Ever since someone coined the phrase, “the dog wags the tail, not the tail the dog” with reference to the golf swing, golfers have gone to ridiculous lengths to move their bodies in a big-muscle movement, which, they say, prevents small-muscle flips and yips.

Now here’s the thing. Say the dog has to swish a tiny fly off the end of his tail, would he still move his entire body just to get rid of one tiny fly? The chip and putt shots being made with grotesque wind and unwind or turn and return or rock-the-shoulders movements, barely keep the club face moving along the target line for long enough to connect the bottom, center of the ball! Whatever happened to the simple back-and-through movement of a couple of decades ago? Everytime the golfer’s body does a stand-and-turn followthrough past impact, for a chip or pitch shot, the golfer risks missing ball-center is both the vertical and horizontal planes.

The short-game section of this website is therefore called ‘bottomline’. It is completely minimalist. It is best to always use the bare minimum movement which is essential for a particular shot to be pulled off. While, at the same time, making sure any joint bending and twisting which MUST happen happens in that joint’s correct plane of movement.

(a simpel example of ‘plane of movement’ is if your elbow faces behind you at the end of a pitch-shot backswing, it can never reroute the club back correctly in time for correct impact. That is simply because the elbow is designed to straighten effortlessly only if it points down towards the ground at the top of the backswing).