From the Spring of 2004
Any comments for the Perfect Pivot for the Soft Draw? Or is it still just perfect?
Perfect Pivot - Part 1: The Backswing by Brian Manzella
The thing that makes poor golfers look like poor golfers, is a poor pivot. Even the ‘untrained’ eye can see the larger and slower movements of the golfer’s body and whether or not a particular golfer’s action looks correct. Like watching a figure skater, the viewer rarely looks at the faster moving components like the skater’s feet and blades, but can see every unbalanced herk or jerk of a poorly executed move and identify the ‘obvious’ grace of a champion.
In golf, most spectators would have a hard time discerning the difference between the delayed release of Jeff Sluman, or the much less delayed version employed by Tom Watson. It is much easier to spot the neat and tidy pivot of a Steve Elkington vs. the seemingly off-balance contortions of Fredrik Jacobson.
Sitting in the stands at the 2000 PGA Championship at Valhalla in Louisville, Kentucky with my teacher, world-renown instructor Ben Doyle, I overheard several spectators’ attempts at swing analysis. Almost all made me shake my head like a wise old man listening to pre-teen age boys talk about women. Except one. This African-American man, who sounded in earlier overheard conversation to be fairly new to the game, was telling his first-time golf watching pal why he thought Tiger Woods was the best player on the range. I listened on the edge of my chair. He said, pointing to the PGA Tour emblem on the side of an equipment truck, “Tiger looks more like the logo.” He meant like the golfer’s silhouette on the famous PGA Tour logo who has held his finish with his torso tilted away from the target all these years. He was right. Tiger did look more like the logo.
Torso tilt, or axis tilt, is one of the most important elements of a perfect pivot, but is only one of many. The motion of feet, knees, hips and shoulders all play important roles in the Pivot. Master these movements and great golf is much more likely to be within your grasp. Do a poor job with your pivot and you will fight your hands, arms and club the rest of your golfing life like a kid that doesn’t want to leave the toy department. And just like the kid will do to you, the poor pivot will make you look bad too.
The first step is a good grip and set-up like we have learned in previous AutoSuccess articles (month #1 and month#2). Next is getting the concept of an effective pivot right in your head. Simply stated, you want to ‘pivot’ around your spine on the backswing and then tilt so that when you pivot around it on the downswing, the force from that pivot-through motion will guide and power the club on the correct track to, and through, the ball.
The first mistake is trying to keep your head perfectly still. While it can be done to produce an effective motion, the fact that the spine is attached to the back of the head and torso, makes it impractical to do so. The golfer who tries to keep their head still more often than not tilts their torso incorrectly toward the target on the backswing (PIC 1).
This motion makes getting the correct unwinding and tilting on downswing, along with the ideal arm and hand movements, next to impossible.
The spot that should remain stationary is the base of the neck. This ‘spot’ can stay still until the club is two-thirds of the way to the finish of the swing. A spot in the mid-back should also stay near the same position as it occupied at address on the backswing. To learn to do this, have someone stand on the target side of you and ‘play the piano’ so-to-speak, on your spine while you make faux backswings without a club. They should lightly rest the fingers of their left hand along your upper back to the base of the neck and also have the right hand in the mid-back area. As you make the correct backswing pivot their fingers should stay in contact with nearly the same place on your vertebrae. (PIC 2)
Most golfers will lean their torsos toward the target while they turn back and the ‘piano’ hands will race to the right side of their backs early in their practice backswing efforts (PIC 3).
When the backswing is done correctly, the head will move slightly to the golfers right from its address position.
Since the torso is seated on the hips, the hip’s movement during the swing is all-important. Pop golf instruction focuses on restricting the hip’s movement on the backswing to create torque between the upper body and lower body. This restriction’s first commandment is to keep the right knee completely immobile on the backswing. While making such a minimal hip turn and its corresponding anchoring of the right leg can contribute to a good backswing pivot, to do so requires superb flexibility and an arm and hand motion that works in concert with this variation.
A far better solution is a free turn of the hips and a reduction in the flex of the right leg on the backswing. The golfer should feel like the first thing that moves on the backswing is the right hip, pulling the rest of the body and the arms-hands-club unit along with it. This sharp hip turn should be accompanied by the right thigh and right knee moving in the same direction-----away from the target line. This will reduce the flex in the right leg without changing the angle of the leg as viewed from the face-on view of the golfer. Interestingly, this loss of this angle by so many poor players a couple of generations ago, was the reason that the ‘keep the right knee stable’ school of thought got started in the first place.
The golfer needs to make absolutely sure that the base of the spine does not move toward the target during this sharp hip turn process. To check whether your lower spine is ‘reversing’ toward the target, try this easy drill: Rest a club against the base of your spine, behind you. Using the shadow cast by either the sun or another light source, watch on the ground in straight ahead in front of you to see if you can execute your backswing hip turn without the resting shaft moving at all. You should think of this shaft as an extension of your spine that connects with the ground and allows you to pivot around it. Most golfer’s ‘shaft shadow’ will move at its apex, toward the target. It will feel like quite a shift to the right while the sharp turn is occurring for the proper alignments to occur. A flat right foot throughout this motion is very important, and will restrict too much movement from occurring.
These hip and torso movements that create an ‘around the spine’ backswing pivot, will produce a certain look from the golfer’s face-on view. The upper body will look like it is leaning to the right, lining up the left shoulder and the right hip.
This very desirable position can be practiced also by placing a club across your chest from your left shoulder to your right hip. You can hold it in place with your left hand and make your ‘air’ backswing with your right arm only. The crossing-guard-like ‘stripe’ of the diagonally placed club when view from straight on (mirror practice works best), should ‘line up’ by the time the backswing pivot is complete (PIC 4).
From this position, the downswing is a much easier creation, and the ball-striking benefits are worth every second of practice time. Next month we will Pivot though impact, to the finish of a professional looking motion.
Perfect Pivot Part 2 - The Downswing
________________________________________
If you made a perfect backswing pivot, like the one we detailed in last month’s article Perfect Pivot Part 1 and shown below,
and you simply un-wound your torso on the same axis that you rotated about on this backswing, you would make a very ineffective body motion (picture below).
Yet this very notion of unwinding on the same axis is what most golfers do and believe it or not, what most ‘name’ instructors teach (picture below).
This literally “misguided” procedure will create a force that will not be focused on the ball and for most players, cause an ‘over-the-top’, off-plane start to the downswing which can only be saved by an equally off-plane force with the arms in the opposing direction.
Whew!
How about we just learn to “Do It Right.”?
The primary reason we should try to make a backswing like in the first Picture, is to get the right shoulder in a ‘deep’ enough location to reach a plane that it can travel straight down to and though impact, giving both guidance and power to the arms, hands and club. This down-plane force will give the golfer their best chance at maximum distance and accuracy.
As the golfer rotates around his spine on the backswing, his weight is ‘shifted’ from centered at address toward the right foot at the top of the backswing. This is due to the fact that the spine is 'behind' the golfer's torso and not because the golfer moved his weight to the right.
However, it is very important to note, that you should NOT be able to pose this position if you want to make functional, dynamic pivot. Because the right leg should not lose its address angle--even if the right knee is allowed to straighten some--the golfer should ‘fall’ back toward the left foot after getting to the top of the swing.
To experience this ‘counter-fall’/change-of-direction, make a backswing pivot with no club. At the end of the backswing motion allow the force of the rotation to assist you in lifting the left foot completely off of the ground (picture below).
If you can ‘balance’ yourself at the top with your foot off of the ground, you have ‘swayed’ off of the ball. In the proper application, the left foot should immediately ‘fall’ back to the ground, ‘starting’ the downswing.
From this into-the-ground fall, the golfer should feel as if he continues going down slightly, like a basketball player going down into the ground before springing up for a rebound. This will put the golfer into the highly desirable ‘sit-down’ position where he then can use the ground to both tilt his axis to the right and forcefully unwinding through the ball to the swivel.
Coming out of this sit-down position is where the golfer, by way of moving his hips toward the target while keeping his head back, tilts his axis to the right. The precise amount is determined by the movement of the shoulders. They must switch from their backswing plane, well above the ball, to a much steeper plane running just inside the ball.
This axis tilting is what puts the right shoulder in position to drive the arms, hands and club through the ball with power and precision. The left shoulder, being at the end of the golfer’s primary lever, moves in the near exact opposite direction the club is moving in during this delivery into the ball. As the club goes downward, outward and forward, the left shoulder is moving upward, inward and backward.
This motion continues deep into the downswing, with the axis is fully tilted and the unwind in full force, pulling the arms to release point.
correct axis tilt shown below at impact
This continues through just before impact, where the pivot slows to a near halt, transferring the speed of the pivot to the club. By the time the left arm has gone from across the chest to the right arm being thrown across the chest, the pivot is waiting for the force of the clubhead now pulling the chain in reverse of the order that occurred through impact.
Most golfers and teachers think that the pivot unwinds non-stop all the way to the finish. In my opinion, they are being 'faked-out' by slow eyes. It just looks that way.
To see what really happens, look at the picture below.
This is where I, or anyone else throwing a golf club out of a golf set-up, looks when they have released the club. Not only that, but this is the position that golf-club-thrower stays in, long after the club 'helicopters' in to the open field. In essence, this is the real end of the pivot. The reason that golfers finish like the picture below
is that the club 'pulls' the golfer the rest of the way around. This would happen to the club-thrower also, if the club he was tossing was super-glued to his hands.
Despite the finish position being a result of being a pulled-by-the-club station, Learning how it feels and looks when it happens correctly is very worthwhile.
At the finish the right foot has 'spun' to the very top of the toe and there should be no bend in the foot at all in this position (below picture).
The knees will touch as well as the legs above the knees and the right hip and right shoulder should be at least as close to the target as the left hip and shoulder. The shoulders should out-turn the hips a bit. The golfer was bent over at address and should remain in some of that primary tilt at the finish. The rearward axis tilt is difficult to maintain past the swivel, so a relaxing of this alignment is not only allowable, but in the case of golfers with back trouble, recommended.
To me the most important detail of the finish is the location of the golfer's weight. It should be directly over the left heel, because the left knee is dead straight at this point and the leg is situated over the heel.
Any comments for the Perfect Pivot for the Soft Draw? Or is it still just perfect?
Perfect Pivot - Part 1: The Backswing by Brian Manzella
The thing that makes poor golfers look like poor golfers, is a poor pivot. Even the ‘untrained’ eye can see the larger and slower movements of the golfer’s body and whether or not a particular golfer’s action looks correct. Like watching a figure skater, the viewer rarely looks at the faster moving components like the skater’s feet and blades, but can see every unbalanced herk or jerk of a poorly executed move and identify the ‘obvious’ grace of a champion.
In golf, most spectators would have a hard time discerning the difference between the delayed release of Jeff Sluman, or the much less delayed version employed by Tom Watson. It is much easier to spot the neat and tidy pivot of a Steve Elkington vs. the seemingly off-balance contortions of Fredrik Jacobson.
Sitting in the stands at the 2000 PGA Championship at Valhalla in Louisville, Kentucky with my teacher, world-renown instructor Ben Doyle, I overheard several spectators’ attempts at swing analysis. Almost all made me shake my head like a wise old man listening to pre-teen age boys talk about women. Except one. This African-American man, who sounded in earlier overheard conversation to be fairly new to the game, was telling his first-time golf watching pal why he thought Tiger Woods was the best player on the range. I listened on the edge of my chair. He said, pointing to the PGA Tour emblem on the side of an equipment truck, “Tiger looks more like the logo.” He meant like the golfer’s silhouette on the famous PGA Tour logo who has held his finish with his torso tilted away from the target all these years. He was right. Tiger did look more like the logo.
Torso tilt, or axis tilt, is one of the most important elements of a perfect pivot, but is only one of many. The motion of feet, knees, hips and shoulders all play important roles in the Pivot. Master these movements and great golf is much more likely to be within your grasp. Do a poor job with your pivot and you will fight your hands, arms and club the rest of your golfing life like a kid that doesn’t want to leave the toy department. And just like the kid will do to you, the poor pivot will make you look bad too.
The first step is a good grip and set-up like we have learned in previous AutoSuccess articles (month #1 and month#2). Next is getting the concept of an effective pivot right in your head. Simply stated, you want to ‘pivot’ around your spine on the backswing and then tilt so that when you pivot around it on the downswing, the force from that pivot-through motion will guide and power the club on the correct track to, and through, the ball.
The first mistake is trying to keep your head perfectly still. While it can be done to produce an effective motion, the fact that the spine is attached to the back of the head and torso, makes it impractical to do so. The golfer who tries to keep their head still more often than not tilts their torso incorrectly toward the target on the backswing (PIC 1).
This motion makes getting the correct unwinding and tilting on downswing, along with the ideal arm and hand movements, next to impossible.
The spot that should remain stationary is the base of the neck. This ‘spot’ can stay still until the club is two-thirds of the way to the finish of the swing. A spot in the mid-back should also stay near the same position as it occupied at address on the backswing. To learn to do this, have someone stand on the target side of you and ‘play the piano’ so-to-speak, on your spine while you make faux backswings without a club. They should lightly rest the fingers of their left hand along your upper back to the base of the neck and also have the right hand in the mid-back area. As you make the correct backswing pivot their fingers should stay in contact with nearly the same place on your vertebrae. (PIC 2)
Most golfers will lean their torsos toward the target while they turn back and the ‘piano’ hands will race to the right side of their backs early in their practice backswing efforts (PIC 3).
When the backswing is done correctly, the head will move slightly to the golfers right from its address position.
Since the torso is seated on the hips, the hip’s movement during the swing is all-important. Pop golf instruction focuses on restricting the hip’s movement on the backswing to create torque between the upper body and lower body. This restriction’s first commandment is to keep the right knee completely immobile on the backswing. While making such a minimal hip turn and its corresponding anchoring of the right leg can contribute to a good backswing pivot, to do so requires superb flexibility and an arm and hand motion that works in concert with this variation.
A far better solution is a free turn of the hips and a reduction in the flex of the right leg on the backswing. The golfer should feel like the first thing that moves on the backswing is the right hip, pulling the rest of the body and the arms-hands-club unit along with it. This sharp hip turn should be accompanied by the right thigh and right knee moving in the same direction-----away from the target line. This will reduce the flex in the right leg without changing the angle of the leg as viewed from the face-on view of the golfer. Interestingly, this loss of this angle by so many poor players a couple of generations ago, was the reason that the ‘keep the right knee stable’ school of thought got started in the first place.
The golfer needs to make absolutely sure that the base of the spine does not move toward the target during this sharp hip turn process. To check whether your lower spine is ‘reversing’ toward the target, try this easy drill: Rest a club against the base of your spine, behind you. Using the shadow cast by either the sun or another light source, watch on the ground in straight ahead in front of you to see if you can execute your backswing hip turn without the resting shaft moving at all. You should think of this shaft as an extension of your spine that connects with the ground and allows you to pivot around it. Most golfer’s ‘shaft shadow’ will move at its apex, toward the target. It will feel like quite a shift to the right while the sharp turn is occurring for the proper alignments to occur. A flat right foot throughout this motion is very important, and will restrict too much movement from occurring.
These hip and torso movements that create an ‘around the spine’ backswing pivot, will produce a certain look from the golfer’s face-on view. The upper body will look like it is leaning to the right, lining up the left shoulder and the right hip.
This very desirable position can be practiced also by placing a club across your chest from your left shoulder to your right hip. You can hold it in place with your left hand and make your ‘air’ backswing with your right arm only. The crossing-guard-like ‘stripe’ of the diagonally placed club when view from straight on (mirror practice works best), should ‘line up’ by the time the backswing pivot is complete (PIC 4).
From this position, the downswing is a much easier creation, and the ball-striking benefits are worth every second of practice time. Next month we will Pivot though impact, to the finish of a professional looking motion.
Perfect Pivot Part 2 - The Downswing
________________________________________
If you made a perfect backswing pivot, like the one we detailed in last month’s article Perfect Pivot Part 1 and shown below,
and you simply un-wound your torso on the same axis that you rotated about on this backswing, you would make a very ineffective body motion (picture below).
Yet this very notion of unwinding on the same axis is what most golfers do and believe it or not, what most ‘name’ instructors teach (picture below).
This literally “misguided” procedure will create a force that will not be focused on the ball and for most players, cause an ‘over-the-top’, off-plane start to the downswing which can only be saved by an equally off-plane force with the arms in the opposing direction.
Whew!
How about we just learn to “Do It Right.”?
The primary reason we should try to make a backswing like in the first Picture, is to get the right shoulder in a ‘deep’ enough location to reach a plane that it can travel straight down to and though impact, giving both guidance and power to the arms, hands and club. This down-plane force will give the golfer their best chance at maximum distance and accuracy.
As the golfer rotates around his spine on the backswing, his weight is ‘shifted’ from centered at address toward the right foot at the top of the backswing. This is due to the fact that the spine is 'behind' the golfer's torso and not because the golfer moved his weight to the right.
However, it is very important to note, that you should NOT be able to pose this position if you want to make functional, dynamic pivot. Because the right leg should not lose its address angle--even if the right knee is allowed to straighten some--the golfer should ‘fall’ back toward the left foot after getting to the top of the swing.
To experience this ‘counter-fall’/change-of-direction, make a backswing pivot with no club. At the end of the backswing motion allow the force of the rotation to assist you in lifting the left foot completely off of the ground (picture below).
If you can ‘balance’ yourself at the top with your foot off of the ground, you have ‘swayed’ off of the ball. In the proper application, the left foot should immediately ‘fall’ back to the ground, ‘starting’ the downswing.
From this into-the-ground fall, the golfer should feel as if he continues going down slightly, like a basketball player going down into the ground before springing up for a rebound. This will put the golfer into the highly desirable ‘sit-down’ position where he then can use the ground to both tilt his axis to the right and forcefully unwinding through the ball to the swivel.
Coming out of this sit-down position is where the golfer, by way of moving his hips toward the target while keeping his head back, tilts his axis to the right. The precise amount is determined by the movement of the shoulders. They must switch from their backswing plane, well above the ball, to a much steeper plane running just inside the ball.
This axis tilting is what puts the right shoulder in position to drive the arms, hands and club through the ball with power and precision. The left shoulder, being at the end of the golfer’s primary lever, moves in the near exact opposite direction the club is moving in during this delivery into the ball. As the club goes downward, outward and forward, the left shoulder is moving upward, inward and backward.
This motion continues deep into the downswing, with the axis is fully tilted and the unwind in full force, pulling the arms to release point.
correct axis tilt shown below at impact
This continues through just before impact, where the pivot slows to a near halt, transferring the speed of the pivot to the club. By the time the left arm has gone from across the chest to the right arm being thrown across the chest, the pivot is waiting for the force of the clubhead now pulling the chain in reverse of the order that occurred through impact.
Most golfers and teachers think that the pivot unwinds non-stop all the way to the finish. In my opinion, they are being 'faked-out' by slow eyes. It just looks that way.
To see what really happens, look at the picture below.
This is where I, or anyone else throwing a golf club out of a golf set-up, looks when they have released the club. Not only that, but this is the position that golf-club-thrower stays in, long after the club 'helicopters' in to the open field. In essence, this is the real end of the pivot. The reason that golfers finish like the picture below
is that the club 'pulls' the golfer the rest of the way around. This would happen to the club-thrower also, if the club he was tossing was super-glued to his hands.
Despite the finish position being a result of being a pulled-by-the-club station, Learning how it feels and looks when it happens correctly is very worthwhile.
At the finish the right foot has 'spun' to the very top of the toe and there should be no bend in the foot at all in this position (below picture).
The knees will touch as well as the legs above the knees and the right hip and right shoulder should be at least as close to the target as the left hip and shoulder. The shoulders should out-turn the hips a bit. The golfer was bent over at address and should remain in some of that primary tilt at the finish. The rearward axis tilt is difficult to maintain past the swivel, so a relaxing of this alignment is not only allowable, but in the case of golfers with back trouble, recommended.
To me the most important detail of the finish is the location of the golfer's weight. It should be directly over the left heel, because the left knee is dead straight at this point and the leg is situated over the heel.