Brian Manzella
Administrator
The quotes are from yours truly....
"You are going to MASSIVELY add gamma (about the shaft) rotation late in the downswing. So, if you can, you sure DO NOT want to do it too soon."
This is not up for debate. Besides myself twice, pals like Richard Franklin and Joe Mayo have spent time on ENSO-pro to confirm what I found in my two visits to see Paul Wood and talk to Alex Dee at Fujikura.
"That's why Hogan went from slightly cupped at the top, to very bent at hands waist high, to arched at impact."
You can add Sergio to that list.
"As far as the right arm goes, you massively add TUMBLE/Beta (pitch of the club) torque at left arm parallel in the downswing."
Tumble—or BETA TORQUE—is basically the golfer taking the left arm and club unit and attempting to pitch it forward, or "tumble" it over.
"So, if you can, you want to add NEGATIVE beta torque early which will be aided by external rotation of the right arm."
Most of my group calls this move "laying the club down." The external rotation of the right arm early is done by everybody who can throw a football a lick.
<iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/71178099?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" width="800" height="600" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe> Brian Manzella Football Throw from Brian Manzella on Vimeo.
"You want an initial force along the shaft—tangential to the hand path—this will be assisted by the right arm straightening early, 'away from your right ear.' "
"You are going to MASSIVELY add gamma (about the shaft) rotation late in the downswing. So, if you can, you sure DO NOT want to do it too soon."
This is not up for debate. Besides myself twice, pals like Richard Franklin and Joe Mayo have spent time on ENSO-pro to confirm what I found in my two visits to see Paul Wood and talk to Alex Dee at Fujikura.
At this point it should be noted that there is a difference between applying TORQUE and creating measurable rotation.
"That's why Hogan went from slightly cupped at the top, to very bent at hands waist high, to arched at impact."
You can add Sergio to that list.
"As far as the right arm goes, you massively add TUMBLE/Beta (pitch of the club) torque at left arm parallel in the downswing."
Tumble—or BETA TORQUE—is basically the golfer taking the left arm and club unit and attempting to pitch it forward, or "tumble" it over.
It is easy to see in Sergio's swing, much harder to see in Mark Calcavecchia's. But it is always present in that middle portion of the swing. Some do it early some later but all APPLY the torque.
At the Golf Magazine Top 100 Summit last year, I was presenting on several topics and one of them was "tumble." Two top teachers just couldn't wrap their heads around it. "I don't see it," was what they said.
But it is there.
<iframe width="640" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/GN4j2GkwfgI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<iframe width="640" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/GN4j2GkwfgI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
So, remember you can be torquing the heck out of that pickle jar, but it may open slightly after you'd like it—or intend it—to.
Just for funzy, here is a little tumble and gamma:
Just for funzy, here is a little tumble and gamma:
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/rKvjU9iI6Do?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
"So, if you can, you want to add NEGATIVE beta torque early which will be aided by external rotation of the right arm."
Most of my group calls this move "laying the club down." The external rotation of the right arm early is done by everybody who can throw a football a lick.
<iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/71178099?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" width="800" height="600" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe> Brian Manzella Football Throw from Brian Manzella on Vimeo.
I've always been pretty good at that and nobody ever taught that move to me. So, maybe that is caused by some other movements. That's a separate discussion, but for this one, the point is the "quarterback" is TRYING to straighten their right arm the whole forward motion.
Not in the transition—the time where some things are going one way and some are going the other—but in the forward movement for sure.
It takes a while to look like it is straightening though.
"You want an initial force along the shaft—tangential to the hand path—this will be assisted by the right arm straightening early, 'away from your right ear.' "
Let's look at this one in depth…
Dr. Steven Nesbit taught us that once there is this little drop in the path of the hands as the pelvis lowers about an inch, and that path gets circular, the golfer is continually changing his force along that path from nearly straight down the path early, to toward the golfer by the time of impact.
Homer Kelley saw this move in the best ball strikers and likened it to "pulling an arrow out a quiver."
Tom Tomesello taught this move to Davis Love Jr. who later taught it to his son DLIII. It was the subject of a feature article in Golf Digest and it still a big part of Davis' swing.
So, I am referencing something that the scientists and the theorists both knew existed.
The "away from your right ear" is obviously just a general location, but that FORCE ALONG THE HAND PATH HAS TO come from somewhere.
I invented a drill a long time ago that teaches this basic movement. I called it "The Fiddle Drill."
Video of me doing the drill is in quite a few places on the 'net, but I did a pic to show the basic idea for this post.
Simply, you are holding the club with your first two fingers and your thumb—in order to have super flexible "wrists"—putting the club on your right shoulder and learning two movements you are going to eventually blend.
The first is the fiddle. Using the shaft as your violinist's bow, you move the club back and forth along your right shoulder—parallel to the ground-ish—by bending your arms toward the shoulder and the straightening them away from your shoulder.
The second movement is the downswing pivot.
So, when you do them together you get a nice tangential to the hand path movement that creates some initial lag, and the golfer sees that down by the ball the club will eventually "line up."
For the sake of this post and my last quoted paragraph above, the golfer is applying force along the shaft "away from the left ear" by pivoting and by straightening their right arm early.
How early?
In these three PGA Tour player AMM right arm graphs provided by Tyler Ferell, one of them does it right away. One keeps it bent for about a tenth of a second, one adds bend about that long.
Then, all three of them massively, quickly, violently, straighten the dog doo-doo out of their right arms toward impact.
It is my contention that the golfer is trying to straighten the arm from the top, away from them, right away, early in the downswing, and depending on their rotational force from their pelvis and torso, actually straighten it massively at different places within a half of a tenth of a second differently.
