{"id":2572,"date":"2018-02-12T19:41:49","date_gmt":"2018-02-13T00:41:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/therecreationalgolfer.com\/blog\/?p=2572"},"modified":"2018-02-12T19:41:49","modified_gmt":"2018-02-13T00:41:49","slug":"a-golf-swing-epiphany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therecreationalgolfer.com\/blog\/2018\/02\/a-golf-swing-epiphany\/","title":{"rendered":"A Golf Swing Epiphany"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have a video on YouTube<\/a> that talks about the straight left arm–what that term really means. It is by far the most popular of all my videos for some reason.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s really good advice to keep your left arm straight, because if you bend your elbow you introduce another lever into your swing. Two levers, the wrist and the shoulder, are enough. No need to add a third.<\/p>\n

But I found out a few days ago that\u2019s exactly what I do when I\u2019m swinging at my best. I bend my left elbow.<\/p>\n

For years, the major thrust of all my personal golf swing research has been to figure out how to keep the clubface square from takeaway to impact. It\u2019s pretty hard to do, because the forearms can rotate too much or not enough, and the wrists can do almost anything. Getting these two to behave isn\u2019t easy. <\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s who knows what else.<\/p>\n

When I was playing very well, back in 2011 before things started happening (long-time readers know what they are), I always had this feeling at the tail end of my backswing that my wrists were bending a bit extra because of the momentum of the swing. <\/p>\n

They seemed to always get back into line in the forward swing, though, because one of the hallmarks of my game was and still is that I hit the ball very straight. <\/p>\n

But I never felt that extra bending of my wrists was the right thing to be happening, so I tried hard to eliminate it by deliberately doing things to prevent the bending feeling from coming up. <\/p>\n

The problem was, those corrections didn\u2019t improve matters, and they turned a free and easy swing into a lot of work.<\/p>\n

So in the past few months I decided to go look for that swing feeling and get it back again. I found it last week, and when I did I quickly realized I had been all wrong all this time.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t my wrists that were bending. It was my left elbow.<\/p>\n

My left shoulder isn\u2019t flexible enough to get my hands to where the momentum of my backswing wants to take them, so my elbow bends to get them there. The feeling in my wrists is caused by the weight of the club, not by any extraneous movement in them. <\/p>\n

On the forward swing, the elbow straightens out again and I\u2019m still in business with a square clubface.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going on about this because it is a perfect example of what I wrote about a few weeks ago<\/a> . Something so fundamental as a straight left arm is something I do NOT do, and when I try to do it, I don\u2019t hit the ball well. That swing is not ME.<\/p>\n

Gary Player once said something along the lines of, \u201cName me any swing fundamental and I\u2019ll show you a championship golfer who doesn\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

I doubt Player had me in mind when he said that, but it\u2019s true. Fundamentals get you in the ball park, but if they mess you up, modify them until your swing is YOU. <\/p>\n

There is only one way for you to swing a golf club, and that is YOUR way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a video on YouTube that talks about the straight left arm–what that term really means. It is by far the most popular of all my videos for some reason. It\u2019s really good advice to keep your left arm straight, because if you bend your elbow you introduce another lever into your swing. Two … Continue reading A Golf Swing Epiphany<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-golf-swing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4qtRQ-Fu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therecreationalgolfer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therecreationalgolfer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therecreationalgolfer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therecreationalgolfer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therecreationalgolfer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2572"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/therecreationalgolfer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2576,"href":"https:\/\/therecreationalgolfer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2572\/revisions\/2576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therecreationalgolfer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therecreationalgolfer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therecreationalgolfer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}