Pop Tart - AFAP

I am a huge Freddie fan, as most folks are. Let's not forget, even though his swing looks so smooth and effortless to us, he does and has suffered from many episodes of back pain and problems.

I would very much like to see him win this week.

Robert, Iv'e always been impressed with the way Surge is balanced
and upright at the finish through his FUS and Iv'e tried to replicate this
in my swing, but in doing so I usually come out/up to early and create mishits and that's why I stay down just a fraction longer which improves
my power and direction. Would be nice if we all had the perfect swing
but sometimes we just have to accept what we've got. I'm happy to be
playing a score somewhere in the eighties. 

You mean you're not on the LPGA, Steve? Your wife wouldn't let you?

SGW--while we are looking at videos on YouTube, I found this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

A compilation of that the producer considers the top ten drivers.  #4 is Freddie Couples.  At 4:01, his driver at the top looks to be pointing across the line just a bit. Except that he takes the driver to parallel, it looks like one of the variabaions that Surge talked about in his videos where the club can go outside slightly at the top.  Thanks for your assessment of the swing of Steve's friend.

Neilof Oz:

   And for those of us with 70 mph swing speeds -- even later.  Frequently the ball is about 50% of "where it is going"  before my head comes up to see it --at least on my best shots.
   On my worst ones -- the "tart pops" too soon -- and a thing hit results.

 Keep hitting them STRAIGHT and LONG

 Amos 

Thanks for pointing out that he uses an interlocking grip, or a variation of it.  I was only used to seeing the fingers truly interlocked.  The loose finger looks like an interesting way to keep the hands from gripping to tightly. I might try the interlocking grip that way.  When I truly interlock my fingers, my right hand rotates counterclockwise, but if I keep my left forefingerand right pinky  loose I don't have to rotate the right hand.  Might work. 

Robert F:

   100% agreement.  The key is to be "mentally relaxed" - and NEVER let the thought "swing harder" enter your brain -- rather think "swing faster"

    Amos

I understand Neil. I really need to make sure I maintain my spine angle and posture through the hitting zone. I agree about Don's balance. Awesome and admirable for a certainty. We can come close at times and that often is close enough.

Oh, oh, see what happens when watching YouTube videos on a cell phone screen? Who was that?

Surge I have tried your virtical swing and although it does cust down on my wayward slice I am now getting a new situation where i hit the ground prior to hitting the ball.  I know that it is me that is doing something wrong but i do not know how to correct it.  Marcel Burn from Niorringham UK.

 Jeff,

Freddie described it himself awhile back. He takes the club back easy, saving his power, gets to the top, drops into the slot, and then goes through the ball (he said goes at it) as hard and fast as he can.

I think this also goes along with what Steve Smith has been describing.  I have a habit of not "going at it" and holding back a little.  I try to emulate Freddie's smoothness, staying fairly relaxed in the BUS, drop into the slot, and then really accelerate through the ball.  When I do that, I get some of the purest shots ever and maximum distance.  When I don't ...

Kevin

Could be a number of things. Ball may be to far forward in stance.  You may be going after the ball from the top of the back swing , instead of starting with a free fall, which will pull you down, or make you dip a bit. You must keep your head still until impact. You need to keep your lower body still by having your legs & bum taught & athleticly ready, or buff ,as Surge calls it. That will help to stop you dipping & perhaps over turning in the back swing. You can find out more by useing the search box to the right & entre chunks, or chunky monkey is one Surge did not long ago.  Good luck

 Yeah, it is really interesting. On page 98, in step 2 of How to Get the Right Feel, they use the term "Bump and Drop!"  They should have given credit to Don for that one!

Sorry--the combination of the hat covering the face and my small cell phone screen totally made it look unlike you.  Then that left hip slide looked like someone doing the Electric Slide.

AFAP, many a thing to many people, I reckon this expression causes some confusion. This is where feeling and action are sometimes misleading as Iv'e
checked Surge's swing in slo/mo and seen that he's still looking at the ball well
after impact and have no doubt that is what Surge is feeling. Played 18 holes this
morning and the first nine I struggled/scrambled with 15 points, the second nine
got 18 and missed a few birdie chances. The reason, keeping my head down
longer and feeling the wrists release before I "Pot Tart". Don't forget that golfers
with swing speeds over 100MPH would feel that "pop tart" action quite early after
impact, whereas some one like myself who swings around 85-90MPH, would feel
that impact a fraction later. This gets back to "Timing&Tempo" and how it relates
to each individual's swing tempo. 

Am I making any sense here?    
 

Does 25 years younger have something to do with it?  The youtube was great!!

Thanks,
marilyn

Other than Freddie, I also enjoy watching the swing of Ai Miyazato on the LPGA.

Her BUS almost looks like it is in slow-mo, but like Freddie, she explodes through the ball. Smooth, tempo-ed and rhythmic, beyond belief, almost. If you have not watched her swing, check out this video of her warm up routine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

 How close did you look at his left wrist on his back swing in the video? He's got it arched as far as humanly possible on the back swing. I saw Ben Crane one morning on Golf Channel propose just that wrist action to improve distance and his exercises to enhance it. It certainly doesn't fit the Surge mold, and I suspect few have the talent to return the club face to square if they tried it.

 Look no further than this month's issue of Golf Magazine for a lesson on the lateral slide of the hips, or as the articles author calls it " Rory McIlroy's pelvic thrust".

Interestingly, there's one thing I think Surge didn't emphasize enough in this video. In the PPGS, we SWING OUR ARMS IN FRONT OF OUR BODY. If you try to restrict your body getting up to the finish, you're going to lose power and control, and probably cause yourself pain. We do not lead the arms with the body, or drag the arms through with the body; but equally on the FUS, we don't want the body to prematurely slow the arms.

One thing I find funny is how more and more Surge-ish ideas are suddenly coming from the lips of mainstream golf commentators. Keeping the club swinging in front of the body being a big one. Also in today's coverage I heard an interesting description of Byron Nelson's swing. To wit, "He would stand the club up in his backswing and then drive his knees toward the target." Sounds like the BUS and Bump in PPGS, doesn't it?

Ai is my wifes favorite Terry. She is almost slow mo during that buttery backswing.

Steve, I don't see any arching either, but I'm wondering if my eyes are playing tricks on my on his left hand fingers.  They are swinging amid the shadows from the brances, but it looks like at least one of his left hand fingers is wrapped outside his right hand.  Am I just being fooled by the lighting?

  

Along with Kevin's good comment below I would add that you and I and most amatures don't get that ideal acceleration and centered sweet spot contact that guys like freddie gets. Most of us muscle it from the top and rarely have that swish at the impact area along with complete release at and through the ball. That along with centered, pure contact while the clubhesd is accelerating through the ball get er done. Bigger muscles and size do not equate to a longer ball. There's a whole lot of players much smaller than Fred couples that hit it well over 300 yards off the tee.

After re reading my comment I remembered that I do occasionally get that pure feeling of hitting the ball well. It is at those times that all is well in the universe.

Really, really fast hands and an incredible ability to hit the ball square on the face every time. The thing that is clearest from Freddy Couples (as with Ernie Els and Vijay Singh), is that you don't need to swing HARDER to hit the ball further. You need to swing faster through the impact zone, which means that you want your muscles active but not tense. Trying to swing harder usually makes your muscles too tense, therefore not as fast. Also, it tends to activate muscle groups that actually work AGAINST your ability to swing the club faster. Finally, trying to swing harder tends to cause more incidental body movement, making it more difficult to consistently return the club squarely for impact and leading to all kinds of bad shots.

 Slightly arched but nowhere near Dustin Johnson's.

What interest me is how he swings on the slot plane with out vertical wrist action. Also the back foot opened up a lot lets the body release the club on the BUS and then lets him move up to the ball with his lower body so that the energy goes out to the ball and down the aim line.

Thanks for the post.

 I was just watching Tiger on the range on the Golf Channel.  He was doing exactly what Don was talking about - dipping the left side on the back swing and snapping the left side straight on the forward swing.  He did not look happy with what he is doing.  It probably does not bode well for him unless he can get his mind straight.

Made sense to me Neil. Especially the timing and tempo part. If I pop too soon I come around with that back shoulder and up and out of the shot too soon. Impact and then up asap with balance.

In addition to the items in Robert F's post, I believe that there are two more points to consider.  One is that the pros are really swinging faster than it looks to us.  The smoothness of their swings makes it look slow.  I found this out when I timed the swings of the pros and of local golfers.  The local golfers looked like they were swinging faster, but they were 20% slower.  The second thing about Couple's swing is the amount of lag he has in his swing.  In this video,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?f...

at the 5:42 mark, you will see his left arm pointing around 10 degrees below horizontal, yet the club shaft is lagging around 115 degrees behind the left arm.  That means that in the time it takes for the hands to bring the club to contact, the shaft has to go through an arc of around 105 degrees, even if you allow for 10 degrees forward shaft lean at contact.  Using rough calculations, his swing speed would be roughly 15% faster than someone who could hold a 90 degree angle at the same position. I'm sure there are geometrical factors that I haven't taken into consideration that might change these numbers, but club head speed for a given tempo is related to the number of degrees that the shaft moves in a pafticular time span.

If you look at Steve Smith's recent posting on YouTube of an LPGA pro, he points out that the club moved farther between frames two and three into contact.  This also illustrates the effect of lag.

By the way, Steve, I was looking at your swing post the other day at my club, and the club pro was walking behind my chair.  He looked at your swing and said, "Look at that lag!.  I bet he hits the ball a ton."    

 Good eyes. Looks like the left fore finger is sticking out off the shaft. Wondering if he grips tight with the other three fingers to help control the radius of the swing while the right side give a really hard hit to the ball.

The more energy applied the more the across the line throw out is needed to get the on-on-on release through the ball.

Jeff,  Good point about the physical outliers.  I used to think in terms of simply that some people were gifted, but recently I have been seeing that even among those who are gifted, there are those who like at the end of the probability curves--highly unlikely but also highly gifted.  Whether I see people as gifted or outliers depends on whether I am trying to develop some compentence in those areas.  Oil painting and violin laying--no.  Golf--yes; thus the frustration, but joy when something is accomp;lished.