I received this email question from Larry, one of my regular students. He asks, “When you say you're all about up, I sometimes get confused and think maybe I'm not the only one. My brain takes the statement, “come up like a pop tart” to mean to come up and stand up and out of the shot, instead of come up to your T-Finish as quick as you can. What exactly do you mean?”
Larry, what the phrase 'swing up, stand up and pop up like a part tart out of a toaster' means is exactly your last point: standing up to the T-Finish. The term “standing up out of the shot” means that you pulled out of the shot, either slightly before impact or just as you're hitting the ball.
Either way, when you stand up out of the shot, you're likely to be cutting across the ball, hitting it thin on the lower part of the golf club and possibly toward the toe, which means you're likely to top it, hit a low, thin blade or cut shot out to the right. Not a good shot. Not a good swing.
I think, as you know, I'm all about standing up to the T-Finish. I've written articles about that, when I take my practice swings, I swing up to the T-Finish. When I make a good practice swing, which should be every swing, then I feel like I've stood up to the T-Finish, to a good balanced finish, recoiled and relax at the target, that's a good swing, that's the one I want to make for the next shot, this is the one I've just felt. The key to the next shot is to set up to the ball and swing the feel I just hand.
I wrote an article called feel the 'Feel the Swing, Swing the Feel.' When I get up there hitting that shot, swinging the feel, I'm taking the mechanics out of the shot and just trying to repeat the feel. My whole purpose is to swing up to the T-Finish.
Why is that so important? Well, if you swing up to a T-Finish, and you get into a dynamically balanced finish, recoil and relax, with your torso square to the target, with your club coming down aiming at the target, which holds your finish nice and tight, you made a really good golf swing. The proof of the pudding is you're in a balanced T-Finished, square to the target. Everything that preceded that balanced T-Finish, the dominos lined up pretty good, that means you got there, you had to have had a pretty good swing. If you had a pretty good swing you had to do what? You had to hit a good golf shot.
Many of us get hung up and try to swing mechanics more that feel. Mechanics are for the work on the range. When you finally feel like your mechanics are falling in line and you start hitting good shots, you have to transfer that mechanics mode, or thinking about the swing, into feel. Think about it. You feel the shot, you can sense it, you can see it in your mind and then you reproduce the feel. Feel the swing. Swing the feel. I think that is the most successful way to play golf. When you can get yourself into that mode, the feeling I think is the most important one to hit balls well is to swing the feel, standing up and pop tarting to the T-Finish. The critical key here, bar none, is that you cannot start your standup until you have contacted the ball.
From the top of the backswing to impact, that's a split second. What I teach is, you have to learn and you have to train your mind's eye and your senses, even hearing, that split second, probably a nano second, that you feel and hear that the contact is registered in your mind, at that split second is when your entire back side, from your back foot to your knee to your hip to your shoulder, all of those body parts are swinging up and chasing the arms, hands and club to the perfect T-Finish.
The T-Finish is all based around you must hear, see and feel impact and stand up to the T-Finish. That's the key. You'll be really hitting good shots.
(Note for Golf School. Look for details soon on our California PPGS schools at Talega Golf Club in beautiful San Clemente, May 17 – 19 and 20 – 22. It's going to be one heck of an experience. Call: 1-888-84SWING(79464) or 1-864-525-7336.)
The Surge!