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So you tell me: how cool is it to hear Peter Kostis and Gary McCord talking about “compressing into the ground” during both the backswing and the forward swing? I have to think that there’s no way they are not watching my videos. I know Peter is for sure, because my head pro told me Peter was pissed at me for calling him out in a few of my previous videos. If that’s the case then I say OK, because that bit on Tiger on Sunday was the best thing Kostis has done maybe ever. My goal all along is to have these announcers do good work. How could I make any of these videos if the stuff they were saying had anything to do with reality? And it’s not about them agreeing with the things that I prefer, it’s more about just getting it right, not saying that something is happening when it obviously is not, and that other things are bad when history proves that they are actually good. Could I do a better job than any of them? On a swing analysis; absolutely. Could I do it in the same limited time frame? Sure: it’s called preparation. I can’t believe these guys can’t plan out a decent swing analysis they could use at any time when a guy gets into contention. I would take a camera and tripod out and shoot properly angled video of each guy while he was practicing. Then when it came time to say something intelligent about one of the player’s swings, there would be swings you could put lines on and really see what was happening. If the average player heard the major components of a good swing over and over people might begin to develop a higher “golf IQ”, which would, I believe, lead them to stick with the game as opposed to quitting due to frustration. The announcers are so focused on finding out what went wrong or on offering some juicy insider tidbit on what the player is “trying” to do that they skip over what has gotten the player into the mix in the first place. When they do a general look at a swing such gems as “big shoulder turn” and “swinging down the line” pop up inevitably.
Anyway, here you see Tiger swinging quite nicely. If anything has changed it is that the shaft is pointing more at the ball when the left arm is parallel to the ground. This leads me to believe that they have decided that instead of achieving a steep shoulder turn by moving the shoulders vertically in the backswing, Tiger is instead bending over more to insure the steep angle, then rotating the left arm a bit more to get the shaft less vertical at halfway back. When the left arm and the hands rotate more going back the left shoulder will fell like it is going a bit less downward. This feeling matches up with the overall sidearm throwing movement that Hogan espoused and that leads to the left-exit of the club. All this is accentuated in a slight “cut” swing pattern, which leads them to anointing the left to right shot as the “go-to” shot. It is certainly not “over the top”, as Tiger’ hands still head somewhere in between his feet and the ball to start the downswing. But just the sense that the ball is going to start a hair left and move a hair left to right is enough to change a swing pattern, and in this case for the better. The fact that most people lose distance when they attempt to use this type of action tells you what a highly developed skill it is to hit the ball left to right while keeping full distance on your shots.
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