HANDS THRU IMPACT

[OLIVER1]

Just looking to see what forum members tink about the following...
If you are making some pretty good body motions through the golf swing and your hands don't operate properly through the impact zone - let's say for sake of argument, a foot before, and a foot after impact - relative to the body motions established, would that be enough to send the whole shot down the toilet?
I guess an easier way of saying this is that you can maybe save poor body motions with a timely waft of the hands at impact, but is the converse true whereby poor handwork through impact can undermine all that preceeded it?
Just interested in some thoughts, and, by the way, I've said it once and I'll say it again: This forum is absurdly good and Brian and all the other lads who are qualified should be applauded to the nth.

 

[natep]

IMO the hands are the most important part of the body as far as the golf swing goes. I think they can ruin or make every swing.

 

[Kevin Shields]

Hands trump everything IMO

 

[rafared]

Not meaning to hijack the thread but how would you guys go about training your hands correctly?
This is my first post having read the forum for a while and bought COFF and SDP online.
I play off 5.5 and feel I make a fairly good pass at it but my ballflight with my irons in
particular isnt as good as it should be. My poor shots tend to be slight push fades which can lack power
or flip hooks, which although powerfull enough, always finish well left of target.
I have also noticed recently that some divots are curved left at the end which is something Ive never seen before.

 

[kc8kir]

COFF is excellent for training good hand position. My problem is I can't execute it well with anything above a 7 iron, or with my normal irons (DG X1.0 Shafts). Makes me wonder if I am indeed playing too stiff of shafts for my swing and pivot.

Hitting solid punch shots with COFF feels amazing if you have never done it before. Addictive is probably the better description!

 

[Bill Miracle]

Hands trump everything IMO

That's what SHE said!

 

[ScottRob]

rafared,

I can relate to your ball flight patterns. Sounds like you have an underplane tendency. I tend to stand the handle up and lose the tush line towards the ball. An idea that is helping with this is "tumble." My hand path needs to get waaay left. I have a little drill that has helped me feel where my hands need to be. I go to the top of my backswing with my hands gripping the club between the head and grip (on the steel.) I tumble the club down. The idea is not to have the part that is "sticking out" i.e. the grip end hit my body. In order to do that everything has to go way left. When I do this real time with a ball, I hit two types of shots 1) blistered dead straight 2) blistered with a slight pull fade, a bit lower. Hope that makes sense.

 

[rafared]

rafared,

I can relate to your ball flight patterns. Sounds like you have an underplane tendency. I tend to stand the handle up and lose the tush line towards the ball. An idea that is helping with this is "tumble." My hand path needs to get waaay left. I have a little drill that has helped me feel where my hands need to be. I go to the top of my backswing with my hands gripping the club between the head and grip (on the steel.) I tumble the club down. The idea is not to have the part that is "sticking out" i.e. the grip end hit my body. In order to do that everything has to go way left. When I do this real time with a ball, I hit two types of shots 1) blistered dead straight 2) blistered with a slight pull fade, a bit lower. Hope that makes sense.

Hi ScottRob,
Thanks for taking the time to read my post and reply, much appreciated. I will try that drill and see how it goes.
When you say missing your body with the grip end I assume you mean allowing the grip end to pass the left (front) side of your body as you turn to your finish?

 

[GPM1985]

I guess an easier way of saying this is that you can maybe save poor body motions with a timely waft of the hands at impact, but is the converse true whereby poor handwork through impact can undermine all that preceeded it?

I don't think the club can be consciously controlled within the interval you specified (one foot before and after impact). Any saving move with the hands at the bottom of the swing is probably a response to some quirk at the top.

Your post makes me wonder - to what extent are the hands just along for the ride through impact? I ask this because it seems impossible to stop the club at the ball on a full swing. I'm no physics buff, but my intuition is that by the time the club is approaching the ball it has attained such an amount of inertia that the hands are basically passive. Going off of this, it would follow that everything needs to be squared away long before impact, maybe just before the club is vertical for the last time before impact.

 

[dbl]

Oliver your question wasn't 100% clear to me, certainly as there are more than just the case you mention and it's converse.


Case....Body....Hands.....Q1.......................Q2
----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.........Bad.....ok............can hands save?..can hands ruin?
2.........ok.......ok............can hands ruin?...can body ruin?
3.........ok.......Bad..........can body save?....can body ruin?

So it seems to me you asked about case 1-q1 and case 2-q1

My answers are
1-q1 yes
1-q2 yes (make push into a bad hook)
2-q1 yes
2-q2 yes
3-q1 sometimes (divert pull to fade, etc)
3-q2 sometimes (divert hook to pull, but knife edge here since the hands are so predominant for initial direction)

 

[finncox]

Hi ScottRob,
Thanks for taking the time to read my post and reply, much appreciated. I will try that drill and see how it goes.
When you say missing your body with the grip end I assume you mean allowing the grip end to pass the left (front) side of your body as you turn to your finish?

Please correct me if I'm wrong, ScottRob, but aren't you meaning to miss the right side of your body as you put the club "back on your right hip" (assuming you're right handed), a la Brian's youtube videos re: UnderPlane and VSP, as well as the end of his Golf Instructor search video?

Is that the drill to which you were referring? If not, then completely ignore this, and I'm sorry for any confusion this might have caused.

 

[ScottRob]

If I grip the club on the shaft halfway up between the grip and the head (from say the start of the transition position) and start to tumble the clubhead towards the ball the grip end of the club is going to hit my stomach, or there abouts, unless I continue to turn my hips. The way I look at it (this could be a serious seems as if!) is that the position of my left hip at address occupies the hole in space through which I want my hands to travel. Keep tumbling and keep clearing the left hip and the grip end will not touch you. Brian's drill works great to get the sense of how stinking left the hands and the clubhead moves.

I understand that what I just said is subjective and consequently may be of little value to others. But on the off chance that it may help a fellow "submariner" like myself I have sent it out. Now, if someone thinks that it will irrevocably ruin my swing...please do tell!

 

[Todd Dugan]

The ball has no idea what you "looked" like through impact. Since the wrists directly affect the movement and position of the clubhead and clubface at impact, then yes, the hands can completely ruin an otherwise great body motion. Nicklaus said that you can't release too early as long as you move to your left side. I've seen plenty of examples in my teaching which disprove this as an absolute.

 

[ScottRob]

do you think the release that Nicklaus describes is sweetspot tumble? If that be the case is that not a given for ALL good motions? (including reverse tumble!)

 

[Todd Dugan]

do you think the release that Nicklaus describes is sweetspot tumble? If that be the case is that not a given for ALL good motions? (including reverse tumble!)

"Tumble" is rotating your lead upper arm, which "tumbles" the clubshaft "over" and onto a more leftward plane. The "release" is the unhinging of the angle between the clubshaft and the lead arm. And that's what Nicklaus and Tiger mean when they use the term "release". Two different moves.

 

[ScottRob]

I see. Thanks.