Brandon sent me some pictures taken this week now that he’s back swinging after an injury, and I really liked his positions.
I forgot to ask him, but I think Brandon took the sequences of his swing with a digital camera that takes high-speed shots but not video. The unfortunate thing is that with his swing speed, the camera missed his impact positions in both sequences.
There is a move in the golf swing that instructors talk about a lot in some legendary players, the “squat” into the transition from the top of the back swing to the down swing weight shift.
Sam Snead is often pointed to as an example of how that squat made his swing so powerful.
I’ve been working with our friend Torben aka kidcharlemagne on some issues he’s been having with his swing. While he is still struggling with the “casting” in his down swing, I wanted to show a comparison between his swing a few months ago and this week.
When I looked at the clip from this week, I was astounded. What an improvement on the area we worked on! Namely, the left side weight shift and stopping the lunging to the target with the upper body and head.
I’m surprised it took me this long to think of it, but I decided yesterday to turn my Casio digital camera upside down to counter-act the effect of distortion of bottom-down digital storage on fast-moving objects such as golf clubs at or near impact.
It is not as easy as it seems without a flexible tripod, which I don’t have. But I was able to get the camera to sit upside down with a little fidgeting and propping on the tripod’s flat top, and I got a couple of slo-mo shots of myself hitting driver, to see what it would look like.
I don’t like to say things about peoples’ physical futures, because it can sound like I’m rooting for bad things to happen.
I blogged about Rory McIlroy, for example, back in ’10 when he began to get more television time, and I predicted back problems based on his swing. Sure enough, less than a year later, he was on the disabled list with back problems. I happen to like Rory, and I did then, so it had nothing to do with “hating” on a player, as some people think one is doing if one has anything remotely critical to say about “their guy.”
Those of you who have followed the Smash Golf Blog before the DJ Watts Golf blog know why I called the golf swing videos I made “MCS.”
For those who don’t, it was because the swing was based on Mike Austin’s swing technique, but wasn’t something that only Mike Austin could perform.
I got an email last evening from a gentleman that is the kind of email I would love to get from everyone who tries the Austin/MCS principles.
I have been meaning to do this lately, but I kept forgetting to. I had made an observation on a slo-mo sequence of Jamie Sadlowski’s swing a couple of years ago on the Smash Golf blog.
I wrongly concluded that he was decelerating into the ball because his club shaft appeared to be flexing forward before impact, instead of bowed as it would be at the midway point, and someone pointed out that it was actually an optical illusion created by the camera due to how digital cameras record and store moving images.
I’m going to be busy this weekend with Mother’s Day stuff and a little bit of golf, it’s way too nice to be inside blogging the next couple of days, so I thought I’d leave an open thread here for people to leave their thoughts on whatever they wish (golf-related, of course).
I’m throwing in a clip that some might remember, from four years ago, around the time I began to look at Mike Austin’s swing but before I’d begun to implement any of his theoretical stuff.
Everyone knows by now what I think of the swing mechanics Tiger Woods is currently using.
I won’t go into the details again because I have done so already, but this clip of Tiger in today’s Players Championship shows him again going left – missing left twice on the same hole, the par-5 9th (which was his 18th hole for the round).
I have found a new Fundamentals Trifecta adjustment that I will be introducing in the MCS HD video later this spring (which, again, everyone with MCS 2.0 will be able to get as a free upgrade if they want it) – making the address stance more like Mike Austin’s than I have it currently.
I have been looking for ways to tighten my swing for playing purposes rather than just swing away for speed and distance, and I found it while looking at a down-the-line shot of MA.
Mike Austin enthusiasts and regular DJ Watts Golf blog followers will already know Jaacob Bowden, one of the last golf teaching pros to have actually met Mike Austin (and who became a long-drive champion under Austin’s student Dan Shauger).
That’s Jaacob (right) in the inset picture with Phil Reed (Austin’s biographer) and the man himself, around the time Phil was working on his book.
I just made a new little clip of Jimmy Thomson as he was shown in the movie “Swing With Bing” Crosby back in the days of black and white.
I still find it amazing that no one ever mentions him when it comes to power swings and long driving prowess. He was a much longer driver than just about anyone out there back then, and it wasn’t like he was a duffer. The man could play.
