Fundamentals, Commonalities, and Prioritization

Agree with you on this. People seem to get very caught up in symantics but when you are taught one way for years and years, like anything else, it's tough to let go of. It seems to me from reading your posts over the years that golf and the way to teach it is an ever evolving thing and for people that are not on board with that have a hard time hearing otherwise. I've always known that GAPS are important (tough to play without them) but when I read Mike and Andy's book what they said about them made sense. Keep spewing Erik (and Mike, Dave, UTTexas, and Stretch, etc.) as I have learned so much from the discussions on this forum. To the posters that have an opposing view to the "S&T;" bent please keep posting as I think I have learned the most with the back and forth talk between how we all see the golf swing.

I think the problem of "what is fundamental" can also be described by thinking about things in a universal or personal fashion.

As an example everyone has "a" grip. This is universal . Everyone's grip however will differ slightly due to physical limitations like hand size, finger length, finger flexibility, grip strength, grip size, height and even to a certain extent swing plane where the player needs to grip up/down the club. My grip is not your grip is not Tiger's grip, however each of us has a grip which, more or less, suits how we swing the club. Our grip is a personal fundamental to our own personal swing, however it is not a universal fundamental in that we can't all use a single description of "the grip" and apply it to all our games with great success.

I think the idea of using "commonalities" is a lot more logical and happily covers both universal and personal "fundamentals"

So the question for me is does "the model" have a grip? Is it strong? Is it weak? Do they align themselves at the target to hit the desired stock shot?

Certainly when a golfer has some of these things ingrained they do not need to necessarily change them because they are not fundamentals, but there must be some standard.

I ask because if I was to take a golfer who has never swung a club, I would like to know what is the best path to help them.

Nice post Erik.

But I disagree about changing those things as being easy.  It is easy to say to someone to grip the club different, line up differently, have a different posture, but actually hitting the ball solid changing these things and taking those changes to the course is difficult.

I know from personal experience that if you are a non-beginner with your eyes and hands trained to swing a certain way for years, then you change them, it is going to be hard to adjust and retrain yourself.  I will use myself as an example.  I learned golf as an adult.  I was a slicer and learned how not to slice by strengthing my grip.  I then learned if I aimed way closed I can hit it pretty consistantly by coming over the top, hitting a pull draw with that strong grip, play pretty ok.

But now I know how to aim correctly which took probably a year, weakened my grip so I don't miss it right as often and can hit it higher, is still a work in progress.  So now I went away from a way I could play consistantly to a way that I think I can play better in time than I did but right now I play worse.

It isn't easy to make those changes IMO.  They are definitely worth while changes and needed with many, but easy they are not.

You probably should credit the source of the picture. People who want more info on the grip might want to read the entire chapter on "The Grip", because it was pretty important to the author.  Just sayin'.

Yeah, thanks.  Sure, for a whole lot of us, this is a famous picture of a "model" grip, if not a "fundamental" grip. But maybe some new folks aren't so familiar with it being from Hogan. They might want to know what else Hogan had to say about the golf swing.  Anyway, thanks.

I actually agree more with Jack Nicklaus on the left hand grip who says he kept it more in his palm for power. I have messed around with club in my fingers and more in the palm and definitely get a more powerful strike with the club is in the palm of my left hand.

Tiger played with the club in the palm because he felt it helped him limit the release of the club and stopped sending his ball off into the left trees so often which makes you wonder how bad a driver he'd be with a grip way in the fingers.

I don't think this post is about the grip. I look at the grip in most of my lessons and tweak it in perhaps a third or half but really not much at all and almost nobody comes to me with a BAD grip just ones not suited for their swing slightly. THe point of this thread is not about the grip and Hogan's book was great at teaching people to slice because it wasn't a treatise on "the golf swing" it was a book that should have been called "Five Lessons on How I Think I Swing" because Hogan didn't even swing like he said. Anyway smarter people than me have picked apart Hogan's book but if you compare that one to Power Golf there are even big discrepancies there.

I like what Bennet and Plummer say about fundamentals but don't like that term. They aren't the first people either. 30 years ago I would ask the assistants I had and some good golfers and some poor golfers what skills they believed they needed to play good golf. They'd list things like good putting and power and hitting the ball solidly and accuracy and a good short game and course management and good nerves. All good answers, but none of them ever listed "I need to line up well" or "I need a good grip" because those are either assumed or not really the highest priority. It hink people who want to call the grip a fundamental are calling it that because it's a building block or a starting point. But I see what the Snt people mean when they say it's not going to determine how good you are at golf, the quality of your grip. It has almost no bearing on your performance in golf. Put another way if I was a betting man I'd bet on the guy who hits the ball solidly every time and putts the eyes out of the ball with the lousiest grip than the guy who has a great grip but who can't find the center of the clubface. That's the point. I think.

I get it's not about the grip. My entry was more of an example of how the grip is not a fundamental as people have different ways of holding the club.

Maybe easier but still really hard. I guess my point is that those static changes make a huge change in your dynamic swing.  When those things are changed, your swing is changed.  It is all inter-related.  That is why there isn't one grip, one stance.  I know I learned to change my static positions to play with my faults subconsciously.  Now I'm trying to go to a more neutral/traditional place and my dynamic positions have to change in order to control the ball/contact/power.  It has to match to be able to play.