I have a blog question from Robert Maes. Roberts says, 'Surge, I am 60, took up golf for the first time in the autumn of last year. I had a dozen lessons from a head pro but things were not evolving that well and I came upon your site, got interested, bought the videos and the manual and I'm digging into it with growing curiosity and interest. I am exercising at the range but I have a problem with control.
'Building your setup in the backswing happens slowly. One has control over every part of it. But at the start of the downswing you are looking at the ball in front of your feet and then a number of things happen with your arms, hands, clubs that are out of sight and it is happening fast. My question: is there a way and does it make sense to exercise the downswing slowly in order to control wrist, hand elbow, etc.? Greetings from Belgium, Robert.'
O.K., Robert. In your question you said, 'Does it make sense?' It does make a lot of sense to do it, and it sounds logical and it sounds like, 'Wow, I can learn all of these fine points and all I have to do is wrap them together in one nice quick fast move as you said, and boom I have a good downswing to impact and then into finish.' It makes sense to do it slow but I don't think it works.
The reason why is it is kind of like going out and you want to learn how run. They always said you have to walk before you run, so you start walking extra slow and if you are trying to walk and trying to figure out how every muscle moves to walk and stuff like that you are going to get paralyzed, both physically and mentally. You can't really connect the dots and make a good golf swing, especially the downswing. If you put a stop watch from takeaway to impact, it is barely a little over a second for the average Tour player, about 1.12 seconds. For me, with the three quarter, limited turn backswing, mine happens in as little time as .88 seconds from the top of the backswing to impact.
The point is, it is happening as fast as you can blink your eyes almost or snap your finger. It is coordinated, explosive movement. I think you can't really learn that trying to do things slowly, inch by inch, or section by section and then tie them all together. Therefore, I come back to the statement I have always said: You have to have a good picture in your mind of what you want to do with the golf swing, what it is, what you have to do, why you have to do it and then how you do it and then you have to learn your places in space. You can see articles about that. You can go back and read those and it is basically if you stand up and put your hands up, like you were taking and oath with both hands up, that is where your backhand is where you are at the top of your backswing, your forward hand is where you swing to at the top of your finish.
You learn those two points that you place in space, and the takeaway is you lift it up to the backhand position which is called point A and then you swing up to the forward hand position, point B, that is learning your place in space. But the point is, once you learn those two places in space, you go in the mitt and up the tree to the backswing position and then swing down to impact, then in the forward mitt and up the tree to the finish. You feel the swing. You make good practice swings, you feel the swing and then when it is time to hit the ball you step up to it and swing the feel. This is dynamic, explosive movement, especially the transition to impact. That I think can only really well and efficiently and consistently happen when you focus on swinging at the proper speed that you are going to hit a golf ball.
Feel the swing and then swing the feel when you hit the ball is the best way to do it. Slow I don't believe really works. So let's get into some dynamic action, practice swinging, Robert, and bet that will help you and everybody else who is interested in trying to figure out what it feels like to make a good swing from the top to impact to the finish.
The Surge!