Joe Mama

I have struggled with fat shots for years, and have gone through hundreds of different combinations of grips, stance and backswing, largely to no avail--until recently, and, now, 90% of my strikes with long and short irons are flush. Here's what I do: 1. Two-knuckle left hand, firm. (Moderately strong grip.) 2. Right hand: two middle fingers very light touch on shaft. Thumb and index finger virtually off the shaft. Pinky hovering over left hand. 4. Feet slightly less than shoulder width apart. 5. Toe line open 10 degrees. Right foot 10 degrees open relative to toe line. Left foot is 20 degrees open relative to toe line. 6. Wrists have zero tension: angle between shaft and forearms is almost 180 degrees, i.e., wrists are "drooped," not cocked up slightly to lift clubface. 7. Weight is 80% left. (That's not a typo.). Head is angled right. 8. Take-away is 100% by left arm push. Two fingers of right hand serve only as support going back. 9. Take-away direction is along the 9:30-3:30 direction (outside-in). 10. There is no wrist cocking, only a dorsal hingeing; the hingeing is not made to happen; it occurs naturally. 11. I try to stay on the left foot as long as possible on the backswing. 12. Left arm goes back about 135 degrees, with the butt end of the shaft pointing toward the ball. (The shaft makes an "L" relative to the left forearm.) 13. Swing down along the 3:30-9:30 direction. 14. The right hand should come off the shaft at the end of the swing, evidencing the extremely loose, two-finger right hand grip. Hope this helps other high cappers.

I sense that we all would agree that this thread has run its course.

Of course. I never said ALL small changes in the grip result in huge effects. Just SOME small changes. As for your two thumbs off the club: maybe no great harm is done to YOUR swing, but if instead of two thumbs, what about two fingers? The two middle ones of the right hand, for example. How well, then, would you hit the ball?

Sure, Hogan already WAS a very good player, but there is a vast gulf between a very good player, and a world champion. Without that half-inch change in his thumb length, he MIGHT have struggled with his hook for the rest of his career, being only a great player instead of the best in the world. Or, maybe not, but how can one of us from this vantage point confidently declare it absolutely could not have been so Small things in the setup and grip most certainly can be extremely important. For example, if your swing now works well with the left thumb on top, but now you rotate it clockwise from the top by just a half inch, the effects on your swing can be huge. Do that one little thing, and change nothing else, and you will likely hit a giant hook. Very small deviations from "correct" at setup can sometimes make a world of difference, can't they?

It's true that there is no such thing as magic. No sane golfer believes in it, of course. Nevertheless, some golfers have an unrecognized swing flaw which seriously impacts their game, and once it is discovered and replaced by the "correct" move, the effect on one's game can be so dramatic, so remarkable, as to seem almost "magical"--almost supernatural. For Hogan, it was the shortened thumb move, though he never called it "magic." This week, the magic move I discovered was the two-finger takeaway.

I continously experiment with most of the items on the llist, hoping to randomly discover a "magic move." One recent change has helped me very much: at setup, my thumb, index, and little finger now are off the shaft. My takeaway is done by pulling back with the middle two fingers. Having the index finger and thumb compllely off the shaft prevents their being inadvertently used to twist the shaft, thereby changing the face angle.

I was not advocating for Hogan's thumb position. I was merely giving an example of how just one small change in a setup can have a huge impact on a person's game.

Almost every aspect of the setup are far more important than we think they are, I think. If just ONE thing is wrong--for example, your left thimb is a half-inch too long, as Hogan's used to be when he was hooking everything-- then your game could be seriously compromised. Years go by while you're chasing your tail, trying to fix things that don't need fixing, all the while failing to take a closer look at possible setup flaws, and maybe finally uncovering that ONE really big flaw that, once corrected, will change everything At least one of us in this forum got it exactly right in just two weeks, and will never need to worry about it again. I suspect that the rest of us will struggle forever, looking for the optimum setup--for them.

The huge odds I offered is totally wrong; it's not 20 factorial. It's probably closer to something like 2 raised to the power of 20, but nobody should care one way or the other. The thing is, the golfer has to do an awful lot of things right at setup before he or she has a chance to make a great swing. If any one of them is wrong, others have to be made wrong, also, to compensate. If you're wrong at the beginning, you will have to twist yourself into a pretzel to make it right. I'm impressed that some of the members of this forum were able to get everything right in their setup in a very short time. I have been working at it for four years, and still am not sure what works best with what. For example, will showing two knuckles instead of 2.5 be better for me if want a higher flight when the ball is forward, assuming I take the club face inside by 5 degrees?

My Golf Swing Worries The following is a list of 20 things at setup that I believe affect the outcome of my swing. yHow much to choke down Arm separation. Arm to chest separation How many knuckles show on left hand. Where is the left thumb. How much of the left thumb is covered. How firm is left grip. How firm is the right grip. Open, closed, or square face. Feet separation. Open, closed, or square stance Body alignment left or right of target, or square. Feet open, closed, or square Knee bend. Left side-right side weight distribution Shaft tilt Upper body tilt. Spine angle Angle between upper and lower left arm How much pressure, and where, on the inside of right foot. These are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, each one of which needs to interlock perfectly with the ones next to it. If the shape of just one of the pieces is changed, at least one other piece--and perhaps all of them in a cascading chain reaction--must also be changed. Our sun will have burned out and life on Earth extinguished before the average golfer's search by ytrial and error for the right shapes for all 20 pieces is completed, because there are 20! (20 factoral), or 2,400,000,000,000,000,000, possible ways for the 20 choices to be made. And this is only this is only the setup.

Maybe what I feel isn't real. Here is a better way to describe my backswing:. When the shaft is horizontal, the face is not vertical--it is closed about 30 degrees.

I've struggled since I began playing four years ago with doubt about the proper orientation of the back of my left hand on the backswing. It seems like most golfers' left hand generally lies in the inclined plane (the swing plane) during the backswing, but I have more success with the left hand generally perpendicular to the plane going back, with a 2.5 knuckle grip. Is there anyone in this forum for whom this also works? I suspect that this backswing is severely limiting me, somehow.

That is helpful, Coyote. Bowing the left wrist at the top loses the cupping, and this, it seems to me, would make it easier for the back of the left hand near impact to more "naturally" generally point more downward (pointing to a point on the ground somewhere between the ball and the target), rather than generally upward (pointing above the line connecting the ball to the target. The latter would open the face near impact, which is not what wants to happen, of course. I've tried bowing at the top, but this usually takes my club off-plane.

Your figures show the right hand. My comments have to do with the left wrist. Now, about the left wrist: for a right-handed golfer: I think we agree that we want the back of the left hand to generally face the ground near impact. But, unless I misunderstood you, you seemed to imply that this occurs "naturally." That may be true for the "good" golfers Hogan referred to, but for many other golfers, the back of the left wrist generally and "naturally" faces skyward near impact, which is not what one wants to happen, of course. My question remains unanswered:. What grip, position at the top, and trigger downward fosters a left wrist facing the ground near impact?

I'm surprised to hear that. Cannot PRONATION equally well happen "naturally"?