as he comes into the recoil & relax, he notices his ball his banging back down on the ground some 50 yards down range and there is a ball sized gouge mark of about 4 to 5 inches in front of where his ball was at address. Befuddled, He drops another and goes through his pre-shot routine to only see the same results. He then decides to tee one up and rips it flag high to the Red Flag green some 220 yards down the range,straight as an arrow. This mystery continues to cycle for a couple of more balls and into his 3 metal some ten minutes later. From the deck ground gouges,off a tee pretty much where they're supposed to go.
Was he topping the ball? Hitting down on the ball? He wasn't hitting them fat,that he knows. He also was using the same glorious swing he started with and thought he had the ball position where it needed to be. He tried everything he could think of,with no success. I'm sure he would appreciate any thoughts or tips, you all my have. I'm just sorry I couldn't help him myself.
This guy did have a nice putting session afterwards, he loves his new L2 and made a 42 footer and left many,many more in the hole or just within tap-in range as he made two circuits around the green.
Closed Captioning
For some reason my sound is not working when I watch videos, so I turned on your closed captioning. The translation was terrible, and nowhere close to what Don was saying. Please review this function and try to make some improvement. Thanks, Jim Phillips
No sound
Jim: Every now and then the same thing happens to me. Don't know why, but on a few of the videos, the "mute/volume" control (the speaker-shaped icon at the bottom-left of the video) is set all the way to the off/mute setting. Try turning the volume up/on using the video "speaker icon" rather than adjusting the speakers on your computer. That has worked for me every time the problem occurs and i'm able to hear the videos perfectly. Hope this will help. R2
Sound
Ha ha! When I got home from the football game last night the sound on my computer wouldn't work on ANY videos on the internet. It worked fine on anything I had saved to my computer so I knew it wasn't a speaker issue.
I messed with it for an hour or two. Restored my computer to an earlier date (twice) and ran every trouble shooting check I could think of. Finally I decided to just go to bed and was intending on un-installing and re-installing drivers when I got the time (or taking the computer to somebody else to be fixed).
This morning I looked at the comments and saw yours and thought. Hmm????
Could it be???
Ha ha! Sure enough that's what it was. I could have "fixed" it in one second (and gotten two more hours of sleep!!!
Sound
LOL, ironically the same thing happen to me on Dave's Prayer daily. I knew it wasn't an issue for me as I was playing on-line poker at the time.I twisted the knob on my speaker,first though, and got a nice shrilling twerp that liked to have bounced me to the wall as I almost timed out on a poker table. Then I noticed, after checking for blood coming out of my ears, that the little speaker on the video had a small x next to it.
Sound
Boog - good to hear from you! Haha, that is a funny story. Glad you weren't hurt! R2
Sound
Glad it worked for you Steve. I don't know why it happens, just that it does even though I never, ever use that "on-screen" adjustment. Hummmm - maybe the Gov't shutdown is worse than we think! Take care, R2
Sound
Steve: for some reason my reply to you ended up under Boog's comment. Oh well, I tried! R2
No Sound
Thanks, reeclfd. That was the exact answer. I was commenting on the Closed Captioning because I had never seen such a garbled mess. It was like a foreigner was trying to interpret what Don was saying.
Sound
You are very welcome! I've tried the CC option in the past and, as you say, it leaves a lot to be desired! Take care, R2
The close captioning does not
The close captioning does not work. We don't provide a track to youtube with the video is uploaded and I think youtube uses voice recognition to try and create a CC channel. Writing a close captioning track would be far too much work for the daily videos.
sq. to sq.
to quote Don ' square to square doesnt work ' hmmmmm. Doug Tewell who is the leading advocate of this method online was a top pro in the 80s/90s he was no.1 fairways and greens for a number of years. now either he wasnt actually doing what he advocates or it does work. which is it?
sq. to sq.
To be fair to The Surge, he was asked to opine on the square to square method. Someone ASKED for his opinion and he is entitled to give it. So, he did. We all can see that Don and DJ aren't exactly vertical at the top of their backswings and their hands are more on their heel lines than their toe lines. They acknowledge that. But like the rotary guys, the natural golf guys, the square to square guys, and the S&T/TGM guys, give Don his just due. While the vertical may not be in vogue, it nevertheless works and is superior to all other swings for me.
Sq. to Sq.
With all of the discussion here in regards to Surge's video, I decided to try to find a Youtube video of Sq. to Sq. There is a guy by the name of Goulden teaching it. I think the major difference in the swing from Surge's is semantics. At the mid point and top of his back swing, the club is toe up just like PPGS. Surge is 100% correct, it is nearly physically impossible to not go toe up.
square to square
Jim Flick was one of the first to teach square to square. He was a pro at a club in Cincinnati, Ohio. I went and had several lessons from hom on square to square.
Shortly after he left to go elsewhere. My HCP went through the roof. I went back to rotational. (now a PPGS swinger).
Quite a few years later I ran into Jim Flick in Arizona. I talked to him about the square to square. He agreed that that was the worst swing he ever taught.
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Not Square to Square
He has mis-represented the square to square swing. He has not demonstrated it correctly so it is easy to criticize it. The essence of square to square is that the club face is square to its path which is not what Don demonstrated.
Sq 2 Sq
Which square to square author. Tewell or Altman?
Square to Square
Tewell
Sq to Sq 2
Thx, next question is which path or both is the club face is square to. The back swing and/or the forward swing. Next concerns the path of the end cap of the grip which is a circle arc around the the center of rotation of the swing. This can be between vertical and the angle of the shaft at address as seen down the line. At some point the club head will need to align on the release path in order to have the throw out sequence going down the intended impact line.