This Week: Butch Says “Swing Down the Line”

I’ve been teaching golf for 25 years, and trust me when I say that my work is mainly in the “trenches”, that is on the range with players of staggeringly disparate ability levels.  You know what I’m talking about: a high level professional followed by the 30 handicapper.  I am constantly challenged while using the totality of my experience to try to help the person in front of me hit the ball better.  It is a fascinating and engaging job, and there is both art and craft in the work.

There are few students who arrive for their first lesson with me who have no predisposed concepts as to how a golf swing should work.  No matter what their level of play they will, upon prodding, come up with answers to the most basic questions (such as “how does the club make the ball go up in the air?”, or where does the club go immediately after impact?”).  The first thing I have to determine is whether or not a student can answer these questions correctly for, if not, there is little chance that they will swing the club well by happenstance, unless they are remarkably talented.  Thus, if I am told that the club gets under the ball and lifts it, and that the clubhead should swing straight down the target line with the face square after impact I know that I can’t even get started with helping them until I get them to understand the faulty nature of their conceptions.

I don’t even bother to ask where they got their ideas.  I realize that conventional instruction, from friends, fellow players, and substandard teachers will often espouse incorrect and ruinous ideas that absolutely preclude a player from hitting the ball with high quality.  The phrase “swing down the line” is probably the single most common of these ideas, and upon hearing it I know that I am in the presence of someone who knows little of the true workings of the swing and who, if they fall back on the excuse that they are talking about “feel’ instead of what really happens, are obviously lacking in teaching experience as they would know, as I do, how the idea of swinging the club straight at the target after impact is entirely unnatural and un-athletic (not to mention the fact that it is physically impossible to stand to the side of the ball and swing the club in a straight line).  Unfortunately many people are enamored of straight lines and simple ideas.  “Swing to the target” is about as simple as you can get, falling right in there with “the swing is one big circle”.  The next question should be, “if the swing is a big circle and I’m supposed to swing straight down the line, how can I get the circle to straighten out?”  Well, the swing is not one big circle, but it is circular in nature through the ball, and that makes swinging straight down any line impossible in reality.  If you want to think that there is a small period of time or distance that the club swings on the target line ask yourself how many straight lines are in a circle.  One of the main reasons golf is so hard is that the clubface is only square when the ball leaves the face, meaning that every shot is dependent on the player’s ability to reach impact at the proper time from an effective angle.  As you have probably heard, “timing is everything”.  And while most instructors who espouse the “down the line” idea would also have the student rotate the clubface closed through impact, this simply promotes an overly in to out path and either blocks or hooks.  The chances of getting an average player to create a descending blow and a compressed strike while trying to swing the club straight at the target are slim. Now, if I have someone who has no lateral lower body movement and swings from out to in I will show them the correct forward swing approach and exit, and it may well be more toward the target than what they were doing.  But I will take pains to have them understand and feel that the movement of the club, and the body, through the impact area is rotary and has nothing to do with swinging down any lines.

You can imagine my surprise when I opened this month’s Golf Digest and saw a one-page instructional piece promoting this bit of wisdom, under the subheading “Don’t Think Left”.  “I hear teachers saying to swing left through impact, really get the club tracking inside.  That might be what happens, but a better thought is to swing straight down the line.  Swing to your target.  As long as your arms don’t fly off your body, the club will go left.  Plus, most golfers already cut across the ball, so why would they want to try to swing to the left?”  Now, that would be bad enough if it were some guy who , but that’s not who this is from.  No, this is from none other than Butch Harmon, the number one ranked teacher in the world.

I have only one reaction to this: are you kidding me?  Supposedly the best teacher in the world and he’s putting this in a national magazine?  Now, I’ve had articles printed in these magazines and I’ve seen them mess things up, but I don’t see how this could be a mistake.  It’s a pretty simple statement, and since I spend most of my day trying to get people to do the exact opposite (I’m one of “those teachers” who say “swing left”) I figure either I’m wrong or he’s wrong.  Well, to see who is right or wrong all you have to do is look at the video.  The club swings left through impact, period.  Saying that “that might be what happens” but that a better thought is to try to do the opposite is just lazy and makes you wonder just how great of a teacher Harmon really is.  Simply put, the old school, “down the line” crew is outdated and should be put to rest along with many other wrong-headed ideas that have been proven to be incorrect and harmful to those trying to improve their golf swings. It may be far more involved to explain how to swing left correctly, but that’s the nature of the game and the swing and to try to make it easier than it really is does not help anyone except players who don’t need any instruction anyway. Butch’s “idea” may not be a problem for Tour caliber players (the only ones he “teaches” anymore), but to apply that to the average guy who can’t create a decent impact position or any sort of clubhead speed is unforgiveable.

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