Manuel De La Torre - Trying to Implement

I started implementing some his principles but seem to be having some issues with two areas: coming out of spine angle and club head flopping around at the top. Any suggestions would be welcome.

I've started playing the club head in the center of the stance, trying my best to stay balance and let the body react to the club, not the other way around.

https://imgur.com/YMZpFIEThanks,

Marlon

IMHO your spine angle is fine don't worry about it.

If you can finish like this it should help:

All your weight on your lead side standing straight up and relaxed. This takes a lot of stress out of your swing and helps to avoid injury. The more easy and relaxed you can swing the better you will play and the farther the ball will go.

Wow, thanks for the image of a very solid finish. Perhaps being a bit more less tense with hands is preventing this nice finish. I thought the club was a bit flat and at impact is being flown away from the body causing me to get up our of spine angle...Maybe I need to work on getting higher hands?

A relaxed, balanced swing is what we are after. Put the club over your trail shoulder on the backswing and over your lead shoulder on the follow through. Finish standing straight up and relaxed just like de la Torre in the picture that I posted earlier. We are after a pure swinging motion and the body will accommodate the motion correctly if we forget about what it is doing. Become an observer of your swing and sort of detached. Don't try to figure out what you did wrong on any particular swing or what you are doing wrong in general. de la Torre liked to say "Why would you want to know what you did wrong? Do you want to repeat it?". We are after a pure swinging motion and when we get that motion the shots will take care of themselves. Golf can become very simple and fun this way...

It looks like you are a little jammed quite possibly from not getting the weight on your right side, plus the back of your right wrist possibly isn't cupped enough. I would take a look at this video at 5:10 to 6:20 by another good coach Jimmy Ballard that shows how the right side is loaded.

Standing up is not a correct movement for someone trying to execute the swing Manny taught. Stnding up means you have raised your swing center which means you are no longer making the club swing. A swing is a back and forth motion from a fixed point. No fixed point no swing as Manny defines the term. If you want to Swing the way Manny taught, the first thing to do is ignore people teaching other systems, Larry Rinker, for example.

David Lee's suggestion isn't a bad one.

Steve

I am going to agree and disagree with what you have said in a single post!

Until a few years ago) I had a golf club in my hands (play or practice) 6 or 7 days a week. I managed a 'summertime index' that would typically dip down in the 4-5 range and go up a stroke or 2 in the winter (but still 6 or 7 days a week touching a golf club). In that timeframe I stood up in a manner similar to the video that started this and I was able to cope with it. Actually a bit less, but still..

A few years ago my game just went to hell (like in a month) and I moved away from the game and started playing typically once a week with only rare practice sessions. My index basically doubled. More recently I started to just 'play with the swing that I could control'. And that was my normal driver swing (where the ball moving about an inch left-right/up-down around the clubface still produces decent results) and otherwise hitting the ball with half swings - my goto club from 100 yards was a 6i.

My single focus here is DO NOT STAND UP. I can do that with half swings and I can hit the center of the clubface most of the time. I have been inching back to full swings but have been mostly off the course since the beginning of the pandemic, so I really don't know how much of that I might use on the course right now., Haven't played since late March, but I do practice typically 2x per week.

And if I were to go back to 6-7 days a week of play/practice I don't know if I could manage my 'stand up' or not. I am guessing no and that the age related decline in physical skills is the reason. But I am guessing about that. But I can say with GREAT confidence that 'the swing that I have naturally (after years of playing golf)' no longer hits the ball with any reliability at all when playing/practicing 1-2 times per week.

dave

I played my first round today since July of last year - shot 10 strokes lower on the back! (51/41).

I have to say, I am happy considering the following:

• I'm alive and don't have Covid and still healthy with a piggy bank stashed away.

• Drives were push fades - which is a direct result of losing spine angle at impact. I've worked on this at the range for the last 3 days and for me, there was an aha moment after watching my old and current driver videos. I watched Justin Thomas' swing in slow motion and concluded that I think my shoulders are not moving correctly - they are tilting instead of TURNING AROUND the spine at impact - this results in these very obvious things - right knee gets kicked in early on DS, hands gets jammed when approaching impact (no where to go), and you have to stand up otherwise, I'd fall on my as_. This is because the hands are flown away from my body!

To combat this, I am focusing on slapping the right wrist/hands into my left thigh at impact - this gets the hands at a position close to setup, shoulders will rotate properly around an intact spine angle and follow thought doesn't look like a train wreck as you see in my video above. The club exits left, and I stay balanced and spine angle is retained.

I will post a video of my progress. I thank you gents for your honest feedback. This shoulder tilting will mess your back up...on irons, shots are crisp if I focus on this right hand slapping the left thigh resulting in good balance.

Do you believe that de la Torre would have tried to change Payne Stewart's swing because he stood up through impact?

Here's 9i down the line focusing on on that right wrist slapping left thigh:

https://imgur.com/a/nJgBUJP

No. Manny never tried to change effective swings that repeat.

Steve

Marlon:

To give yoursef the best chance to learn this particular swing get rid of the ball for a while,. Just assume the grip and stance Manny prescribed and the practice swinging the club from over the trail shoulder to over the lead shoulder brushing the grass on the way. Without a ball your attention will be where it belongs, on the club. All your attention is on the club. You simply swing and allow your body to respond as it will. Film youself and you will see the difference beteen what you are doing and a real swinging motion.

Steve

de la Torre talks specifically about getting the club over the trail shoulder on the backswing and then over the lead shoulder on the finish so he does talk about position. The lady pro he uses for swing examples in the video "Understanding the Golf Swing" demonstrates this perfectly including the straight up balanced finish.

The circle is an Earnest Jones teaching and de la Torre talks about the swing being a circle in his book on page 58 and 59. The big circle of the clubhead is something that I practice because it does a lot of good things in my swing.

I believe that practicing finishing correctly will help your swing a great deal and is easy to do and I would strongly recommend it.

I don't know why you would think that standing up is OK in Manny's system. We keep our swing center stationary for a number of reasons. For one It promotes a consistent bottom to the swing arc. Move the center up and down and you need to make ad hoc manipulations to get the club solidly on the ball. It can be done but Manny's swing concept is to eliminate the need for those manipulations.

As to the finish position, that is the result of moving the club from over the trail shoulder brushing the ground on the way. The picture of Manny at the end of his swing reflects the way his body responded to swinging the club properly. My finish position is like Manny's but not the same. Why? Because no two bodies respond in exactly the same way to swinging the club. That's why chancing positions is not part of what Manny taught.

Steve

Steve, my point is that if a persons natural swing is the upper core swing then the standing up move is correct for that person. If you don't believe that the Wright Balance system is correct in their assessments then that would be bit of a problem and I understand that. I don't think that de la Torre cared one way or the other as long as the swing was pure as you mentioned concerning Payne Stewart's swing. As you said no two bodies respond the same way (my point with Wright Balance) and 'changing positions' would include trying to change spine angle would it not?

I am interested in your assertion that standing up moves the center of the swing. I would think that the center would be more in the shoulder area? I am trying to understand that! Can your provide a reference where de la Torre talks about the center of the swing? Thanks!

He defines a swing as a back and forth motion from a fixed point. Move the point around and it is no longer a swinging motion.

The center of the swing is in the sternum. Manny felt his at the bottom of his sternum, mine is close to the top.

Have you read Understanding The Golf Swing. It's all there.

Steve

Nells %%:

If you want to understand a stationary center go to Freebird Golf and watch the Maintain Your Center Drill. It's four or five minutes that explains it well and tells you how you can feel it.

Steve

Hi Steve, yes I have read the book but I don't always remember everything! Getting older and I have read a lot of golf instruction over the years... I don't think that the standing up move or g humping as some people call it changes the center location. I would say that Payne Stewart maintained his center quite well! The point that I am trying to make is that the correct swing will look different for different players and trying to 'fix' spine angle change can be a real waste of time. If the swinging motion improves and the spine angle look gets 'better' then that is fine but pursuing a fixed spine angle through the ball is a bad idea especially if the golfer is in the upper core range. My use of the term standing up may have been a poor choice of words as it probably means something different to other people then it does to me.

Manuel also talks about keeping your hands as far away from you as possible to the top of the swing. Your right arm collapses.

You are correct, Sir! With higher hands, the hands/club would tend to fall vs get thrown out away from the body. Further, due to gravity of the falling of the hands, the spine would be "assisted" in staying down"...am I on the right path here?

It's about keeping making sure the right elbow doesn't bend more than 90 degrees. If it bends more than that the arm has to re-straighten which causes all sorts of issues. It's not about higher hands but hands more away from the head or as some call it width. Does that make sense?

Guys, further digging into this original video, I sense there is early extension ("goat humping") and most of this is triggered by trying to kill from the top, instead of allowing a smooth transition and get the lower body moving first in the DS.

I am trying my best to not micromanage this but the feel of a proper shoulder turn (not tilting by allowing trail shoulder to go down early), a smooth transition of the club should give way to resolving these faults.

Marlon:

There are a lot of good ways to swing the club. Some have elements foreign to Manny's way, some even destructive of what you are trying to do if you're trying to follow Manny's wing concept. Two non-Manny concepts are in your quoted post.

Proper shoulder turn: Manny never taught about a "proper shoulder turn" because he thought the shoulder turn should be a reaction to the movement of the club and expected different golfers, with different bodies to react differently. In the many years I knew him I never saw him correct someones shoulder turn. You needn't worry about it either and when you do you take your attention from where it should be, on the club to something you don't need to think about.

Lower body moving first: Manny taught a method in which the lower body doesn't move first. Any movement of the body is a reaction to the movement of the club and must therefore occur after the club begins to move. The sequence Mannt tught was back with both hands, allowing the body to respond, forward with both arms swinging the club in the directionof the target in one continuous motion to the end of the swing allowing the body to respond. That results in the body doing what it must for you to make the proper swing.

If you were to suggest moving the lower body first in the down swing he would ask you a series of question. When do you move your lower body, how far, how fast, in what direction, is it the same for a driver as for a wedge, what about partial shots, and how much time do you have to practice. If you were to say I'm going to practice like a tour pro he would tell you that with that much practice you can learn to do most anything.

Steve

@marlon Why don't you post a video from the front? Also, your left hand grip looks like it's mostly in the palm instead of the hand, which will severly limit how effective the hands can be as well as shoulder turn and width.

Wow, after such a long time battling my early extension, this video finally fixed it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IxllCJRKS4There is a post here in Golfwrx that has placed a post citing the merits of the vid which is now in the Hall of Fame for posts!

A couple takeaways: at setup, my weight is on the balls of my feet, not in the heels. On the backswing, my hips get deep (away from the ball) and this causes a slight dipping of the spine, which is the COMPLETE opposite of what was happening in my early extension swing. Doing this exaggerated move with the driver is a real game changer.

The graphical representation of the hip movement of a Pro is something you cannot depict from watching a pro swing in real life...even in very slow motion. This is money.