Position No. 9

  

Your Golf Swing Should Be A Two Wall Swing

     Mental images, the pictures you draw in your mind, let your muscles know what needs to be done when you make a golf swing. In this way, what you see on your mental screen helps you to understand what you’re trying to do. An image that I often use involves the following:  Picture a horse and rider moving away from a wall with one end of a 60 foot coil of rope tied to the saddle and the other end anchored securely to the wall. The horse gains speed and the rope rapidly uncoils until, in a bone jarring tug, the rope goes taught and the horse stops dead in its tracks. As you can imagine, the rider is flung [released] from the saddle, continuing alone in the direction that he and his horse were traveling only a fraction of a second before.

     Now reverse the situation so that our horse and rider are approaching a six foot wall at full gallop and just as they get to the wall, the horse stops dead. Once again our helpless rider continues on alone as he's thrown over the wall.

     In the first image the wall represents your right leg, in the second the wall is your left leg. The rider is your clubhead and his separation from the horse causes the release of your clubhead through the hitting zone. Model a player like Dustin Johnson

 

Johnson’s legs are in perfect opposition; the right resists the left and vice versa. You could fit a       small pony between them

     

     At first exaggerate the move by taking some swings where it feels like your right heel stays on the ground until it’s pulled off by your body turning up and into your follow-through. Feel as if, for a fraction of a second, you’re sitting on your right knee to start the downswing.  But there are two things to watch out for:  Take care to keep both knees flexed and make sure you transfer your weight to your left hip. What you want is to let your weight empty into your left hip joint while keeping your right heel down

        This is the result of a correct two wall swing i.e. the butt of the club points at the middle of her pelvis and both arms are straight with the toe of the club pointing skyward. She’s run her right side over a resisting left side.

Position #8

Position: Both Arms Straight

 There is only one time in the golf swing where both arms are straight and that occurs just after impact when the shaft is parallel to the target line. As you pose in the mirror this is what you should see: The right shoulder is under the chin, the spine reaches its maximum tilt away from the target and the left shoulder is even with the left ear. Almost all the weight is on the front leg with your head rotated so you look over the ball as it leaves.  The back heel is off the ground and beginning to turn up onto the toe, but is still on its inner rim.

 

Sans excess rotation of his forearms, Lee Westwood has the toe toward the sky 

Nick Watney demonstrates full extension of arms caused by momentum [MO] and non-manipulation. He’s not trying to ‘do anything’ during impact so MO will be his friend.

The guiding theme here is to allow momentum to straighten both arms; by doing so you minimize the destructive force of manipulation. This position is instructive even though the ball is gone because it testifies to either excellence or malfeasance at impact – get the swing right here and excellence reverberates back through impact.

Studies show that the average rate of rotation of a PGA Tour players lead forearm/wrist at impact is 2000 degrees/second a rate that allows the toe of the club to point toward the sky when both arms are straight. [see photo] This position is a signal that the correct amount of forearm rotation has occurred -- if the toe of the club points other than this something is wrong.