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The latest diet
books talk about good carbs and bad carbs. I believe that
the beautiful, intricate motion of swinging a golf club to
create a desired ball flight, can have good and bad tension.
Bad tension: Grabbing, grasping.
You would have a hard time finding a golf book or teacher
who doesn’t agree that tightness in the arms and body, is
one of the great killers of good golf. Imagine when you are
particularly hungry that you feel like grabbing at food, or
a needy person grabbing at tid-bits of life, thinking it
will pass by unless it is captured.
When your arms grab at the club, trying way too hard to
help, wanting too much to hit a good shot, the club will be
thrown out of orbit, and the beautiful angle called lag is
lost. In addition, your body tends to stop moving.
That grabby lurching motion becomes a habit after too long.
The result is a swing without trust, disjointed, and until
the brain forms new pathways, it will remain that way.
Good tension: Pressure
The great lesson I learned from Norrie Wright, was how to
decipher the book The Golfing Machine. One of the key points
in this groundbreaking work, was that there are numerous
`pressure points’ in an effective swing. There is a feeling
of heaviness that results in a sequence, where the stronger
and bigger body parts drag the lighter faster ones into
impact. The end result is the club head being `flung’
through the ball, unobstructed.
There are many places this pressure is felt; the
index/trigger finger, last three fingers of the target hand,
and my favorite; the target arm pressed against the left
chest. Homer Kelly calls this the `master accumulator’, and
I know that in my game, when I feel this sensation, I play
my best. Bobby Jones, when asked what his swing felt like,
said `I feel like I’m leaving my arms behind’. That is what
I would call good tension. |
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