A Centered Pivot Golf Swing

[Ernest Jones]

Won't work. Up above we posted pictures of Tour pros, with their shoulder locations at setup and most of the way through the backswing marked, and he denied that stuff too.

He said he was leaving for other forums. I think he was last spotted at http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/.

The first time I ever came across the Flat Earth Society website I checked it out expecting some tongue and cheek little society that pokes fun at itself, the kind of thing Robert Anton Wilson would be involved with. I was thoroughly stunned when it became obvious that these bat shit mo-fos are ****ing dead serious!

[RandallT]

@mvmac posted this in another thread, but I thought Leadbetter's tip to "wind up" starting at 1:37 to 2:33 in this video was very useful for the centered pivot idea:

http://www.golfchannel.com/media/lesson-tee-live-leadbetters-long-drive-tips/

Here's the key screenshot of the "wind up" drill he recommends. He hates the term "turn" on the backswing because it sounds like a weak movement. He uses terms like "spiraling", "coil", "piston" (see the arms below, as he rotates the hips/shoulders, the arms do look like pistons).

[Mr. Desmond]

Pete Cowan -- spiral staircase -- DVD -- over 3 years ago.

[mvmac]

@mvmac posted this in another thread, but I thought Leadbetter's tip to "wind up" starting at 1:37 to 2:33 in this video was very useful for the centered pivot idea:

Yes he's basically describing the knee linkage without talking about the knees changing flexion.

[iacas]

Pete Cowan -- spiral staircase -- DVD -- over 3 years ago.

None of this is new. Virtually everything in golf is or has been done before, at some point. I'm sure someone did it before Pete Cowan. Heck, even Hogan could be taken to have said some of these things. And probably many before him.

LSW, in whole, I think has some entirely new things in it. The Decision Maps, for example.

OT for this thread, though.

[fanofsaosin]

by any chance can one over turn the hips on the backswing? how much hip degree turn is usually perscribed

[mvmac]

by any chance can one over turn the hips on the backswing? how much hip degree turn is usually perscribed

Yes, one can but it's rare. Typically players that turn their hips more than 50 degrees are probably turning them too flat. We like to see roughly 40-50 degrees of hip turn.

[fanofsaosin]

thats what i suspected, what pieces help with turning the hips on an angle?  is it pretty much how the knees work that give the hip slant

[mvmac]

thats what i suspected, what pieces help with turning the hips on an angle?  is it pretty much how the knees work that give the hip slant

Yes that's a big part of it, lead knee gains and moves inward while the right knee lessens in flex. The knee linkage is gradual. Post a swing in your swing thread, would help me to see what's going on.

[Robbie Williams]

I have recently tried to make a more centered turn, no heady sway to the right on the back swing, releasing the flexion but not locking the right knee.

A PGA pro I know preaches about turning around a braced right knee and allowing the head to move slightly back. He mentioned that the reason most players in the past (i. Snead, Hogan etc.) used to straighten their right leg was because of how bendy the shafts were? Is there any truth in this? He keeps saying that the top players in the world all load into their right side over a braced right knee and get behind the ball with minimal hip turn.

I haven't really acquired a trained eye and being relatively new to the game I can't eyt disprove him but everything I've been reading (SnT,TGm,5sk) seems to totally go against that. Do the majority of PGA pros now teach that way? Is there a shift now more towards SnT,TGM and 5sk among golf professionals?

From an aesthetic view I love the swings of Robert Rock, Grant Waite, Justin Rose etc. however, other than Rose the others are hardly world beaters (very good players mind!) why don't more players on the PGA Tour swing like these guys?

[billchao]

A PGA pro I know preaches about turning around a braced right knee and allowing the head to move slightly back. He mentioned that the reason most players in the past (i. Snead, Hogan etc.) used to straighten their right leg was because of how bendy the shafts were? Is there any truth in this? He keeps saying that the top players in the world all load into their right side over a braced right knee and get behind the ball with minimal hip turn.

Never heard of the bendy shafts thing, but the pro is wrong about the right knee. Most players lose some flex in their right knee in the backswing.

They're not all doing it with minimal hip turn, either. Look at Bubba's hip action. Hip turn is important because it facilitates shoulder turn.

From an aesthetic view I love the swings of Robert Rock, Grant Waite, Justin Rose etc. however, other than Rose the others are hardly world beaters (very good players mind!) why don't more players on the PGA Tour swing like these guys?

I'm sure @iacas or @mvmac can explain it better than I can, but all golfers have compensations in their swings. What's important is they have all 5 Keys. Look at a guy like Furyk. You wouldn't change what he does, because despite it being weird looking, it works for him, and he can repeat the move consistently. Other PGA Tour professionals are no different. They've spent years "owning" their idiosyncrasies and it works for them.

[mvmac]

A PGA pro I know preaches about turning around a braced right knee and allowing the head to move slightly back. He mentioned that the reason most players in the past (i. Snead, Hogan etc.) used to straighten their right leg was because of how bendy the shafts were? Is there any truth in this? He keeps saying that the top players in the world all load into their right side over a braced right knee and get behind the ball with minimal hip turn.

First time I've heard that one. Doesn't make sense anyway because Hogan, Snead, Nelson used steel shafts. Hogan's driver was extremely stiff, I think it was frequency tested and came out triple X or something like that.

He keeps saying that the top players in the world all load into their right side over a braced right knee and get behind the ball with minimal hip turn.

Depends on what "minimal" means. All pros turn their shoulders 90+ degrees and in order to do that the hips turn have to turn a good amount, somewhere in the 45 degree range.

In terms of the head moving slightly back, again it depends on what he means by "slightly". T he average PGA Tour player moves his head one inch during his backswing and less on his downswing. So for every guy who moves it two inches, there's a guy moving it zero inches. For every guy that moves it three inches, there are two guys who don't move their head one bit.

I haven't really acquired a trained eye and being relatively new to the game I can't eyt disprove him but everything I've been reading (SnT,TGm,5sk) seems to totally go against that. Do the majority of PGA pros now teach that way? Is there a shift now more towards SnT,TGM and 5sk among golf professionals?

Majority of golf instructors are still pretty bad. It is slowly getting better though, @iacas and @david_wedzik are doing their part, they're certifying more and more instructors into the 5SK system. Here's a list of all the 5SK instructors.

From an aesthetic view I love the swings of Robert Rock, Grant Waite, Justin Rose etc. however, other than Rose the others are hardly world beaters (very good players mind!) why don't more players on the PGA Tour swing like these guys?

In terms of 5SK, touring pros achieve all 5 Keys. The Keys are commonalities of great golfers. 5SK isn't a particular "swing" and leaves plenty of room for every golfer to have their own quirks and unique pieces.

[Robbie Williams]

Thanks for your response @mvmac ! Trying to learn as much as a can about the golf swing so you have to excuse some seemingly stupid questions!

5SK looks great to me and certainly a productive way to diagnose and fix the golf swing! Have the PGA of America embraced the 5SK?

Have signed up to evolr and can't wait to get my first analysis back!

[mvmac]

Thanks for your response @mvmac! Trying to learn as much as a can about the golf swing so you have to excuse some seemingly stupid questions!

Just be careful, learning a lot about the swing doesn't necessarily lead to playing better golf. Yes, understand general concepts, your priority pieces, the cause and effect they have to your swing/shots but don't let learning lead to "trying" a bunch of swing thoughts or revamping your whole golf swing.

Have the PGA of America embraced the 5SK?

Dave and Erik are PGA guys as well as most 5SK instructors.

[Moppy]

Thanks for this post. I was completely oblivious as to why I was hitting fat and thin and had no idea what to practice. I  took this idea to the range and it has shown me the way to get better contact though I need a lot more reps and experimentation to get it right. At least I feel like I have a flashlight now, instead of wandering around in the woods in the dark.

[MattM]

I would recommend doing evovlr if I were you.  However, even doing that for me for 8-9 months I still needed one of those "it just clicked with me" moments.  I had been working as I said with evolvr for 8-9 months and got my swing looking pretty technically good.  My big misses were fat and thin shots, and while towards the end of my evovlr lessons I had cut those misses down by a pretty decent amount I was still having some problems.

I posted on here about what my swing score would be and Iacas (in his usual straight forward self, lol) posted that my score was pretty low still.  Basically, what Iacas found was that even though my head was not moving very much side to side it was moving pretty far down in my backswing.  That was the click moment as the two times I've been able to get to the simulator my swing was much smoother with more consistency because I was not only trying to keep my head from moving side to side but also up and down!  I wish the weather was better so I could get out and really test it, but it will have to wait still.

Anyway, a centered pivot is very important, but don't think like I did and only concentrate on keeping your head from moving left to right but also up and down which is just as important.

I think the whole time in my swing the biggest culprit of the fat and thin shots had to be with my head dipping in the downswing.  I either had to correct and stand up with perfect timing or I wound up just hitting a fat shot.....

It's crazy how that works....

[saevel25]

Quote from Jason Day on one of the things he likes to do on his driver swing,

Quote:

" I also try to keep my lower body stable, so I can create a nice, tight body coil. I don't want my right knee and hip to drift away from the target; that ruins the coil. As a drill, I put the grip end of a club under my right foot (inset) and make backswings. It teaches me not to sway."

#Centered_Pivot :)

[mvmac]

Quote from Jason Day on one of the things he likes to do on his driver swing,

#Centered_Pivot :)

Good players don't sway