Diary of PGA Seniors’ Championship by Kitchenaid in St Louis
Off-course diary today – the sand-storm quantities of pollen will do anyone in.
A case-study of one of the ‘poor things’ (ie. most of the Seniors at the 2013 Seniors’ Championship)
In one’s college days, any movement that involved a big up and down element, was compared to ‘bouncing up and down like a loo seat at a mixed party’.
And that is the farcical level to which the golf swing has sunk. Current ‘thinkers’ in the game either disregard or actively require, the left side of the body – the left trunk (for the right handed golfer) to drop below the right during the backswing. How does that make sense? If the right side must be lower at address (just because the right hand is placed below the left) and once again at impact, what sense does it make to let it rise during the backswing?
So, given that people do make this move, what next? During the downswing, they must first drop the right side (which involves re-positioning 24 actively moving vertebrae!) so that the right arm can become fairly straight at the elbow, then further raise the left side, so that the bent right wrist can straighten!
Now our ‘poor’ Seniors (who have lost strength, rotary speed, neuro-muscular co-ordination and thus that elusive thing we call ‘timing’ in golf), are unable to bounce up and down so much and so fast. So, after they raise the right side during the backswing, their right side drops down just enough to straighten the right arm, but does not allow further left side lift to straighten the right wrist too. Hence all the ‘shrunken’ positions of impact which can be seen in the Diary entry of Day 2 below.
That is the reason the Seniors’ have lost zip and oomph to their ball contact. If the left side is unable to ultimately lift to straighten the right wrist, the club is unable to bow out and truly compress the ball by connecting it below its equator.
Their loss of ability to be ‘loo seats’ is ALSO the reason they suffer from so much injury.
Dropping the left side down/raising the right side during the backswing, makes the left knee and ankle bend, both of which must straighten up abruptly as the body tries to rotate during the downswing. Hence back and lower limb – hip, knee, maybe ankle – injury.
At the same time, raising the right side during the backswing allows the right shoulder, elbow, forearm and wrist to get into all sorts of awkward positions. Hence upper-limb injury, of both sides but especially left.
See Curtis Stange’s swing as a case-in-point:
Backswing left side drop allows awkward right upper-limb positions. Now he must try to straighten his right elbow on a plane it was not designed to straighten on! No wonder he wears a black armband – maybe it signifies the death of perfect golf!
If the right arm were to be positioned correctly (and many intuitively good teachers try to make that happen), his elbow would unbend correctly, and he’d have less chance for elbow injury.
However, attending to only one joint to attempt an injury-free swing IS NOT ENOUGH. ALL the major joints of the body must be positioned appropriately at the top of the backswing so that they can WORK TOGETHER to create the most efficient downswing the human body is capable of making, based on it’s design. ONLY the Minimalist Golf Swing System positions ALL the joints correctly for the full-swing, pitch/bunker, chip and putt strokes.
That means, with the MGSS, the ‘loo seat’ has one less up-and-down movement to make (just level and then one final ‘up’ of left side to induce ball-compression regardless of lost strength, speed, vitality, whatever)!
