Summary:
If the club is moved away from the target at transition and the golfer "closes the gap" and lets the hands come back up and in prior to impact and then COMBINES THAT with a good pivot, then lag and a FLW will happen WITHOUT THE GOLFER TRYING TO DO IT. And then once impact happens it doen't matter what you do with the left wrist.
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1) Soften the left arm a bit
2) From the top move hands (think in terms of the club as well) away from the target
3) Close the gap...align the shaft
4) Gasp in amazement
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Six ideas to lining up the club for impact:
1. You are trying to scrape the ball off of the turf with a de-lofted club. With a Driver, you are trying to hit up with a de-lofted club.
2. To have the club coming in to the ball not so downward (or upward), the clubhead needs to be low to the ground well pre-impact.
3. The hands ideally should reach their lowest point well before impact. Somewhere near the right leg or under the "bowtie." The distance of the clubhead to the left wrist gets longer near impact, that is why you can have the hands moving up, and the clubhead moving down. But, you can also assist this action with the upward pull of your left shoulder and hands (from the shoulder socket and elbow). The hands will also be moving IN past their low point.
4. There is a point between the hands on the grip of the club we call the "coupling point." This point rotating around the full club Center of Gravity (which is off of the club, about an inch out and somewhat down for the club's balance point) is of upmost importance in studying the golf swing. Early in the downswing, getting the CP to stay inside the FCCoG is accomplish by and outward away from the target hand path. All hand paths from the top should be outward and away from the target. The width and direction of that path, and the FCCoG is VERY important.
5. The CPP (Coupling Point Path) should to be constrained to an arc that is optimal for lined-up impact, and the correct bottom vector of the D-Plane. Never move you hands outside of this arc. Don't ever direct them at a point anywhere NEAR the target line.
6. This Coupling Point is what the club should rotate around in the perpendicular plane for "release." When it does is optional, but will influence all of the above.
Closing the gap
Q. What exactly does "close the gap" refer to? A. The clubhead has alot more traveling to do than the hands. Get it started early and close that gap. In other words, start releasing from the top. A. The gap between the sweetspot and the ball.
The intent of "handle draggers" was to hold off the release and have forward shaft lean in an attempt to snap release which supposedly produced an optimal strike. I think what Jacobs is saying is that a golfer's intent should be to line up the clubhead with the hands right at the ball, and that is what produces the optimal strike.
Hips, hands, and club head is still the correct sequence but to sequence it correctly you've still gotta close the gap in order to line it up which is what Michael's video was about.
The golfer has very little time from the start down to impact and into finish, there is a huge gap to cover from the club head to ball and a much smaller gap for the body parts. THE CRUX IS THE ACCELERATION RATE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE HANDS AND THE HEAD OF THE CLUB. The poorly timed golfer is moving the hands and club head at a similar rate
Role of hips:
If you start down with the hips you basically become a captive of your own good swing.
Once the hips take the lead you're not going to be able to release too fast or too much provided your lower body action is solid in positioning the shoulders, arms and wrists in a position to do their business.
Let the swing "recruit the body".
In my view, it is impossible to "release" too early with the hands, wrists, and arms so long as the legs and hips have worked ahead of them and the left hand holds onto the club firmly. I think I actually said the following: "When I move my legs and left side correctly starting down, I can hit as hard as I like from the top of the swing--really throw the club head into the ball with everything I've got. So long as my left hand stays in control of the club, I'll hit good shots. In fact, that's just how I hit my biggest drives."
Jones wrote that he was always focused on a lateral then rotary movement of the left hip and his right elbow returning to his side.
You can't start unhinging the wrists too soon in the downswing - as long as your weight has shifted onto your front foot
Force Across the Shaft - Clinically known as TANGENTIAL FORCE:
Clubhead Lag Pressure point is a DETRIMENT
Lag Pressure Ideology - A WELL TIMED HIGH END PLAYER IS REPORTING NO FORCE ACROSS THE CLUB in the final stages of the downswing. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment was used by the USGA and Universities to measure all forces and torques on the club, and FORCE ACROSS THE CLUB was ABSENT in the final stages as all the force was "NORMAL" or towards the golfer.
18 Handicap - 7.8 % of total tangential force still present at impact
13 Handicap - 3.8 % of total tangential force still present at contact
5 Handicap - 6.7% of total tangential force still present at contact (but does not hit a straight ball)
Professional Player: 0% of total Tangential Force present at impact
To achieve no FATS: First you pull in the direction of the club (refer Hand direction at top of backswing), then you do a good push-pull with your hands—making sure that the radius is in the ground, then yank up on the grip as hard as you can.
Pull Back, Run and Jump (the jump helps with no FATS):
"Pull Back" is the amount the left shoulder, left hip, and left knee MOVE AWAY from address.
"Run Up" is the move FROM the "Pull Back"....and how CLOSE it gets to the left foot, and how far the radius is temporarily buried in the ground, along with the FORCE of the "Run Up."
The "Jump" is how far you can get the left shoulder, left hip, and left knee to MOVE AWAY the end of the "Run Up." Plus, how fast and how hard it goes. And how SHORT the radius gets.
The hula hoop analogy: If the bottom of your swing radius is the bottom of a hula hoop then when you get in the Run Up position, if you swung from that position without the jump up, you would stick the hula hoop/swing swing radius and the club way into the ground. The jump up moves the hula hoop up so you aren't on a path that would hypothetically take a 5 inch deep divot.
Brian's epiphany: no one TALKS ABOUT how the radius need to be IN THE GROUND SIGNIFICANTLY around release point, and then YANKED out of the ground by "the JUMP."
Hands lowpoint
The hands reach the lowest point of their arc before the ball is contacted. And, this being the case, they then continue both upwards and inwards. But the club continues downwards.
The feeling I get when doing this is a VERY wide downswing that FEELS like your swinging UP into impact
Bottom out hands in the downswing back by right thigh and continue the hands from that point up and in
The forward hands handle drag is a disaster when the golfer goes down and out trying to match their hand low point to their club head low point.
Hand direction at top of backswing
Hands should do nothing conscious at the start of the downswing.
To push the hands farther from the body at the start of the downswing is the feel which will produce a wider downswing arc.
In order for the butt of the club to come up and in on a circle. The circle has to be started early. All the way from the top of the backswing.
Pros start releasing as soon as they start down.
Of all the lines of direction made available by the ability of the arms arms hands at the top to move wherever they wish, that from the butt end of the rubber grip straight down to the ball is the favorite of millions. It is as destructive as a dozen other equally erroneous lines of directions, all of which carry the hands and clubhead to the front of the player too early. Assuming that the backswing has been completed to the best of the player's ability, the direction in which the hands must be guided is exactly that in which the end of the rubber grip is pointing when at the top of the backswing. There must be no conscious effort, only guidance in the direction indicated by the end of the grip. It should certainly not be pointing at the ball and for the first couple of inches will not necessarily be pointing in the downward direction. On no account must the butt end be thrown from the top down along a direct line to the ball or anything approaching it.''
The hands should NEVER go to the ball PERIOD.
Hands go away from the target at the top
The hands should NEVER be directed at the plane line. NEVER.
I visualize casting a fishing rod behind me. With a little assistance from the pivot it is much easier to square up at impact.
Just push the club back where it came from while moving forward.
It is an out away from the target hand path that will help many
The motion of the "coupling point/butt of club" away from the "target" at the start of the downswing is primarily a motion due to the initial unwind of the right shoulder.
The right arm is attached to the hands which DO NOT EVER EVER go to the plane line.
Bobby Jones, On Golf: "The proper start down from the top position I have described is in the direction in which the grip end of the shaft is pointing".
If left arm is not slightly bent then you have "nowhere to go" from the top.
First move is a lengthwise move of the hands/handle, and not a move of the clubhead
Lag
Lag is the angle of the shaft to a straight line from the left shoulder to the hands at impact
Jack William Nicklaus was right about not trying to hold the lag
Lag is the RESULT of a proper "release."
Lag is something we "see" and try to incorporate. What is seen and what is felt are two different things. Lusting after the appearance of "lag" has wasted many a golfers time.
TRYING to lag the club, have a "snap release", or hold your left wrist flat is NOT the way to create lag
Interesting Quotes (Misc)
Stand facing any good golfer and watch the space between his hands and right shoulder. You will see it widen like lightning.
Weight shift is nothing more than a reaction and counter-balance to the swinging clubhead and some attempt to help time the line up of the club
The great fault in the average golfer's conception of his stroke is that he considers the shaft of the club a means of transmitting actual physical force to the ball, whereas it is in reality merely the means of imparting velocity to the club head"
