The Ideal Build For Golf

[From the Golf Issue of my El Chismoso newsletter and offered here with my permission] It's depressing! I am just not physically built for golf. Maybe I should take up bowling.
For years, I have admired the "Hogan swing." But I can never swing like Hogan, because I am not physically built the way he was. It's not just a little thing like a spare tire around the waist. It is a matter of genetics. I am barrel-chested, short-necked, and narrow-shouldered. My sternum looks like it was inherited from a pigeon.
I've been doing some thinking about the genetic traits of the ideal golfer.
Flat Chest . If your chest is flat and thin enough, you can keep your left arm straight all through the backswing, for greater consistency. Hogan was a muscular guy; but he had a very thin, flat chest, like some other folks we may have heard of: Mike Weir, David Duval, Jim Furyk, Charles Howell, III, Phil Michelson, Tiger Woods and on and on. (Wait a minute! What about those stories about Tiger bench-pressing 300 pounds? Maybe, but you wouldn't know it from his chest; if he has pects, they are flat pects.)
Long Neck . If you are gifted with a long neck, you can rotate your shoulders without moving your head way off to the right (to the point where you lose depth perception of the ball), and can tuck your left shoulder neatly under your chin. Tiger Woods has a long neck.
Wide Shoulders . The wider the shoulders, the wider the swing arc, and the more leverage coming through the ball on the downswing. Guess who has wide shoulders?
Freakish Flexibility . Leadbetter believes that Hogan had an ability to hyperextend his thumb. It is said that Sam Snead could bring the tip of his thumb back to touch his forearm, and could kick the top of a doorway (or the ceiling!) flat-footed. And remember that Golf Digest photo of Tiger linking his arms behind his back like a yoga master?

I know! Maybe there is some hope for me. Perhaps what I need is a different swing model, a new golfing hero. Maybe Miller Barber....

Modelgolf.com has the supposed ideal golf swing. I don't think it really matters how you get there only thing that seems to matter is the impact zone.

Thanks. Did not know about that website. But I have been reading

Swing Like a Pro about the same swing model. Uh-oh, book's overdue to the library. Arnold Palmer said to take a good grip, keep your arms compact, your head still, and don't worry about anything else, or you'll give yourself ulcers or end up in the looney bin. Good advice. I guess I feel the golf swing should be a thing of beauty in itself, apart from the adequacy of the results. Kind of the way that T'ai Chi Chu'an branched off from martial arts, and became a kind of dance/ceremony/ritual. Maybe one day, as human beings venture out in a sealed tubes toward distant stars, there will evolve a free-fall dance or exercise based on the form of the golf swing, but without ball or club. And eventually over the course of generations, the art-form will persist, though its origins on the windswept coast of Scotland on a far away planet are long forgotten.... Hey! Am I decadent or what?

Is there anyone on the forum that is a member of Modelgolf.com? I have read through the site and it all seems pretty impressive to me. I would like a first hand account of it though before I actually sign up.

I am not a member. But if I understand rightly, both the website and the book

Swing Like a Pro are based upon the same computer model derived from analysis of the golf swings of a number of professional golfers of different physical types. The result is a swing model incorporating only the features common to the pros. It reduces the pro swing to its essentials, free of individual quirks and ideosyncracies--and gives us non-pros a model for our own swings. I strongly recommend the book. You can probably get a used copy for $10 + shipping on Ebay or Amazon. This empirical approach is a really great idea. So much teaching about the swing is based on patches and preconceptions. No wonder some of us golfers are neurotic and screwed up. Hankins feuds with McLean and both have a different method from Butch Harmon and all are different from Jimmy Ballard! There are new books out by Leadbetter, Hankins, and somebody else giving their new slant on Hogan's Five Fundamentals that was published 50 years ago. With so many would-be golf gurus, golf instruction is like a darned religion divided into warring sects. You pick your religion on blind faith and happenstance and are certain to be wrong somewhere. And when you spend your $50 on 15 minutes of instruction by your local pro, you'll just get pigeonholed and at most taught a quick fix, get a "bag on the side of your machine." The swing model is a scientific, objective, antidote to all this.

Thanks for the reply. Much appreciated. I have taught myself everything I know about the game and quite proud of it. I'm pretty much clued into what the science of golf is all about and know that with the hours put in my handicapp will come down. This sounds like pretty much what I would buy into from the video analysis point of veiw. The only problem is that with one's swing evolving it could be a pretty expensive experience. So I'm looking for an inexpensive aid that will develop my game. Have you heard of The Swing Plane Stick?

Ian Woosnam, Craig Stadler, Nick O'hern all are "unique" physically and play the game very well.

Hi,

Well I'm 6 feet tall, thin build, long arms and I can't swing! hehe

Can you expand on how having a long neck helps with your swing? I have to admin I am a newbie at golf and I am actually struggling with keeping my head down throughout the swing (no matter how many times I've been reminded to keep my head down throughout the swing!)

Hello, I CAN'T SWING. Like you I am a golf newbie although I was first taught to swing by a Hogan disciple in a college PE course in golf 33 years ago, but am neither a model nor an expert. So you have to take what I say--or what most anybody else says--with a large grain of salt. Some of the advice posted in forums is rock-solid, and some is about as reliable as the deep philosophic discussions of life and love that ensue at a bar after the sixth martini.

My posts fall somewhere in between. You decide. As for the "long neck" matter: one of the ways we humans vary is in the apparent length of the neck; in actuality, it is just that some of us have lower-hung or sloping shoulders that give the appearance of a long neck. Some of us are "no-necks." In my case, my shoulders are squarish and seem to start about 2 1/2 inches below my ears. Because I wear glasses (trifocals), I need to point my head down so I can look at the ball through the distance or the middle range lens; this brings my left deltoid into a collision with my chin on the backswing, which is only avoided by turning the head to the right (like Nicklaus and many other fine golfers). But when my head turns to the right, my depth perception suffers, IMHO, both because of (1) a shorter base of triangulation between the two eyes and the ball, and (2) increased visual distortion from looking at an angle through my thick lenses. IMHO, I do feel that any golfer with a "long" neck or with sloping shoulders who does not have to turn his or her head much to the right on the backswing has a better view of the ball, Nicklaus and friends notwithstanding. I, too, have trouble keeping my head down and my eye on the ball through impact. Here's my best bellied-up-to-the-bar advice. A 1.68" ball, like a 4.25" cup, is just too big an object to focus on--so pick a smaller target! When you tee up the ball, place it so that the logo, the number, or some mark on the ball is visible behind the ball near the impact point; concentrate on watching that point, and trying to see the leading edge of the club face impact the ball under the mark. Or, if you top the ball or hit it thin, you can choose a blade of grass right behind and beneath the ball and focus on beginning a divot at that point. Practice the swing in slow-motion using a shaft or stick; get the feel of the correct movement. The time-honored treatment for heads that are too mobile or (horrors) sway up or down is for your teacher/coach to stand right in front and grab your hair as you swing. Caution: try this swinging a short iron only!