The Ruthless Golf Project: Brian McGregor, Complete Series List

As promised, here's the complete listing of all the posts (in order). This will give Brian an easy way to look back over all the things we talked about, and maybe it'll help the rest of you with your games as well.

And I'll repeat this once more: The comments are always open. If you have a question about a particular post, just leave a comment on it. I'll find it and give you a response. (Hopefully a helpful one!)


The Ruthless Golf Project: Brian McGregor, Series 1 (Some Basics)

1. Introducing The Ruthless Golf Project: Brian McGregor
2. A Look at Brian's Grip
3. Fanning the Club Open on the Way Back
4. The Dreaded Chicken Wing of Death
5. Swinging in a Barrel
6. Feeling the Start of the Downswing

The Ruthless Golf Project: Brian McGregor, Series 2 (Leg & Hip Action)

1. Some Further Thoughts About Leg Action, Part 1
2. Some Further Thoughts About Leg Action, Part 2
3. Why Hip Action Matters
4. Doing the Bump
5. The "Feel Drill" Revisited
6. More About That Lead Leg

The Ruthless Golf Project: Brian McGregor, Series 3 (Hand & Arm Action)

1. Learning to Feel the Swing
2. The Full Motion Punch Shot
3. Why We Start with a Punch
4. That Fuzzy Feeling at the Top, Part 1
5. That Fuzzy Feeling at the Top, Part 2
6. Swing and Sweep
7. Tie It Together

Tie It Together

Ok, I've talked about the sequence of movements that start the downswing, the importance of the arms starting down just before you uncoil, and about feeling the pressure in your hands and wrists when the club reaches the end of its travel to the top of the swing.

Now let's tie it all together. Brian, this should answer most of your questions about what's happening at the change of direction and the first move down. I won't promise that it'll solve all your problems, but you need to understand what you're trying to do in order to find a way to do it consistently.

While replanting your right foot and starting that knee moving is the first move in the downswing (and remember, you'll have to determine how you feel that movement), you could argue that feeling the club's pressure against your wrists is the actual start of the downswing. As you become more sensitive to that pressure, you'll get to where you can anticipate it. That will allow you to choose when you start the downswing:

• If you want to make an approach shot to the green, where consistency of distance is important, you'll make the first move of your downswing just as you feel the pressure in your hands. This way, your wrists uncock in a fairly predictable and therefore consistent manner, and you can be pretty sure how far the ball is going to go.
• If you want to drive the ball as far as possible, you'll make the first move of your downswing just before you feel that pressure. That way, you'll be able to carry as much wrist cock as possible into the swing as long as you can. I don't care what you may hear, you don't "hold" your wrist cock; rather, wrist cock is delayed automatically if you start the club down at the right moment. However, because you're anticipating the pressure, there's guesswork involved; so you never know exactly when the wrists will fully uncock, and therefore you don't have any idea exactly how far the ball will go. That's why we only use this method when the exact distance isn't important.
  

Once you decide when you want to start down, you replant your right foot, the right knee starts to move, the hips turn slightly, and the arms drop a little. That's the sequence, but it happens so fast that you'll probably find it easier to think of it all as a single move. Once you are solidly into that move, then you uncoil and the swing happens really fast after that!

And with that, I'll call this the end of the Ruthless Golf Project: Brian McGregor post series. I'm going to do one more post just to put together a complete listing of all the post titles, complete with links, so individual posts are easier to find. As usual, though, the comments are always open; anybody (not just Brian) who has a question can add a comment to any post and I'll find it. Once I do, I'll do my best to give you a helpful answer.

I hope this series leaves you with a clear understanding of what happens during the swing and how to solve some of the most common swing problems.

Swing and Sweep

(PAY ATTENTION, RIGHTHANDERS! Normally I describe things as a righthander, and lefties have to transpose it. But Brian is a lefty and this is his project, so you righties will have to substitute “right” for “left” and vice versa. It will give you an appreciation for what lefties have to go through when they learn the game. But here’s a hint that will help: View any diagrams as if you were looking in a mirror.)

Brian asked me several weeks ago if there was a way to feel the resistance at the top of the swing as strongly as you can with the feel drill. I’m not sure anything could give you a feel that strong short of swinging a steel pipe; however, this post should help you learn to feel the club’s weight better.

A traditional method of learning about the golf swing involves a piece of twine with a weight on one end. Also traditional was the use of a penknife for that weight; I suppose it was something most people carried with them back then. Because you can’t force a weighted string to make a swinging motion by muscle alone, teachers used it to teach students what a true swinging motion feels like.

The drill actually has a lot of applications for learning the golf swing. I spent an entire chapter on it in my book Ruthless Putting, where I used it in tandem with a putter to teach distance control. In today’s post, although we won’t use a weighted string, I’m going to show you how a similar technique can help you learn to feel the change of direction. I call it the swing and sweep. You can use either a short broom, if you have one, or a wedge for this drill.

Take your normal grip on the wedge (or broom handle) and keep your hands, forearms, and shoulders as relaxed as possible without letting go of the club. You don’t have to ground the club and it doesn’t have to touch the floor at any point during the drill, so you should be able to hold it pretty lightly. What you want to do is swing the club back and forth, not letting your hands go higher than waist-high but allowing your shoulders to turn freely. The head of the club will probably go about shoulder-high at either end of this abbreviated swing. Just swing it back-and-forth like a pendulum, and pay attention to what you feel.

You’ll probably notice some unusual sensations, like how fast the clubhead seems to be moving. This is a surprise to most people; they think it’s going to move very slowly, but they end up moving their hands faster than anticipated in order to keep up… which causes the club to pick up even more speed. (I’m not saying it’s going to go so fast that it flies out of your hands, folks - only that it moves faster than you may expect.)

What I want you to focus on during this drill is the end of the backswing, where your hands stop but the clubhead is still moving. Try to feel the pressure on your wrists when the clubhead finally stops going back. This may or may not be easy for you, but keep trying. It’ll come. This pressure is not quite as strong as it is during a full swing, so if you can feel this, you shouldn’t have any trouble with the regular swing.

Since the swing is short and the club doesn’t have to hit the ground, you can probably find someplace to do this drill inside during the winter. You don’t have to spend a lot of time practicing, either; spending 30-60 seconds a couple of times a day would probably be considered working hard. But if you use it regularly for the next few months of cold weather, you should have developed a lot of sensitivity to your swing by spring.

That Fuzzy Feeling at the Top, Part 2

(PAY ATTENTION, RIGHTHANDERS! Normally I describe things as a righthander, and lefties have to transpose it. But Brian is a lefty and this is his project, so you righties will have to substitute “right” for “left” and vice versa. It will give you an appreciation for what lefties have to go through when they learn the game. But here’s a hint that will help: View any diagrams as if you were looking in a mirror.)

Yesterday was kind of a “theory” post, looking more at how you think about the change of direction. Today we’ll look at Brian’s other questions, which are more about the actions themselves:

• What should be the first action to trigger the downswing?
• I've read much in the past about the "bump" of the hips forward. Does the sensation of the door jamb drill amount to the "bump" and if so, should that be the first movement from the top?

First, the “bump” and the door jamb drill are the same thing - namely, a movement where the hips move toward the target during the downswing. After that, it gets a little complicated.

See, here’s the problem: Both questions are about the same thing. How do I start my downswing? Believe it or not, the answer is the same for everybody; it’s just that everybody feels the downswing differently, so it seems like there are a hundred different answers.

A number of things happen in sequence during the downswing:

1. If your right foot came off the ground at the top of the backswing, you replant that foot firmly on the ground, which starts your right knee moving. If your foot is still flat on the ground at the top, the knee move happens first.
2. The right knee begins to swing around as your hips turn ever-so-slightly to the right, which creates a very slight “bump-and-slide” to the right.
3. Your weight shifts from your left side to your replanted right foot. (It doesn’t really shift - that’s just how you perceive changes in muscle pressure - but this is an easy way for most people to understand it.)
4. Your arms pivot downward a little at the shoulder joints. (These first four items feel almost simultaneous, but they happen in this order.)

Now, this sequence of events causes two other sequences to happen simultaneously:

1. The right foot rolls onto its outside edge as the right knee continues to swing around and straighten slightly, which causes the right hip to move up and back. (This is the opening of the hip everybody talks about.) This, in turn, pulls the left hip around, which pulls the left leg up and around, and that makes the left foot roll and pivot up on the toe. (The left leg does actually push a little, and some players feel that push more than the pull on the right side.)
2. The arms continue to move downward as the upper body turns back to face the ball. The arms straighten and square the club as the wrists uncock. The momentum of the upper body causes it to continue turning through contact to face the target, and the momentum of the arms causes them to swing up and finish over the shoulders.

Of course, these two sequences are feeding on each other, each helping power each other. The hips and legs are pulling the upper body around, but the arms and club are making it easier and easier for the lower body to turn. (In fact, near the end of it all, the lower body is actually acting as a brake, slowing down the rotation of the upper body.)

Obviously, the first link in the chain is the right foot/right knee move, so that’s the move that starts the downswing. However - and this is VERY important - because all four of those actions I mentioned happen so quickly that they’re almost simultaneous, a player might feel ANY ONE OF THEM as the way the downswing starts. One teacher says it’s a weight shift to the right, another says it’s a bump-and-slide to the right, a third focuses on the slide, a fourth says you need to drop your shoulder, and still others might focus on the elbows. In the late 80s, I think it was Golf Magazine that ran a cover story on Davis Love III and his “power move,” which (I’m paraphrasing here) they described as pushing the hands away from the body at the start of the downswing to increase wrist cock. That's how Davis felt the combination of actions that started his downswing; Jim McLean’s “V-Gap” is almost exactly the same thing, yet it’s described in entirely different terms… and different feels.

That’s why so many players are confused, and why there are so many teachers apparently saying different things. And it’s why I call it the “fuzzy” feeling at the top; it’s hard to give a definitive answer to how it feels, because everyone’s different.

If you try the first four moves I mentioned above in slow motion, you’ll see how each one causes the next so quickly that they’re almost simultaneous. And you’ll see that they ALL have to happen when the swing starts; it’s simple physics. But which of these moves you FEEL when you start down is different from player to player, and THAT FEEL is what most players are referring to when they talk about the first move of the downswing.

So Brian, the answer is… the right foot/right knee move is the move that starts the downswing, but you may feel that move in any of several different ways. The starting move is the same for everybody, but the feel of that starting move is what differs… and only you can determine how it feels to you. What I’m trying to do is teach you how the moves are done, so you can do them and find out how they feel to you; then you can use that feel when you make your swing. The goal is to learn the correct mechanics, then identify how they feel to you so you can forget about mechanics on the course and just play golf by feel.

That Fuzzy Feeling at the Top, Part 1

(PAY ATTENTION, RIGHTHANDERS! Normally I describe things as a righthander, and lefties have to transpose it. But Brian is a lefty and this is his project, so you righties will have to substitute “right” for “left” and vice versa. It will give you an appreciation for what lefties have to go through when they learn the game. But here’s a hint that will help: View any diagrams as if you were looking in a mirror.)

Yesterday I promised to try and answer some of Brian’s other questions about timing and mechanics. Specifically, these are the questions he asked, from his comments on this post:

• What should be the first action to trigger the downswing?
• I've read much in the past about the "bump" of the hips forward. Does the sensation of the door jamb drill amount to the "bump" and if so, should that be the first movement from the top?
• Are the hands still going back as the hips open up? Hank Haney seems to believe that.
• Does the club ever stop on the backswing? (Actually, Brian never asked this question, but it’s more common way of asking the Haney question and we need to answer both to avoid confusion.)

I’ll answer the “theory” questions (the last two) today; I’ll answer the others tomorrow.

Does the club ever stop on the backswing? In a word, yes… unless you loop the club at the top. It makes sense if you think about it: The club is moving away from the ball, and it has to change direction to come back. Unless it loops (makes a U-turn) at the top, it’s going to have to stop at some point. BUT…

Are the hands still going back as the hips open up? Technically, yes… but for the majority of players, that knowledge won’t help them one single bit. Haney’s not the only one who teaches this; my hero Bobby Jones does as well. In fact, for one of his filmed lessons in the How to Break 90 series, they actually shot a high-speed sequence where you can see his hands continuing to make a backswing while his lower body clearly starts moving toward the target.

But here’s the rub: It is a HIGH-SPEED sequence. When you shoot a golf swing at hundreds, even thousands of frames-per-second (fps), you can mislead people badly. (For those of you who don’t know, the standard film speed of a movie is 24 fps, and TV is 30 fps.) For example, Discovery Channel’s show Time Warp, which shoots high-speed footage of events like a balloon popping, uses cameras capable of 325,000 fps… which would take three hours to replay at normal speed, according to this New York Times article. It can take several tenths of a second for a person to blink an eye, yet a tenth of a second at this speed would take over 18 minutes to play back. That can distort how you perceive the action.

Most golf swings aren’t shot at that high a speed; CBS Sports’ Swing Vision claims only 40,000 fps and typically uses 10,000 fps. (You can read about it here.) Obviously, CBS doesn’t show us all the frames they recorded when they replay the swing for us. Still, the replay takes around eight seconds, which is far longer than the original. We can now analyze movements in the golf swing that happen too quickly for us to control directly! And that can distort our perceptions, because we can’t accurately equate the movement we see in the slow motion replay to the actual time required by the original move.

For example, I can detect when this lag happens in my swing, but not soon enough to do anything about it. If I were to say “Now!” when the lag happened, it would be over long before the word could get out. (And “lag” is the word generally used to describe this disconnection in the change of direction.)

From a practical standpoint, most players will swing better if they simply act as though there is no lag. Lag happens automatically when you swing properly… so just let it. Rather than trying to control the change of direction, which happens too quickly and feels a bit “fuzzy” because… well, remember the whip image I suggested in the Practice BRAINge? The pulse runs up the length of the whip, affecting each portion at a slightly different time, but too quickly for each portion to be specifically identified. Since the pulse will affect every portion on its own, without any interference from us, it’s easier to just think about cracking the whip…

And instead of trying to control the lag, it’s much easier to just think about smacking the ball. As I said in the image, starting the downswing corresponds to moving the whip handle. So tomorrow, we’ll look at how we start down.

Why We Start with a Punch

(PAY ATTENTION, RIGHTHANDERS! Normally I describe things as a righthander, and lefties have to transpose it. But Brian is a lefty and this is his project, so you righties will have to substitute “right” for “left” and vice versa. It will give you an appreciation for what lefties have to go through when they learn the game. But here’s a hint that will help: View any diagrams as if you were looking in a mirror.)

So how did you do with yesterday’s little puzzle? Did you figure out how a punch shot can teach us to use our shoulders properly? I gave you a hint: Wrists are shock absorbers.

If you swing to the top of your backswing with no wrist cock and then cock your wrists, you’ll feel all kinds of movement and flexes. You won’t feel them just in your wrists, but through all the joints and muscles in your arms and shoulders. Each of these movements represents a place where your swing can be altered a little, mostly without your notice. A little twist here, a slight flex there… and suddenly joints are bending in slightly different planes, and the club is being pulled a bit to the side rather than straight.

By keeping the wrists uncocked with the punch shot, we eliminate a lot of little things that can alter our shot; that allows us to focus on one particular aspect of our swing.

In this case, the punch allows us to focus on our swing path.

Brian, you said you’re having problems with pulling your shots, which means you have an outside-to-inside swing path. During your downswing, the club swings out over your target line and then cuts across it on the followthrough; some teachers call this “coming over the top.” The shots start to your right and often curve farther right - a duck hook. (Some of you may pull the shot but leave the clubface open; you end up hitting a pull slice.) Some of this was caused by overactive legs, which we worked on “toning down” in the last series of posts. Now we can work directly on your swing path.

Because the punch doesn’t allow the joints and muscles to cover things up as much, we can track down the cause of this problem much quicker. I suspect you’re starting your shoulders too soon in the downswing. We could call this lunging or jerking or twisting or any number of other things, but it simply means you start uncoiling your upper body a little faster than you should. If you do that with the punch shot, you’re going to hit a huge pull because there’s no way for the joints and muscles to absorb any of the movement.

How do you stop this problem? Again, the punch makes it easier to learn the correct move. Because you can’t use all those joints and muscles as much, you’ll have to let your arms drop a little before your shoulders start to turn. (“Drop” is the correct word here; your shoulder joints are the only place movement can happen with the punch shot, and tensing your shoulder muscles in an effort to generate power will just cause them to hurt.) Your arms start to drop as your lower body begins the downswing; a split second later, your upper body begins to turn in reaction to your lower body. (In other words, your lower body will start pulling your upper body around.) That may sound tricky, but it actually feels pretty natural once you do it a few times. You may need to do it slowly at first to get used to it, especially if you’ve been jerking those shoulders around to start the downswing.

Brian, even though the golf courses are closed up there, you might try swinging a club in your backyard to get the feel of the punch shot. That will give you a basis for tomorrow's post, when I’ll try to answer some of the other questions you had about timing and mechanics.

The Full Motion Punch Shot

(PAY ATTENTION, RIGHTHANDERS! Normally I describe things as a righthander, and lefties have to transpose it. But Brian is a lefty and this is his project, so you righties will have to substitute “right” for “left” and vice versa. It will give you an appreciation for what lefties have to go through when they learn the game. But here’s a hint that will help: View any diagrams as if you were looking in a mirror.)

We’ve talked about how to use the lower body. Now we need to learn how to use the upper body―the arms and hands―so that it syncs up with the lower body and doesn’t sabotage all our good work so far.

Ironically, the best way to learn how to use the arms and hands properly is to learn how not to use them at all. Specifically, I’m going to start you off with what I call a punch shot.

As I’ve said before, I approach the golf swing backwards from most teachers. I believe you start with the putting stroke; then you gradually stretch it out longer and longer, making small adjustments to complement the longer stroke, until you have a full swing. If you check the posts in the Basic Principles of the Game category, you’ll find that what I call a punch shot is essentially a chip shot that has been lengthened by the addition of a full upper body coil. There’s no wrist cock to the swing; in a full-motion punch shot, the club shaft remains in the same relationship to the arms that it does at setup, or at the halfway point of a one-piece takeaway.

In essence, at the top of a full punch, the club shaft sticks straight up in the air.

Why would you want to learn a swing like this? There are some tactical uses that I’ll cover at some future point, but its most important use right now is that it teaches us to use our shoulders properly. I’ll cover the shot itself tomorrow, but here’s a chance for you to use your mind to help you improve…

See if you can figure out why the punch shot teaches us how to use our shoulders. Here’s a hint: Wrists are shock absorbers.

Check your answer tomorrow. Good luck!

Learning to Feel the Swing

(PAY ATTENTION, RIGHTHANDERS! Normally I describe things as a righthander, and lefties have to transpose it. But Brian is a lefty and this is his project, so you righties will have to substitute “right” for “left” and vice versa. It will give you an appreciation for what lefties have to go through when they learn the game. But here’s a hint that will help: View any diagrams as if you were looking in a mirror.)

This will be the final series of Project Brian… at least until next year, since Brian says the courses in Canada have mostly closed for the season. This series will deal with arm and hand motion, now that we’ve finished discussing leg action.

Well, almost finished. There was one question Brian asked about leg action that I forgot to answer, but it will serve as a suitable introduction to this series.

Brian asked me What move triggers the downswing? Is opening the front knee the way I start the downswing? These questions were mixed in with other technical questions, but they all boil down to a single problem.

In essence, he’s asking how I feel my swing.

This question is at the heart of why we have so many different teachers and teaching methods. Each of us feels a swing differently, and until you can identify how the proper moves feel to you, individually, you’re going to struggle. Every teacher is seeking a set of feelings that can be taught to a student, and there are any number of ways that a swing can be felt; hence, we get a lot of teachers and methods.

The real problem is that the way we can best feel a swing may not be obvious at first. Brian wanted to know how I feel that leg movement I dissected during the last series, and it’s a good example of how feel works in a swing. It took me some time to find the right words, Brian, but here goes, described as if I were lefthanded:

When I start my downswing, I feel as if I am driving the outside edge of my right foot straight down into the ground.

Not what you expected, is it? In some ways it should make sense; as I move to the top of my backswing, my right foot rolls up onto its inner edge, and my heel barely rises off the ground. When I start down, I replant my right foot and it rolls to the outside, which means my knee swings around and my hip opens up as it swings back.

But, you may ask, why don’t I feel that I’m rolling my foot rather than driving its edge straight down into the ground?

This is why feel is so difficult to teach. You see, my typical error is to slide my hips too much. (Imagine a bump drill where I shatter the door jamb as my hip penetrates six inches into the wall!) Because of that, I need a feel that helps me avoid my error. Since my error is lateral, I have adopted a feel that is vertical. When I use it, I don’t slide nearly as much; in my case, it actually helps me open my hip better.

So you see, feel isn’t just about the motion you want; it’s also about the motion you DON’T want. The ideal feel not only encourages the correct move, but it also discourages the wrong move. No matter who teaches you, no matter what method you use, ultimately you have to determine what your swing feels like.

And when it comes to hand and arm motion, this is doubly true. That’s what we’ll look at next.

More About That Lead Leg

(PAY ATTENTION, RIGHTHANDERS! Normally I describe things as a righthander, and lefties have to transpose it. But Brian is a lefty and this is his project, so you righties will have to substitute “right” for “left” and vice versa. It will give you an appreciation for what lefties have to go through when they learn the game. But here’s a hint that will help: View any diagrams as if you were looking in a mirror.)

Yesterday I wrote about needing to “tone down” the leg action that starts your downswing, and about how it’s so easy to overdo the movement if you don’t. Today I want to look a bit closer at the action of the lead leg―the one that “opens up” on the downswing, as Brian put it.

The diagram below isn’t a perfect representation of what the lead leg does during the swing, but is close enough for you to get a good idea of how it should look. The position of the vertical dotted lines is consistent in each portion of the diagram, so you can see the relative changes. Think of those lines as the door jamb from the bump drill; you can use that door jamb to give you some tactile feedback about your position. By the way, that huge circle represents your hip, not a head!



At setup, both hips are balanced over the feet. That’s clear enough, right?

In the next picture, you’ve turned to the top of the backswing. The lead knee has moved forward a little, and the lead hip has moved forward and down. Bear in mind that the back hip has moved in the opposite direction (back and up), so you still feel balanced.

In the final picture, you’ve struck the ball and are moving into your finish position. Remember how I said the hip movement isn’t a “turn and slide” as you may have heard, but is more of a “back and across” move? Look closely at this picture. The lead knee has straightened considerably; see how it touches the dotted line (door jamb)? The lead hip has moved up and back, in keeping with the position I described in the bump post; the door jamb should touch your hip roughly halfway between the side seam of your jeans and the zipper.

And of course the back hip has moved forward and down, since your back knee is remains bent. (That was in the second leg action post. You should still feel balanced.

If it seems like I’m belaboring the point, I am. You simply MUST get your hip to turn on the downswing, not slide. It’s really important to get your leg action correct before you start working on the arm action, because the leg muscles are responsible for the larger movements; if the large movements are too big, the arms have to work too hard and you’ll develop complex timing problems. (Brian, can you say “twisting forearms”?)

I’m going to make this the last post of Series 2. This series ended up being totally devoted to leg action, and this seems like a good place to wrap it up. In these posts we’ve dealt with each leg separately, as well as with both together. Take some time to make sure you understand the concepts here, so you can get your lower body moving properly. I’ll devote Series 3 to arm action, and we’ll deal with Brian’s other questions then.

The “Feel Drill” Revisited

(PAY ATTENTION, RIGHTHANDERS! Normally I describe things as a righthander, and lefties have to transpose it. But Brian is a lefty and this is his project, so you righties will have to substitute “right” for “left” and vice versa. It will give you an appreciation for what lefties have to go through when they learn the game. But here’s a hint that will help: View any diagrams as if you were looking in a mirror.)

In Brian’s comments on “Feeling the Start of the Downswing” he wrote, “The door jamb drill really lets you feel the strength created by the turning of the front hip against the resistance of the back hand which is pressing against the door jamb - but what I can't get my head around is how to re-create that feeling in the swing, because there isn't really any resistance created by the arms at the top of the swing. How does one get that same feeling of resistance when only holding the club, and not an immovable object like the doorway?”

His confusion is understandable. Recreating the feel of that strong pull without the resistance of the jamb is nearly impossible, because you would need a club so heavy that it would wreck your back… if you could swing the club at all! The “feel drill” was meant to help you:

1. understand what the start down feels like, and
2. help you identify how your body feels when you start down properly.

Once you identify how the correct move feels to your body, you need to “tone it down a notch.” The door jamb drill is easy to feel simply because it is such a strength move; when you’re only using a club, the move is less violent. Toning it down is where so many players get messed up because we equate clubhead speed with the kind of physical effort that makes us grunt.

Most teachers these days say it’s better to start out swinging hard and then learn to control the resulting wild swing, so now everybody’s way too caught up in a power game. You may have heard it called “bomb and gouge”―hit it a mile into the rough, then gouge it out with a wedge. I try not to get too dogmatic about most teachings, but that one’s just plain wrong, no matter who’s teaching it. Length and accuracy are not mutually exclusive, so using power techniques that don’t make you accurate at the same time is just doing things the hard way. As a weekend player, you simply don’t have the time it takes to get good at that sort of game. (And it appears that most of the tour players don’t either, given how inconsistent most of them are.)

So, the answer to Brian’s question is “You have to make a mental adjustment. You don’t want the same feeling of resistance, because a club doesn’t weigh that much.”

Yes, Brian, there is resistance at the top of the swing. It’s the pressure your wrists feel when the movement of the club causes it to resist the change of direction. Once you stop trying so hard, your ability to feel this less dramatic amount of pressure on your wrists at the top of the swing will improve. I’ve already written some about feeling this pressure, in both the Single-Plane Loop and Deadhanded Approach Shot series listed in the sidebar, but I’ll be writing more posts about it (both in this series and in the future) simply because it’s the most important point in the swing… and yet it gets little or no attention.

So use the “feel drill” to discover how your body feels when it starts the club down properly, but remember that the actual swing isn’t nearly as stressful to your body. And since you don’t want to be tense when you swing, that’s a good thing.

Doing the Bump

(PAY ATTENTION, RIGHTHANDERS! Normally I describe things as a righthander, and lefties have to transpose it. But Brian is a lefty and this is his project, so you righties will have to substitute “right” for “left” and vice versa. It will give you an appreciation for what lefties have to go through when they learn the game. But here’s a hint that will help: View any diagrams as if you were looking in a mirror.)

“The Bump” is a swing image often used to help players learn proper hip motion. It comes from the idea of bumping your hip against a wall, not from a dance move. I have eliminated arms and shoulders from the following diagram, as they merely cluttered it up. You can imagine where the arms should be.



Wow. Impressive, isn’t it?

Don’t get me wrong, this is a good image to use… provided you perform the bump properly. As it is, most players don’t. Let me enlighten you about some finer points of the bump which are rarely emphasized.

First, I would prefer you to do the bump against a door jamb rather than a wall. Why? Because most walls have baseboards, which allow you an extra inch or so of movement. Many teachers talk about your hip sliding and bumping, but “bump” a jamb (again, not a dance move) and you’ll discover that there is no noticeable slide! From the top of your backswing, your hip will probably move less than six inches before bumping to an abrupt halt.

Try it on your own jamb. I bet you’ll be surprised how little side-to-side movement is really involved.

Now, if you’re paying attention, you’ll notice something else about the bump. For all the talk about moving toward the target, you’ll notice that the bump actually requires a more rotary motion; you need to move your hip back and across the jamb to get to a good finish position. In his comment Brian made mention of “opening” the hip; this is the move to which he is referring.

There’s one last thing worth noting about the bump. You’ll hear many teachers say that the downswing is started by dropping the shoulder. (You may remember that I wrote a post several weeks ago disagreeing with a Golf Digest article about this.) A proper bump prevents this from happening, as it doesn’t allow for much side-to-side movement during the downswing. In order for you to purposely drop your shoulder, your hips would need to slide toward the target more than the bump allows. (Just to be clear, the shoulder does drop slightly when the downswing starts, but this is a side-effect of a proper downswing move, not the cause.)

The bump is one of those images that everybody has heard of, but most don’t really know what it teaches. It teaches neither a slide toward the target nor a shoulder drop, but it does teach a much less active lower body than is popular today. The hips turn, but they don’t spin. In fact, if you do the bump properly, your hips will turn about 45 degrees past their position at setup. When I do this move in jeans, the jamb contacts my hip about halfway between the outer seam and the zipper. (And for reference, your shoulders will be almost in their setup position, with one shoulder slightly lower than the other. Your lead shoulder will NOT touch the jamb.)



If you find the bump to be a useful image for you, by all means use it. Just make sure you do it right.

Why Hip Action Matters

(PAY ATTENTION, RIGHTHANDERS! Normally I describe things as a righthander, and lefties have to transpose it. But Brian is a lefty and this is his project, so you righties will have to substitute “right” for “left” and vice versa. It will give you an appreciation for what lefties have to go through when they learn the game. But here’s a hint that will help: View any diagrams as if you were looking in a mirror.)

Brian left a comment on the last post of Series 1 that included a HUGE load of questions. (I don’t mind, as it gives me lots of new ideas for posts!) I had intended to talk about hip action today, but his questions made me realize that I should probably provide a little more background info before jumping into detail.

One question he asked was “What should be the first action to trigger the downswing?” That seems a good place to start.

Technically speaking, the swing always starts from the ground up. If you were to stand on a lazy Susan and try to swing your club, you’d find it nearly impossible to strike the ball. Any attempt to swing the club would cause your feet to spin in the opposite direction, because you need friction between your feet and the ground in order to make a swing.

However, none of your muscles work in isolation in a golf swing. You use your entire body to make a swing, so all the muscles are working at once as you move. But since the contact between your feet and the ground serves as an anchor point, and since you can’t make a swing without that contact, you could argue (as many teachers do) that the feet start the downswing.

Having acknowledged that, there really isn’t a specific move that begins the downswing. The “move down” is a complex combination of muscles all over your body acting in unison. When we talk about “starting the downswing,” what we’re referring to is the specific way that a given player feels that muscle activity. And for that given player, this overall movement is predominantly felt in a certain “part” of his or her body. This “part” can be different for different players. Sometimes, this “part” even changes from day-to-day for our hypothetical player; if you’ve ever heard a pro discuss his or her search for a “swing thought” that allows he or she to overcome a problem he or she is having, this is what they’re talking about.

As I told Brian in my reply, if everybody felt a golf swing in the same way, then we could all become expert golfers using a single golf instructional manual about the length of a child's picture book. Instead, we have hundreds of teachers, each with their own teaching method, and each teacher’s method is perfectly valid because there are so many different ways to feel a golf swing.

Now, because the hips are literally in the middle of this full body movement, the action of the hips almost always figures into this “feel” somehow. That has led to some interesting swing methods, like the “stack and tilt” (formerly used by Aaron Baddeley and Mike Weir), “Natural Golf” (a la Canadian legend Moe Norman) and the “Golf Machine” (used by Morgan Pressel). And it’s also led to the creation of some now-famous teaching images.

One of the most popular of these images is the “bump,” which Brian mentioned in his comments. I’ll discuss the rationale behind that image in the next post.

Some Further Thoughts about Leg Action, Part 2

(PAY ATTENTION, RIGHTHANDERS! Normally I describe things as a righthander, and lefties have to transpose it. But Brian is a lefty and this is his project, so you righties will have to substitute “right” for “left” and vice versa. It will give you an appreciation for what lefties have to go through when they learn the game. But here’s a hint that will help: View any diagrams as if you were looking in a mirror.)

Now, where did we leave off yesterday? Oh yes…

The back knee MUST remain flexed throughout the swing. As I said, even when you pull with the front leg, your upper body can still move forward enough to throw you off-balance. Because you set up with your spine tilted toward the ball, the back hip needs to rotate forward AND DOWN as your front leg pulls you through the shot. If you straighten your back knee on the downswing, you push the back hip upward instead, which throws your upper body toward the target and prevents you from getting that nice balanced finish everybody likes to have.

Yes, I know what you’re going to say… Gary Player used to advise students to “step through the shot,” which meant the upper body was moving forward so much that the back foot had to step in front of the pulling foot to keep you from taking a faceplant into the ground. Gary used to do it himself on occasion, and he was a pretty decent golfer, wasn’t he?

But the key words here are on occasion. This step-through isn’t the desired move so much as it’s the desired error. The most common alternative is a reverse-C, which causes most weekend golfers to hit a big slice. (It doesn’t help the old back much, either!) There have been a few good players who “did the C”―Johnny Miller being one of the most notable―but most of them didn’t enjoy long careers.

Here’s the difference, and it’s all about knee flex: The reverse-C causes the hips to slide too far forward, while the step-through causes the upper body to move too far forward. That’s because the back knee collapses in the reverse-C, while it straightens in the step-through. See the pattern?



In the proper move, the back knee doesn’t straighten much and it certainly doesn’t collapse; it feels more as if it is swiveling. It swings toward the ball as the club approaches the ball (which means your body weight moves from being centered over your back foot to being on the inside edge of it―think of a rolling motion), and then the back knee turns toward the target as the club moves to the followthrough position and the back foot pivots up onto its toes. Now you’re in the classic finish position, with your weight balanced on your front foot.

The movement of the back leg and knee is a reaction to the movement of the hips. It’s Principle 7 at work; the back leg is moving around because the hips pull it around, and the back foot rolls and pivots because that’s the way the hips are turning.

We’ll look at hip action more closely in the next post.

Some Further Thoughts about Leg Action, Part 1

(PAY ATTENTION, RIGHTHANDERS! Normally I describe things as a righthander, and lefties have to transpose it. But Brian is a lefty and this is his project, so you righties will have to substitute “right” for “left” and vice versa. It will give you an appreciation for what lefties have to go through when they learn the game. But here’s a hint that will help: View any diagrams as if you were looking in a mirror.)

Welcome back for the second season of Project Brian!

Having spent a few days working with the first posts in the Project Brian series, you should have learned a few things just by thinking about what you were doing. Today we’ll focus on those things as they relate to the action of the legs. I’m also experimenting with Brian’s suggestion: Your “front” leg is the one closest to your target, and your “back” leg is the one that’s farthest away. To help you get oriented, think about your “handedness”; for a righthander, your right leg is your back leg, and for a lefthander, your left leg is your back leg.

Many of you aren’t bending your knees enough. I’m sure a lot of you found that your legs were too straight, which interfered with a proper hip turn. You don’t need to do deep knee bends to have good leg action, but you need enough bend to get (and keep!) some flex in the knees throughout the swing.

The front leg pulls you through the swing. However, the wider your stance, the more you might feel the back leg pushing. This is logical, if you think about it for a moment. If your stance is wider, the back leg has to work harder to keep your body stable during the swing. But if you start to focus on pushing with the back leg, you’ll probably start sliding your hips forward rather than rotating them.

The back knee MUST remain flexed throughout the swing. Even when you pull with the front leg, you can find your upper body moving forward enough to throw you off-balance. This is because you're straightening your back leg as you swing. See, your setup position tilts your spine toward the ball, causing the back hip to rotate forward AND DOWN as your front leg pulls you through the shot. If you straighten that back knee on the downswing, you push the back hip upward, which throws your upper body toward the target and prevents you from getting that nice balanced finish everybody likes to have.

This is an important concept that isn’t explained very often. I’ll go into more detail in the next post.

Feeling the Start of the Downswing

(PAY ATTENTION, RIGHTHANDERS! Normally I describe things as a righthander, and lefties have to transpose it. But Brian is a lefty and this is his project, so you righties will have to substitute “right” for “left” and vice versa. It will give you an appreciation for what lefties have to go through when they learn the game. But here’s a hint that will help: View the diagrams as if you were looking in a mirror.)

Once you know how the lower body behaves―and the barrel drill from yesterday will teach you that―you’re faced with the more difficult problem of finding out exactly what that behavior feels like to you. This may be the biggest source of confusion in modern teaching, simply because many teachers have a predetermined idea about how it should feel… and that idea is based on their teaching theory. For example, if you’re teaching a lefthander that the left side should drive the downswing, you’re automatically going to describe the lower body action in terms of the left leg “driving” or “releasing through.”

But what if it doesn’t feel that way to everybody?

Here’s my “feel drill,” which I believe will help you identify how the downswing move feels to you. You don’t need a club to do this, so you can do it almost anywhere and as often as necessary until you determine just what you want to feel when you start down.



The setup is pretty simple. Find a door jamb and take your normal stance with your left heel about 6” from the jamb, then make a full coil with your upper body and place your left hand on the inside of the door jamb. It’s alright if your right heel needs to come off the ground when you coil.

Now, all you have to do is try to turn your shoulders back to your setup position. Resist with your left hand and pay attention to which muscles seem to be starting the downswing.

I bet most of you are going to be surprised. I thought the left leg would start the downswing with a push, but I felt the right leg pulling me through the swing. (I’m a rightie, of course, but that’s the “leftie explanation” of what I felt.)

In retrospect, it makes sense. It’s basic physics: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. I want the left shoulder to start pushing the club forward, so the right leg starts pulling the body around. That’s the most opposite motion available.

Knowing this is an important part of the puzzle, but it doesn’t give us the full answer to our question. Just what does that pulling motion feel like? Take a look at this diagram, drawn as if I were standing in front of you and facing the doorway:



As you can see, there are several aspects to this movement. The right foot is rolling over to the outside, toward the target, which could feel to you as if it’s digging into the ground. The right knee swings to the right, and it also straightens a little; you may feel one or the other, or both. The right hip moves back (some teachers call this “opening” the hip) and it also moves upward a little. Again, you may feel either or both.

You might feel any one or any combination of these actions. That’s the beauty of this drill: You can use it to help you identify just what combination you’re feeling.

For example, I feel my knee swinging out and causing my foot to roll. Because of this, I want to start my downswing by feeling that action. I don’t have to get technical and watch to see how much they move, or if one moves first, or anything like that; all I need to do is identify the feel of the movement, then… well, feel that when I start down. And if at any time my feel changes (which happens to golfers every now and then), I can just do the “feel drill” again to discover the new feel.

So, use the barrel drill to learn the proper mechanics of your lower body movement, then use the “feel drill” to determine how those mechanics feel to you. Once you do that, you can swing by feel, which is the Holy Grail of golf. You’ll know your mechanics are ok, and you can just focus on the shot you’re trying to make.

These last few posts should have provided enough material to keep everyone busy practicing this week, so I'm going to take a brief break from the series. That will also give you a few days to post comments and let me know if I covered things thoroughly enough. Consider this the first "season" of Project Brian; I'll continue with the second season next week.

Swinging in a Barrel

(PAY ATTENTION, RIGHTHANDERS! Normally I describe things as a righthander, and lefties have to transpose it. But Brian is a lefty and this is his project, so you righties will have to substitute “right” for “left” and vice versa. It will give you an appreciation for what lefties have to go through when they learn the game. But here’s a hint that will help: View the photos as if you were looking in a mirror.)

This post is the first of two intended to help Brian learn proper hip and leg movement. I think so many players are confused because too many teachers confuse mechanics and feel. Here’s my approach: Today we focus on mechanics, tomorrow on feel. It’s simpler that way.

Why? Because the best way to teach proper mechanics is by using drills that feel nothing like your actual swing. A drill usually isolates certain groups of muscles, while your whole body is involved in the feel of your swing. The drill allows you to focus on a single part of the movement; but when you work on feel, you always want to work on the total swing.

For lack of better terms, mechanics are components while feel is holistic. Got it?

Now for the drill. It’s an old one, but very effective. It’s called “swinging in a barrel.” Unlike the feel drill I’ll give you in the next post, this requires a club and room to swing, so you’ll need to go outside. (However, you don’t have to hit balls if you don’t want to, so you can do it in the backyard.) Let me give you a brief description―it’s really simple, so I haven’t included an illustration―and then I’ll tell you how it helps.

Stand with your feet just slightly wider than shoulder-width, then squat. You don’t have to do deep knee bends, but you want to bend your knees more than you would normally… much more, enough to make you about 5-6” shorter. Call it a half-squat.

Now, from this position, practice your golf swing. It’s that simple.

This drill does several things:

• It severely limits your hip movement, which will slow down those spinning hips and require you to use your hands and arms more. That means you have to “swing” the club rather than “hit” with it.
• Most people think more hip movement means more knee movement, but excess hip movement actually takes your knees out of the swing. The more your hips move, the straighter your knees get. Because you can’t use your hips as much in this drill, it forces you to use your knees a lot more. Specifically, your right knee will move toward the ball on the backswing while the left knee stabilizes you; then your left knee will move toward the ball on the downswing while your right knee returns to a stable position. It’s automatic; you can’t help it!
• Your feet will stay on the ground better. Because the hips are restrained and the knees move in more of a side-to-side motion rather than twisting and straightening, your feet will “roll” from one side to the other.
• The “rolling” motion of the knees and feet will allow the hips to turn without moving much from side-to-side. Result: More stability during the swing, because your body weight stays between your feet.
• As a bonus, it will also help you improve your ability to coil and maintain your spine angle.

I like this drill because it accomplishes so much with so little effort. Once you take your stance, it’s almost impossible to do it wrong, plus it teaches you just how little movement is required in order to get a full golf swing. Most weekend players have heard the pros say they need to use their whole body when they swing, but using your whole body is NOT the same as making violent lurches at the ball. This drill will help you tame those bad impulses quickly, because you can make a practice swing using this drill any time you need it, even during a round.

And Brian, I bet you won’t come “over-the-top” when you do this. You may uncock your wrists too early, which can cause you to pull shots, but that’s just a further indication that you haven’t been swinging the club properly. First things first―get rid of the excessive hip movement, then you can learn correct hand and arm action.

Working with this drill gives you a better idea of what good hip, leg, and foot action is like, but it doesn’t teach you how your body will feel when you move during a normal swing. In the next post, I’ll help you “feel” better about your swing.

The Dreaded Chicken Wing of Death

(PAY ATTENTION, RIGHTHANDERS! Normally I describe things as a righthander, and lefties have to transpose it. But Brian is a lefty and this is his project, so you righties will have to substitute “right” for “left” and vice versa. It will give you an appreciation for what lefties have to go through when they learn the game. But here’s a hint that will help: View the photos as if you were looking in a mirror.)

One thing that Brian mentioned is a persistent problem with a chicken wing. For those of you unfamiliar with this legendary creature, Brian has thoughtfully provided a picture of the “fowl” practice. (I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist.)



A chicken wing shows up at the end of your swing and can be caused by many things but, as a general rule, a chicken wing is a symptom rather than a cause. You end up in the wing position because you did something else wrong; that’s why attempts to “cure” the wing by doing drills such as holding a spare glove between your upper arm and chest never seem to result in a permanent fix.

If you want to get rid of your chicken wing, you’ve got to fix the real source of the problem.

A chicken wing is evidence that you aren’t swinging the club; rather, you’re trying to muscle the club through the point of contact. Poor foot and leg action can also contribute to the problem, because it’s hard to swing the club when your body is out of position.

When you chicken wing at impact, your elbow is pointed in the wrong direction. Grab a club and take up your address position; where does your elbow point? Bend your elbow if you aren’t sure. I bet a straight line from your wrist through your elbow points behind you, at a slight angle away from your body. Where does a chicken wing elbow point? Usually toward the hole.

That means your impact position is nowhere near your setup position. Es bad mojo, mon!

Remember the last post, the one about fanning the club open on the backswing? Take your setup again and just fan the clubface open. (You can do this inside, since you don’t have to swing the club.) Where is your elbow pointed? Toward the hole!

Brian, if you break the First Principle and rotate your forearms, you’re setting up for a chicken wing from the very start of the swing.

In addition, we tend to equate swing speed with expended effort, but that’s an incorrect assumption. Rotating your forearms puts your arm into a position where pulling the club feels normal and even correct to a lot of people. If you’re pulling the club rather than swinging it, you’re going to have to spin your shoulders to try and get the club back into position, and most people have to spin their hips in order to spin their shoulders. From this state of affairs, it’s hard to swing the club.

Here’s our plan of attack: I’m going to help you stop spinning your hips, which should help you stop spinning your shoulders. Once you accomplish that, it should feel much more natural to swing your arms… and that will, in turn, help eliminate that nasty chicken wing at the end. (Save those chicken wings for the 19th hole, where they belong!)

So next up… we tackle that nasty over-the-top move that plagues so many weekend players.

Fanning the Club Open on the Way Back

(PAY ATTENTION, RIGHTHANDERS! Normally I describe things as a righthander, and lefties have to transpose it. But Brian is a lefty and this is his project, so you righties will have to substitute “right” for “left” and vice versa. It will give you an appreciation for what lefties have to go through when they learn the game. But here’s a hint that will help: View the photos as if you were looking in a mirror.)

One problem Brian mentioned in our emails is that he fans the club open on the backswing and flips it shut on the downswing; this, combined with an over-the-top move, sometimes causes him to hit a duck hook. That over-the-top move should disappear when we deal with the rest of his swing, but I told him he can work on that other problem now. You’ll hear me say this over and over until I run it into the ground, but I can’t stress it enough:

The number one principle of good golf, whether you’re putting or driving or making any shot in-between, is that the clubface should remain square to the stroke path; the forearms should NOT rotate during the execution of the stroke.

This is non-negotiable! If you want to hit the ball a long way and do it accurately, you simply MUST follow this principle. The Deadhanded Approach Shot series listed in the sidebar has a simple drill with a drinking glass that will help you learn how it feels. You don’t even have to go to the golf course―you can do it inside, where it’s warm. (Specifically, the drill is in posts 2 and 3.) You don’t have to spend a lot of time on it, maybe a minute or so a day if you’re ambitious, and it’ll improve your game during the off-season.

For many of you, this one little drill will cure a multitude of ills. But am I finished? Oh no, not yet; let me give you two for the price of one.

When I had my lesson with Carl, I had the same problem (one of many!) that Brian has. Carl gave me a drill that helps you stop rotating your forearms. While you can use this drill during play, bear in mind that you probably won’t be hitting 300-yard drives with it. However, I’m only average height and weight, and I was able to routinely hit a 3-wood 230-240 yards off the tee using it, my driver around 250. (Admit it, some of you would pay for those drives!)

The drill uses an early wrist cock, which steals a little distance in exchange for an easy-to-feel forearm position check. But it’s very easy to describe and even easier to do:

When you take the club back, cock the club almost immediately. When your arms are parallel to the ground (halfway up to the top), you want to be sure the club shaft is pointing straight up in the air.

Yeah, I know this goes against everything you’ve heard about how important swing planes are, yaddy-yaddy-yah. But if you’ve been twisting your forearms on the backswing, your brain associates that twist with quiet forearms. This will teach you what non-twisting forearms really feel like.

And trust me, if you use this technique in a full swing, the movement of your upper body and the club’s weight will result in your club automatically following the correct plane… because you won’t be twisting it off the plane. Carl eliminated my banana ball in one lesson with this simple drill. At worst, I had a slight fade, which is a very nice shot to play on tight courses.

These two drills will help you learn to quiet your forearms on the backswing. Remember: Unwanted forearm action is the number one killer among weekend golfers today. But your donation of only $25 dollars a month can help us eradicate this terrible… well, you get the idea.

Of course, tomorrow is Limerick Monday, but the next post after that will tackle the delight of Buffalo that terrorizes many golfers… the chicken wing.

A Look at Brian’s Grip

(PAY ATTENTION, RIGHTHANDERS! Normally I describe things as a righthander, and lefties have to transpose it. But Brian is a lefty and this is his project, so you righties will have to substitute “right” for “left” and vice versa. It will give you an appreciation for what lefties have to go through when they learn the game. But here’s a hint that will help: View the photos as if you were looking in a mirror.)

I wanted to start by looking at Brian’s grip just because it’s so darn good! Here’s what Brian told me in an email:

One of the fixes was strengthening my grip which has really almost cured me of the slice. Now though, more often if I miss it's with the driver and it's a pull or straight duck hook.

Take a closer look at this grip:



This is what is called a neutral grip. Since Brian says he strengthened it, that actually means he started with a weak grip. In a weak grip, the hands are turned so the thumbs are pointed more toward the target at setup. (In Brian’s case, that means his hands were turned more to the right. For you right-handers, that would be your left.) A weak grip requires a lot of forearm action to square up the club (BAD Brian, BAD!) and he couldn’t do it consistently, hence his persistent slice.

A neutral grip is what Carl taught me when he worked with me. (My grip was actually too strong.) A slightly strong grip works better for many people, but one advantage to a neutral grip is that it’s very easy to tell if it’s correct. The pics Brian sent are taken from directly in front of him. (Look at his stance in the 2nd photo. His target line runs straight across the picture from right to left.) Now, look at the Vs formed by his thumb and forefinger―see how they point straight up at where his chin should be? See how the pattern on the grip is centered in the V? This neutral grip is set up properly.

As I said, a slightly strong grip works better for many people, but a neutral grip allows you to hit the ball with extreme accuracy if you don’t rotate your forearms. His problem with duck hooks indicate that this bad habit has carried over from his original grip. (BAD Brian, BAD!)

We’ll talk about that forearm action in the next post.

Introducing The Ruthless Golf Project: Brian McGregor

Hank Haney, eat your heart out!

Actually, this has kinda become a joke between Brian and me, and Brian is the one who first used the term project to describe this series of posts. So I figured, why not?

For those of you who haven’t been keeping up (shame on you!), Brian, who lives in Ottawa, Canada, first commented on a post I did about Jim McLean’s “V-gap” technique. That post is part of the One-Piece Takeaways, Coils & the “V-Gap” Technique series listed in the sidebar. Brian had been able to use the technique briefly, but soon lost it and couldn’t get it back. (That’s a feeling I’m sure we’ve all shared.) So I tried to help, which is how that whole series came to be.

About a week later, Brian commented on the last post of that series that I had indeed helped him, but he still couldn’t quite get it together. (I feel that way about most everything, not just golf.) We’ve traded a few emails since―and then, in a tragic display of brain damage, he sent me a series of swing photos. Further proving that the brain damage was severe and possibly permanent, he granted me permission to use them in some posts. He even thanked me for turning him into a project! Fortunately, Brian isn’t nearly as bad as Charles Barkley. His swing actually looks pretty good, all the way back to the top of his backswing. He’s getting into trouble on the way down, though.

This is a pretty common situation among weekend golfers. Although it’s possible to screw yourself up on the backswing, most players do pretty well until they get to that change of direction. The pictures Brian sent me were taken from directly in front of him; I don’t have any “down the line” shots. But the problems I can see are pretty common and not that hard to fix.

Some of you may be struggling with the very same problems as Brian. Well, fret no more! With the help of my guinea pi― er, student, I’m going to show you just how simple a good swing can be.

Hopefully, Brian will drop by to post comments about how incredibly smart I am… but you should at least see some feedback concerning how hard or easy he finds these tips to be, as well as what sort of results he gets from them.

And you’ll be able to find all these posts under the new category project brian. (What do you think, Brian? You’re not just a project anymore, you’re a whole freaking category!)

Well, here we go―the Project is afoot!