Hitting vs. Swinging in Golf (TGM)

[JetFan1983]

I feel more swinging but would like to become a better hitter.

[canadianpro]

I'm a pull then pusher

[cbrian]

Don't feel one over the other unless I'm working on getting the hands down faster. At that point I feel more of a swing.

[Jay-Bird]

I feel like I "swing" all cut and straight shots .

I feel like I let my right arm take over a bit to "hit" a draw.

[Billy33]

I try to be a swinger;however, the closer to ball contact I get I start to hit. My practice swing is a swing. My real swing is a hit. I am very much ball reactive. I want to be more of a swinger I feel I have more abiltiy to work the ball with a swing.

[B-Con]

Swinger at the beginning, a hitter at 8 o'clock (or 9 o'clock, if I'm flipping like a dolphin). My second most primary swing though is to pull with my left arm and push with my right, so I can't say I feel one strongly over the other.

[The Recreational Golfer]

I really like to hit, but whenever I do, my right hand takes over too much and I become a 35 handicapper. If I just swing, everything lines up, I make consistently good contact, the ball goes straight, I get good distance, so as much as I like to hit, I keep reminding myself to swing. Lots of reminders.

[Easy]

I am a swinger, but I do not pull with my left arm. That's a death move. I pull with my body.

Damn straight it is!

I'm left handed but swing right sided. I used to always pull with my left arm and that screwed me. I think swingers really need to focus on having a good pivot rather than a hitter.

[Leftygolfer]

This is a hard question for me. I have learned to play golf purely on feel and hard work/results. I've been working on making my swing as simple as possible by shorting my back swing and staying on top of the ball. I've had good results recently in terms of contact and less wildness (well I haven't touched a club in a couple of weeks but I am basing this off my play overall during the fall).

I answered hitting. I am very left handed so I really don't have much use of my right hand. When I'm swing well, I don't feel any pulling. I feel the driving of the club through the ball with the left hand but it happens so fast so its hard to tell. If I come after it too hard I hit wild pulls and hooks from closing the club face at impact and if I pull really fast I can hit wild push slices. For me, when I'm in a good groove hitting good shots I really feel nothing but good tempo and simplicity. I've realized recently I'm strong enough and big enough I don't have to put any extra effort to hit it far (I'm not saying I'm super long but long enough to have short clubs into anything but the very longest par 4s if I hit a good drive) so I try to be niether. I just want to be in control and have predictable outcomes.

[Scott_K]

I started out swinging the club and as I got older turned into a hitter. I don't feel like I'm pulling with my left arm when I swing. I kind of do both swings depending on the club. Longer clubs I tend to swing, mid and shorter clubs I tend to hit and attack more. I tend to hit with the driver. Sometimes good, sometimes ugly.

Curious if there's a Part II to this thread .....

[Taggsy]

I should imagine most readers of this forum have heard the terms “Hitting” and “Swinging”, and may have a vague idea of what they entail.

You’ve probably heard one’s pushing the club, the other’s pulling the club, one’s using your right hand, the other your left, that one’s muscular force and the other centrifugal force. These are simplified explanations. Homer Kelley, the chap who wrote The Golfing Machine and who first classified Hitting and Swinging, has written the following about simplifying explanations in the introduction to his book;

“Treating a complex subject or action as though it were simple, multiplies its complexity because of the difficulty in systematizing missing and unknown factors of elements.”

“...golf instruction kept simple does not make it simple - only incomplete and ineffective.”

With this in mind, let’s go through The Golfing Machine and discover exactly what Hitting and Swinging are. You may be surprised...

*****

Firstly, why all the confusion in the first place? Surely you could flick to the section entitled “Hitting & Swinging”, read what it says, and you’re good to go. Right? Erm, no.

For those of you who’ve (attempted to!) read The Golfing Machine, you’ll quickly discover it’s not an easy perusal. For a start, Kelley seldom repeats himself. This means the book is littered with cross references. As a (not accurate) example, if you want to understand what’s written on page 25, you’d need to have read page 50, but to understand page 50, you need to have read pages 5 and 78, but if you want to understand pages 5 and 78..... et cetera, et cetera. Couple this with the fact the language used is very exacting (Kelley spent a long time making sure every single word was correct and not open to misinterpretation- even making up the word “non-automatic” because “automatic”’s antonym is “manual”, and the definition of “manual” was at odds with what Kelley meant). You can flick through, read a paragraph where it mentions something being “vertical to the angled plane” and think to yourself “Well, I know ‘vertical’ means ‘up and down’, so I understand that part”, when in fact Kelley was using the dictionary definition of “vertical”, meaning “perpendicular”. It’s not patronising to suggest you have a dictionary on hand when reading The Golfing Machine!

If the cross referencing and language used isn’t hard enough, there are a lot of concepts that don’t have pictures or diagrams!

You’ve probably already guessed it, but the Hitting and Swinging concepts are prone to the above difficulties.

*****

Where shall we begin our search on the elusive meaning of Hitting and Swinging? Kelley was kind enough to provide us with a glossary of most of the terms and concepts in the book, so that’s as good a place to start as any.

For each Golfing Machine concept, Kelley gives us three examples;

• A “real world” example from something non-golfing that has parallels to the concept (but not always 100% the same).
• A mechanical example, for example a comparison to machine parts or a scientific definition.
• A golfing example - what exactly this concept is on the golf swing.

Hitting and Swinging are in the glossary as one entry. For the “real world” example he uses; “The catapult (Hitting) vs. the sling (Swinging).”

For the Mechanical example he gives; “Continuous thrust producing a steady acceleration of a hinged beam is a Hitting action. A rotating arm pulling steadily on a weighted line is a Swinging action.”

For the golfing example he gives; “Accelerating the Club radially with Right Arm Thrust is Hitting. Accelerating the Club Longitudinally, with either Arm, is Swinging.”

So there’s your answer, lesson over! ;) I’m joking... what does the above mean in English?

I’m going to come back to that a little later, but first I want us to go through the book for more information that can help us.

In the preface to The Golfing Machine, Kelley writes;

“The golf stroke involves, mainly, two basic elements - the geometry of the circle and the physics of rotation.... The geometry (of Hitting and Swinging) is the same for both. But, basically, the physics of Hitting is muscular thrust, and of Swinging, centrifugal force. Herein, “Motion” is geometry - “Action” is physics.”

Kelley says here that the golf swing is made up of motion (of your body and golf club), and the way to make that motion. He explains that the motions for hitting and swinging are the same (by that he means; for both you are moving your body and golf club), but how you move your body and club are different.

At this juncture I’d like to clarify one of the most widely held misunderstandings about Hitting and Swinging. And that is; they look the same. They don’t. They look completely different! This misunderstanding arises from the above statement where Kelley says the “geometry is the same for both” , and from another section in the book entitled “Right Arm or Left” (1-F).

Firstly, the “geometry is the same for both” simply means the clubshaft and arms move away from the ball around a fixed point, your left shoulder (but also your spine, that’s not important now), and then back towards the ball. Because there is a fixed point from which the arms and clubshaft are moving, the clubshaft makes an arc, That’s the geometry, and it’s the same for both Hitting and Swinging. The actual golf swings themselves looks completely different.

The misunderstanding also comes from the aforementioned section, “Right Arm or Left”.

Here, Kelley says it’s difficult to detect if the right arm is active (using muscular thrust), or not, just by looking, because either way the right arm bends on the backswing, and straightens on the downswing. The bent right arm will straighten on the downswing whether you’re pushing your right arm straight with your triceps or not, because the hands are moving away from the right shoulder. The left arm is pulling the right arm straight, or the right arm is straightening itself- either way, they look the same.

Because people believe Hitting is simply muscular thrust (actively straightening the right arm with the triceps), and because you can’t tell if there is muscular thrust on a swing, then it seems obvious that you can’t tell if someone is Hitting or Swinging just by looking.

That would be true except for this one very important point.... Swinging, as we’ve learnt above, is centrifugal force- and Hitting is not. Centrifugal force is very easy to see on the golf swing!

The centrifugal force on the golf swing, according to The Golfing Machine’s glossary is;

“The effort of the swinging clubhead to pull the Primary Lever Assembly (left arm and club) into a straight line.”

In layman’s terms, it’s the angle between your straight left arm and the clubshaft. On the backswing that angle decreases when cocking your left wrist, and on the downswing it increases when swinging the clubhead towards the ball. That angle between the left arm and clubshaft on the downswing is often referred to as “lag”.

So we now know Swinging is any time there is centrifugal force during the downswing .

I hope at this point you’re thinking to yourself; “Hang on, isn’t that every swing?!”.

Because you’d be pretty much correct. It’s certainly every swing that’s ever been on tour. It’s most likely every swing you’ve ever seen, ever, anywhere, on anyone!

So what on earth’s Hitting? Well, we know Hitting isn’t Swinging, and we know Swinging is any time there’s centrifugal force, so Hitting must be an absence of centrifugal force.

How could we use the golf club without centrifugal force? It’s easy; you keep the clubshaft in line with the left arm at all times. You imagine the left arm and golf club are just one line with no arching, or bending, or cocking, or uncocking of the left wrist. That left wrist may as well not even be there.

With your left wrist frozen and the left arm and clubshaft in line, how can you hit the ball? With muscular thrust. You bend your right arm on the backswing, and use your triceps to straighten the right arm on the downswing- pushing that in line left arm and clubshaft towards the ball.

You don’t believe me when I say that’s Hitting? Let’s look back at the glossary definition.

Hitting is like a catapult. (not the elastic kind you hold in your hand, but the kind that propels rocks and boulders into castles!). Google “catapult” if you’re not sure what they look like. The first dozen or so images show them quite nicely.

The mechanical definition was the “ continuous thrust producing a steady acceleration of a hinged beam”. See how that relates to the catapult. The beam is the length of wood that throws the rock. The hinge is what attaches that moving beam to the base of the catapult. The continuous thrust is whatever method is used to propel that wooden beam forwards.

Now compare that definition to the golf swing. This time the beam is the left arm and clubshaft, the hinge is the left shoulder, and the continuous thrust is the right arm straightening.

In summary;

• Swinging is any time there is centrifugal force.
• Hitting is pushing the in-line left arm and clubshaft with the bent right arm.

*****

There we have it. Hitting and Swinging explained. And that’s not my opinion or interpretation of Hitting and Swinging; it’s straight from the horse’s mouth so to speak- directly from The Golfing Machine.

I’ll include a video of me Hitting. You already know what Swinging looks like ;)

[Taggsy]

It's about as close I can get to keeping the left arm and clubshaft in-line.

[Phil McGleno]

Hitting Swinging Schmitting Schminging. What's the point? Golfers use both hitting and swinging on each stroke but Homer classified components as being good for Hitters or good for Swingers but rarely both. The hitter uses angular hinging, the swinger uses horizontal hinging. And it all means jack since hinging action is irrelevant and every decent golf swing that produces even moderate power uses both Hitting and Swinging. Ain't that right?

[MiniBlueDragon]

Originally Posted by Phil McGleno

Hitting Swinging Schmitting Schminging. What's the point? Golfers use both hitting and swinging on each stroke but Homer classified components as being good for Hitters or good for Swingers but rarely both. The hitter uses angular hinging, the swinger uses horizontal hinging. And it all means jack since hinging action is irrelevant and every decent golf swing that produces even moderate power uses both Hitting and Swinging. Ain't that right?

I'm far from having an ideal swing but the feeling for me is one of:

swinging (backswing) > swinging (downswing to P6ish) > swinging + hitting (to P7.5ish) > swinging (everything else)

So you're right in that it doesn't have to be solely one or the other.

[Taggsy]

Originally Posted by Phil McGleno

Hitting Swinging Schmitting Schminging. What's the point? Golfers use both hitting and swinging on each stroke but Homer classified components as being good for Hitters or good for Swingers but rarely both. The hitter uses angular hinging, the swinger uses horizontal hinging. And it all means jack since hinging action is irrelevant and every decent golf swing that produces even moderate power uses both Hitting and Swinging. Ain't that right?

Hi Phil! You'd know the answer to that question if you'd read my initial post

I'm not going to put words in your mouth, but for the sake of me answering your question, I'll assume you believe Hitting is using muscular force (the right arm pushing the club).

You'd be half right if that's what you believe. Hitting is using muscular force and NOT centrifugal force.

Any time there is centrifugal force, irrespective of if the right arm is controlling that centrifugal force, it's still swinging.

There's only one way to perform Hitting- read my first post and look at the video!

When people have performed studies on Hitting and Swinging and conclude "they both have the same elements" or "you can do both at the same time", they've completely misunderstood what Hitting is. They've been comparing Swinging with.... Swinging (but what they thought was Hitting).

Read the first post Phil. If you're still unsure after reading it, ask away

[Taggsy]

Originally Posted by MiniBlueDragon

I'm far from having an ideal swing but the feeling for me is one of:

swinging (backswing) > swinging (downswing to P6ish) > swinging + hitting (to P7.5ish) > swinging (everything else)

So you're right in that it doesn't have to be solely one or the other.

Read the first post, not Phil's reply.

What you're saying is "Through Impact I'm powering the swing with my right arm". I'm not disputing that at all.

But is there centrifugal force in your swing? Yep. That means you're Swinging.

Read my first post

[MiniBlueDragon]

Originally Posted by Taggsy

Read the first post, not Phil's reply.

What you're saying is "Through Impact I'm powering the swing with my right arm". I'm not disputing that at all.

But is there centrifugal force in your swing? Yep. That means you're Swinging.

Read my first post

What I'm saying is the shaft starts to fall in line with my left arm from P6 with the addition of my right wrist's power to straighten it a little faster. That straightening normally completes a fraction before the ball but my right arm remains a little flexed at the elbow. Then the whole package is retained up until my shaft is parallel to the ground again before the club re-cocks to slow down.

Granted there's an active element to my right wrist straightening the club in line with my left arm but I found that being right-handed I tended to over-power the right arm and flip through impact. Nowadays I let the majority of the work be done by centripetal force and my right wrist just allows a smidge quicker straightening which is required when lag is properly maintained.

And I did read your post.

[Taggsy]

Originally Posted by MiniBlueDragon

What I'm saying is the shaft starts to fall in line with my left arm from P6 with the addition of my right wrist's power to straighten it a little faster. That straightening normally completes a fraction before the ball but my right arm remains a little flexed at the elbow. Then the whole package is retained up until my shaft is parallel to the ground again before the club re-cocks to slow down.

Granted there's an active element to my right wrist straightening the club in line with my left arm but I found that being right-handed I tended to over-power the right arm and flip through impact. Nowadays I let the majority of the work be done by centripetal force and my right wrist just allows a smidge quicker straightening which is required when lag is properly maintained.

And I did read your post.

I hear what you're saying MiniBlueDragon, and I completely understand what you mean and what you're doing during your swing. But the bottom line is this;

There is centrifugal force, therefore you are swinging. It's really that simple.