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Golf Books Have Misled Me

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Toggs

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I think I've been the victim of overdoing the "hold the angle of the wrist cock for as long as possible" thought in the downswing. Many of the books I've read emphasize that idea, but can't it be overdone? If you hold it till your hands are hip high on the downswing, you've now got less distance and time to let the clubhead speed up so it's square at the ball. Jack Nicklaus has said "let the angle release all the way from the top as long as you transfer your weight to your left side." Look at slow motion swings of Nicklaus and Snead in particular. They look like they are releasing from the moment they swing down, not holding that angle. I think I've been holding myself back for a long time with the delayed release.
 
Any book telling you to consciously "hold" the angle of your wrists during the downswing is a book you ought to throw away immediately. Totally bad advice. That may be a fine thing to do during swing drills or specific practice exercises but not while actually playing golf.
 
 
lag is a byproduct of sequencing. imho it should not be anything that is an active focus or intention.
 
McLovin said:
lag is a byproduct of sequencing. imho it should not be anything that is an active focus or intention.
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I'd add; except JUST in practice, so you can gain the feel but don't dwell on it.

If you have a "death" grip on the club, it's probably not gonna happen.
 
How about this image below that I posted on another forum? Does this offer a more dynamic visualisation of how your left and right hands apply forces to the golf grip in the early downswing? Note something called the PP1 force which is a term used in 'The Golfing Machine' by Homer Kelley . This image below is not from that book but a possible way to create clubhead speed while 'NOT' trying to hold lag. MH is the 'Mid-Hand Point' (ie. the middle of both hands gripping the club).

If you apply a push force with your right hand in the way I've shown in the image below , that will tend to 'prevent' an early release without actively trying to 'hold' the lag angle and relaxing it until later in the downswing. If you do try and use the 'hold' method you will need to time the relaxation perfectly.

But beware, too much 'yellow arrow' force will cause an early release of the lag angle. If you do this properly you should be able to feel the release freewheeling naturally at around P5.5 (ie. 3rd image of Rory McIlroy below).


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Toggs said:
I think I've been the victim of overdoing the "hold the angle of the wrist cock for as long as possible" thought in the downswing. Many of the books I've read emphasize that idea, but can't it be overdone? If you hold it till your hands are hip high on the downswing, you've now got less distance and time to let the clubhead speed up so it's square at the ball. Jack Nicklaus has said "let the angle release all the way from the top as long as you transfer your weight to your left side." Look at slow motion swings of Nicklaus and Snead in particular. They look like they are releasing from the moment they swing down, not holding that angle. I think I've been holding myself back for a long time with the delayed release.
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probably so for us hacks. but if you rotate enough to close/square that club in that little space, it creates the speed everyone craves.
 
You should get an instructor to look and see whether you've got the club face sufficiently closed. As @McLovin said, lag is a byproduct of a proper sequence, not something you consciously hold. If your club is sufficiently closed, your brain realizes you're not going to hit the ball right and allows you to swing from the inside maintaining the angle, and to rotate to square the face. But if your club is too open, you'll throw your upper body at it and release early to keep from hitting the ball miles right (aka dump all your lag).
 
As a side point, although there’s obviously some value in looking at classic swings like Nicklaus and Snead, don’t go back too far because golf swings were different back then because of the technique that was required to get the ball up in the air with the technology (or lack thereof) they had.
 
I do what my instructor says and we don't talk about lag. I don't worry about it.
 
It is so much easier to ignore clubhead lag than it is to explain the micro and macro movements that are essential to holding lag. Any sensible person who has this knowledge would keep it to themselves to avoid the glazed looks in people's eyes.
 
razaar said:
It is so much easier to ignore clubhead lag than it is to explain the micro and macro movements that are essential to holding lag. Any sensible person who has this knowledge would keep it to themselves to avoid the glazed looks in people's eyes.
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So true. Unfortunately, some people like to flex with their knowledge of the golf swing and in a real world context, knowing the minutiae of golf swing mechanics is surprisingly useless.
 
razaar said:
It is so much easier to ignore clubhead lag than it is to explain the micro and macro movements that are essential to holding lag. Any sensible person who has this knowledge would keep it to themselves to avoid the glazed looks in people's eyes.
Click to expand...
I've only met one The Golfing Machine "true believer" before. It was during my first year of playing golf and of course I'd never heard of TGM and thought maybe this guy knew something worth listening to. Or at least I thought that until the first time I talked to him for more than a few minutes.

It was a guy who hung out at the driving range near my house where I'd go to practice in the evenings. I was a total beginner and had no idea what I was doing, this guy seemed to hit it pretty good and had a nice looking swing. So I let him give me a few tips.

Then one evening he found out I had an engineering background so he thought I might like to talk about "the theory behind the perfect golf swing" or something like that. He starts riffing on P-this and accumulator that, scribbling little diagrams and arrows on the back of a scorecard. Even being a total noob I was like, "OMG, this guy is off the deep end".

I started practicing when this guy wasn't around because he would have eventually driven me crazy. Some time later I talked to a friend who was a golf pro and he had actually met the guy. Dude had showed up for golf lessons and then spent the whole time trying to "educate" the pro on the finer points of TGM and said he was going to quit his day job and become a golf teacher just as soon as he could find enough students to earn a living from. Guess he was trying to recruit me there on the driving range in those evening bull-sessions.
 
Homer Kelley's TGM book is useful in some ways and is more a reference guide to different types of swing patterns. I assume HK knew the physics of a golf swing was way too complicated for many readers so he developed power accumulators as a pragmatic explanation. I sometimes use the TGM terminology as a short hand version to explain a movement in the golf swing but now we have 'inverse dynamics' and high-tech systems with real measured data to try and explain what is happening in golfers swings. A lot of it is still a mystery because no-one has been able to develop an accurate way to measure forces/torques applied by each hand on the clubs grip.

The problem with inverse dynamics is you have to understand some physics/maths and also some useful clubshaft characteristics , whereas TGM is based on qualitative concepts and some physics (but not entirely accurate).
 
DaveGolfer15 said:
So true. Unfortunately, some people like to flex with their knowledge of the golf swing and in a real world context, knowing the minutiae of golf swing mechanics is surprisingly useless.
Click to expand...

Yet minutiae stuff (right or wrong) is used by many golf instructors/teachers to sell an idea or product . If you are unable to discern the integrity of their claims you will end up following people into blind alleys forever (and wasting a lot of money too).
 
My lag is what it is. Although sufficient, like every other amateur it could be better......I think.

When I was taking lessons, my instructor told me that my lag would take care of itself, as long as I did other things in my swing correct.

I can remember reading tid bits about holding the lag as long as possible to creat more club head speed at ball impact. This was one of those written pieces of info I ignored. Every golf book I have ever read, except for Penick's writings always had something that needed to be ignored. Even the newer publications are not 100% useful to every golfer....imho.
 
WLG1952 said:
My lag is what it is. Although sufficient, like every other amateur it could be better......I think.

When I was taking lessons, my instructor told me that my lag would take care of itself, as long as I did other things in my swing correct.

I can remember reading tid bits about holding the lag as long as possible to creat more club head speed at ball impact. This was one of those written pieces of info I ignored. Every golf book I have ever read, except for Penick's writings always had something that needed to be ignored. Even the newer publications are not 100% useful to every golfer....imho.
Click to expand...

Same here , I was reading this article by Dave Tutelman and ,because he's a well respected golf scientist, was attempting to do this pitch trail elbow over trail hip move (to hold the lag angle) but it caused more problems than fixed . But when I looked at Dr Sasho MacKenzie's inverse dynamic graphs , this move was unlikely to occur.

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This is not mere speculation. Kelvin Miyahira has been looking at lag from a biomechanics viewpoint rather than the physics approach I am comfortable with. By studying videos of golfers (including a lot of Tour players), he has identified a number of "micro-moves" that encourage the retention of clubhead lag. Two of the important micro-moves are left arm extension and a right elbow tucked down in front of the body through almost the entire downswing. That is exactly the diagram we show here:
  • The extended left arm is a pushing force at the butt of the grip.
  • Tucking the right elbow prevents it from extending, "shortening" the right arm. Do this assertively and not just passively, and the right hand is pulling the grip.
The net result is a negative torque, one that prevents the release of the lag until inertial forces are irresistible in releasing the clubhead. Kelvin's observation is consistent with physics theory in this regard.

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But if you look at the 3D guys Athletic Motion Golf , the opposite seems to be happening . The right arm is not shortening but extending in the downswing , so what gives?

 
Monte Scheinblum has a lot of YouTube and IG videos and a whole video series about the idea of intentionally "casting" the club from the top. There are also some videos you can find from the early 2000s from Duval and Tiger talking about how they are trying to release their hands as soon as possible from the top of the swing. Monte's perspective is that it's basically impossible for your brain to consciously hold the angle of the wrist and get in the right positions. Seeing a static image or a slow mo of the pros can make it seem like they are really holding it off, but watching in real time it seems a lot more likely they are releasing from the top in the proper sequence. I really seem to notice this in Tony Finau's swing.
 
Proper wrist angle and release is a byproduct of everything else being correct. If you do all of those other things correctly, the wrist angle will take care of itself.
 
The only thing that matters is impact and repeatability. Face to path relation and it happening over and over is it. The rest is glamor or ego on how far you hit it.
 
Right, there's no need to hold anything in a golf swing, ever. There are other thoughts that can help keep the lead wrist flat at impact, with the correct shaft lean.

Justin Rose is an advocate of holding the lag with irons, and he's a pretty good ball-striker, but I doubt he's really holding anything, he's just using his body and turn to achieve the correct attack.
 
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