I started with the C-motion swing -- or at least as
much of it as I
adopted -- in late November of 2010. I worked on it through the winter
of 2011, which meant not much. We had a lot of snow in New Jersey (see
picture), and
the golf courses and even driving ranges were closed for more than two
months.I did get away a few times for golf, and played a lot when I did. And by early March I was able to play regularly without traveling. And I continued to practice a right-side swing.
I found myself feeling that I was striking the ball more solidly more often, but it did not show up in my scores. None of my rounds came closer than three strokes to a personal best for the course. So I was not getting a ball-striking bonus, no matter what it felt like.
I noticed a fairly frequent distance gain, but it was not consistent nor even usual. I could not count on it, and I didn't. In March, I did some launch monitor tests with Charlie Badami, a very good clubfitter that I have worked with. (You will see his name occasionally in my articles on this site.) It became clear from those tests that I got the speed bonus when I did not try to hit with the right hand! When I powered the hands with a right-arm push, but had the hands and wrists hold the lag, I got a 6-8mph boost of clubhead speed. (On a drive, that translates to 18-24 yards of carry.) But that did not happen when I hit through the ball with my hands. (That would tend to confirm the analysis, which says that the benefit comes from moving the hands "along the track" rather than delivering the clubhead to the ball. But anecdotal tests, especially when performed by the analyst himself, are hardly reliable data.)
I kept with it until mid-June, when I injured myself playing golf.
There is little doubt in my mind that the right-side swing was a major
factor in the injury. It was not serious enough to see a doctor. In
fact, it was not even serious enough to stop golf; I just had to stop
making a right-side swing.The problem was a muscle pull or strain in my right latissimus dorsi. Powering the swing with the right arm did a few things to stess that muscle:[1]
- Obviously it became more of a factor in developing clubhead speed. The major right-side muscle in this motion is the triceps, but the right lat is next most important in this regard.
- I was getting a better follow-through than I was used to with my left-side swing, with the club and right arm pulling me around. This turned out to be a mixed blessing. The right arm pulling the body around meant that tension in the right lat was doing the pulling. In June, I started getting pain in the lat during the follow-through... and only during the follow-through.
What I did -- and it worked -- was to go to a left-side swing where the body pulled the club around, via the left shoulder and arm. I was surprised I could still make that swing, because I hadn't practiced it in over six months. But I got through the round, and the pain did not return as long as the body pulled the club around, rather than rather than the right arm pushing the club through.
My current swing[2]
I never went back! A few weeks later was my 70th birthday, and I made a resolution. No more swing changes for the goal of recovering the distance I have lost since I turned 65. (That's about 2½ clubs in the irons and 50 yards with the driver.) So I decided to cultivate the left-side swing that doesn't hurt me, and get it to the point of having a pretty good idea where the shot is going. What has made it work has been (a) a tip gleaned from Dustin Johnson's swing via Kelvin Miyahira (yeah, I know; DJ is a big hitter, but that's not what I'm going after), (b) some drills and philosphy from Paul Wilson, and (c) a couple of valuable keys from Jim McLean's book, "The X-Factor Swing". Here are my swing keys:- Get to a good X-factor position at the top of the
backswing. Keys to get there are:
- Initiate the backswing by turning the right hip back.
- At the top, the left shoulder is under the chin.
- Keep the left arm across the chest, from the top of the backswing through most or all of the downswing. Kelvin Miyahira pointed this out to me in video frames he has of Dustin Johnson's swing. Kelvin associates this with keeping a good lag. See his article on lag, the section on "Lag Micro Move #10".
- From the top, just turn the hips and relax the assembly
above. It should feel like:
- The hips are energetically dragging the torso around.
- The chest is pushing the left arm around.
- The club is being dragged along behind all this.
Bottom line: It's working for my scores, and I don't hurt when I swing. In fact, it feels remarkably relaxed and even passive, except for the hips. And that is the secret of the whole swing.
But wait. There's more.
I said above that I was not chasing distance any more. And I meant it. But I am in fact getting more distance, and more reliably, from my current left-sided swing. And I think I know why. The hint comes from the analysis of C-motion in the preceding pages.At the right is an update of the figure from the first page of this article, explaining why C-motion might result in increased distance. In that section, I point out that decreasing the torque's radius increases the force accelerating the hands. The footnote points out that the chest is seldom used as a fulcrum for the left arm, just a way to think about "connection". But my swing does indeed use the chest as a fulcrum to lever around the extended left arm. In that way, it shortens the lever arm almost as much as does the right-side swing.
When Kelvin Miyahira was showing me Dustin Johnson's move to promote lag, I recognized that was what a full-fulcrum "connection" would look like. When Kelvin wrote his article a few months later, he included words to that effect.
It is probably worth mentioning here that, when I was working on my article on mathematical models of the swing, something about Sasho MacKenzie's model clicked. I refer now to his swing optimized for clubhead speed. For the first part of the downswing, the muscular torque is all torso. There is no shoulder torque, the torque that separates the left arm from the chest. That means that the left arm is being driven by what MacKenzie calls "passive tissue interaction" with the chest; the chest is pushing the left arm around. That is further confirmation that this does in fact increase clubhead speed, because a computer optimization of one of the better swing models recommends it.
Anyway, I am seeing more driving distance now, and it is starting to reach the irons as well. It was not my goal, but as I relax the left arm against the chest and drive around with my hips, it comes along with the more reliable contact.