Manual de la Torre Method

[PepsiDuck]

I'm having a bit of an issue with straight pulls using wedges and short irons that turn into pull draws with longer clubs. I've made the setup and grip adjustments to correct, but I'm still experiencing these misses, though to a lesser degree than before. Is it as simple as moving my forward swing direction a little bit further to the "right"? There was a chapter in Hayes' book about how the target is slightly to the right of the player and not directly left of the player at address.

[northgolf]

I'm having a bit of an issue with straight pulls using wedges and short irons that turn into pull draws with longer clubs. I've made the setup and grip adjustments to correct, but I'm still experiencing these misses, though to a lesser degree than before. Is it as simple as moving my forward swing direction a little bit further to the "right"? There was a chapter in Hayes' book about how the target is slightly to the right of the player and not directly left of the player at address.

 

Is your head sliding forward on the downswing?

[PepsiDuck]

I'm having a bit of an issue with straight pulls using wedges and short irons that turn into pull draws with longer clubs. I've made the setup and grip adjustments to correct, but I'm still experiencing these misses, though to a lesser degree than before. Is it as simple as moving my forward swing direction a little bit further to the "right"? There was a chapter in Hayes' book about how the target is slightly to the right of the player and not directly left of the player at address.

 

Is your head sliding forward on the downswing?

 

It's certainly possible. I have stayed away from video for a while now, so I wouldn't have any definitive evidence...

[juststeve]

Thank you Steve. Toe up and parallel is where I started working at the weekend. Although I think toe up may be difficult to achieve with a grip on the strong side of perfectly neutral. I think I may also need to work on having my shoulders turn fully in sync with the clubhead. A fuller turn might, I hope, be the groundwork for keeping the arms and club more in front of me.

 

So, responsive and synched up turn, and good alignment at p2 seems to be my homework for the off season.

 

Manny was reluctant to write a book because he knew that it would be incomplete. He was right about that, there is much he had to teach that couldn't fit in a book of reasonable size and complexity. You're now touching on two areas where the books is incomplete.

 

The neutral grip. To Manny a neutral grip is one that allows the club to return square to the ball without conscious manipulation. That is not necessarily the same for every player so there is no "perfectly neutral" grip that fits everyone. Had you worked with Manny at some point he would have tested your grip and recommended what for you was a neutral grip. Dan Purdy now markets a training device that is meant to simulate Manny's test. So---Find out what grip allows you to square the face without manipulation and that is your neutral. You may already be there.

 

The toe up position will vary somewhat depending on how your hands are placed on the club. Toe pointed perfectly straight up is not the point. If you start in an appropriate set up position, and swing the club back in an appropriate manner the toe will point more or less upward. The worst thing you can do is start twisting your hands to achieve some theoretically perfect position. Just swing it back, on an arc, and the toe will take care of itself.

 

You don't need to synch up your turn. If your turn is a reaction to the swinging of the club, if your body is relaxed and responsive, you will be synched up automatically. At far as P2 goes, I don't know where that is. If it is the first parallel in the back swing remember it is just an orientation the club passes through as you swing it back in one continuous motion. Don't get caught trying to move from one position to another. That's Jim McClain, not Manny.

 

Steve

"Ted" Purdy. He was taught from a very young age by the same Manny disciple I learned from. His grip analyzer: http://www.tedpurdy.com/

 

Ted Purdy it is. Love his golf swing!

 

Steve

[PepsiDuck]

It appears I'm even pulling my chip shots...

[birly-shirly]

 

You don't need to synch up your turn. If your turn is a reaction to the swinging of the club, if your body is relaxed and responsive, you will be synched up automatically.

 

Steve

 

I guess this is one area where words just aren't a great medium for conveying meaning. I think my body will turn better if I pay it close attention, whilst letting the shoulders and torso respond rather lead the swing. However, if I leave them to their own devices and pay attention only to the swing of the club, then they are no more likely to turn fully than my are kids are likely to tidy their room whilst I read a book in another part of the house.

[Joe90]

Another great video explain on the concept by Vivien Saunders. She's a great teacher

 

 

[Jacob Mac]

It appears I'm even pulling my chip shots...

 

You still pulling your chip shots?

[PepsiDuck]

I have been working on this method for a couple of months now. I have swinging the club head back with both hands so the club ends over the right shoulder down pretty well. I am still working on swinging the entire club forward towards the target with the arms. I have spent the last two range sessions just working on that concept tied in with the concept of the club being parallel to the ground and parallel to the target line at 9:00 o'clock on the downswing. When I tie these two concepts together, I find that both arms move as a unit down through 9:00 o'clock into impact. The hardest part about returning to that 9:00 o'clock parallel position is it feels like I am dropping my arms and the club straight down to my side parallel to the target line instead of on a plane toward the ball. This might just be feel as I may have spent my last 5 years OTT.

 

The next piece has been keeping tension free wrists so the club releases sometime after 9:00 o'clock and before impact. I am making no conscious effort to square the club face, if anything I am just continuing to swing the arms forward and through. As if by magic, the clubface has been square to line at impact more times than not and when it isn't I can always find a point where I tried to hit or speed up instead of swing.

 

The end result of this is the feeling of the arms swinging as a single unit and the club releasing into impact through the loose wrists attached to the arm unit. This is a completely alien feel for me. It works, I just wonder if it is what MDLT teaches.

 

I'm pulling this post from a few years back because it reflects a breakthrough I had yesterday that helped "solve" the issue of my pulls... I observed that the only way to get the arms to swing the club toward the target without opening with the lead shoulder is to swing the arms "down" rather than directly at the target. Any effort to get the arms moving toward the target instantly and reliably led to pulls.

[Moleman]

Pepsi, the pulls are also my major miss with the MLDT swing. For me the best fix is to consciously swing the whole club to the right of the target, my shoulders start by feeling slightly closed at address ( they're not, they just feel closed).

 

For me this keeps the left side of the course out of play, either straight shots, draws back to the target line or the odd push right.

 

I know this is not a perscribed variation but it certainly works with the rest of the MLDT swing for me..

[northgolf]

I have been working on this method for a couple of months now. I have swinging the club head back with both hands so the club ends over the right shoulder down pretty well. I am still working on swinging the entire club forward towards the target with the arms. I have spent the last two range sessions just working on that concept tied in with the concept of the club being parallel to the ground and parallel to the target line at 9:00 o'clock on the downswing. When I tie these two concepts together, I find that both arms move as a unit down through 9:00 o'clock into impact. The hardest part about returning to that 9:00 o'clock parallel position is it feels like I am dropping my arms and the club straight down to my side parallel to the target line instead of on a plane toward the ball. This might just be feel as I may have spent my last 5 years OTT.

 

The next piece has been keeping tension free wrists so the club releases sometime after 9:00 o'clock and before impact. I am making no conscious effort to square the club face, if anything I am just continuing to swing the arms forward and through. As if by magic, the clubface has been square to line at impact more times than not and when it isn't I can always find a point where I tried to hit or speed up instead of swing.

 

The end result of this is the feeling of the arms swinging as a single unit and the club releasing into impact through the loose wrists attached to the arm unit. This is a completely alien feel for me. It works, I just wonder if it is what MDLT teaches.

 

I'm pulling this post from a few years back because it reflects a breakthrough I had yesterday that helped "solve" the issue of my pulls... I observed that the only way to get the arms to swing the club toward the target without opening with the lead shoulder is to swing the arms "down" rather than directly at the target. Any effort to get the arms moving toward the target instantly and reliably led to pulls.

 

Conceptually, it feels steep doesn't it? Actually, I'm going to say it is a shallowing move until I'm taught better.

[PepsiDuck]

Pepsi, the pulls are also my major miss with the MLDT swing. For me the best fix is to consciously swing the whole club to the right of the target, my shoulders start by feeling slightly closed at address ( they're not, they just feel closed).

 

For me this keeps the left side of the course out of play, either straight shots, draws back to the target line or the odd push right.

 

I know this is not a perscribed variation but it certainly works with the rest of the MLDT swing for me..

 

I know it's sacrilege to think body movements with MDLT, so I'm trying really hard to distance myself from swing thoughts involving my body. That being said, I've found that if you think of the club as swinging on a circle, from the top of the backswing, the club *must* go down before it can move forward to the target. So I think it's better for me to think of swinging the club down the circle and then forward to the target.

 

Also, in the Hayes book, he discusses that the target it actually slightly to the right of the target line from the player's perspective, so your thought of swinging the club to the right definitely has merit.

[PepsiDuck]

Conceptually, it feels steep doesn't it? Actually, I'm going to say it is a shallowing move until I'm taught better.

 

It definitely feels different, but I agree that it is indeed a shallowing move, and you can't deny the results are significantly better...

[birly-shirly]

 

 

I know it's sacrilege to think body movements with MDLT, so I'm trying really hard to distance myself from swing thoughts involving my body. That being said, I've found that if you think of the club as swinging on a circle, from the top of the backswing, the club *must* go down before it can move forward to the target. So I think it's better for me to think of swinging the club down the circle and then forward to the target.

 

 

What I bolded is, IMO, too restrictive. MDLT is refreshingly light on prescribed positions or alignments to hit with your body - but the big thing, as I understand it, is that the body needs to move in response to the actions of the hands and arms, and the swing of the club.

 

But to give 2 examples straight from the book, he says that on the backswing, the shoulders should start to move at the same time as the clubhead starts to swing, and they should continue to move together right to the end of the backswing. Then, on the forward swing, there's the specific direction that the right heel should be up and perpendicular to the ground when the clubshaft reaches horizontal after impact. These are things that I feel I need to think about, but not force, if that makes sense.

 

The bigger taboo might well be the idea of swinging the club "down" rather than forward. But he does stress that the arms must be responsible for the forward swing and that allowing the shoulders to initiate things will tend to take you OTT. I don't want to say to "curb" your shoulder movement, but if your arms initiate the forward swing and the shoulders only react, I would guess that the "down" element will take care of itself.

 

Lastly, I'm pretty sure that Steve has previously made a point of differentiating the idea of swinging the club in the direction of the target (good) from swinging your arms at the target (not so good).

[juststeve]

Manny admonished us to swing the club in one particular direction, that is in the direction of the target. The reason for this in inarguable. If the ball is to fly on a straight line in the direction of the target the club must be moving toward the target when the ball is struck. That is just a matter of geometry and physics and is absolute.

 

What is not absolute is how an individual golfer will experience the act of swinging the club in the direction of the target. In other words, how it feels to swing the club in the direction of the target. Manny teaches principles in his book, not feels, because he knows feels are individual while the principles are universal.

 

Let's not confuse the principle, swing toward the target, with the individual feel which might be to swing right of the target. Were you on the lesson tee with Manny and experiencing a series of straight pulls, he might well observe that the swing you thought was toward the target might actually be left of the target. The fix might be as simple as encouraging you to swing a bit more to the right in an effort to get you to actually swing the club in the direction of the target. He would not however encourage you to actually swing to the right of the target because he did not believe in fixing one error with another.

 

There is a good test to determine whether you are actually swinging your club in the direction of the target. If you can produce a straight on target ball flight then you have swung in the direction of the target. That is the only way to produce that ball flight. If that feels like you are swinging to the right of the target, keep feeling that but understand that you are actually swinging in the direction of the target. Its just what you have to feel to swing in the direction of the target.

 

Steve

[Jasonic]

Manny admonished us to swing the club in one particular direction, that is in the direction of the target. The reason for this in inarguable. If the ball is to fly on a straight line in the direction of the target the club must be moving toward the target when the ball is struck. That is just a matter of geometry and physics and is absolute.

 

What is not absolute is how an individual golfer will experience the act of swinging the club in the direction of the target. In other words, how it feels to swing the club in the direction of the target. Manny teaches principles in his book, not feels, because he knows feels are individual while the principles are universal.

 

Let's not confuse the principle, swing toward the target, with the individual feel which might be to swing right of the target. Were you on the lesson tee with Manny and experiencing a series of straight pulls, he might well observe that the swing you thought was toward the target might actually be left of the target. The fix might be as simple as encouraging you to swing a bit more to the right in an effort to get you to actually swing the club in the direction of the target. He would not however encourage you to actually swing to the right of the target because he did not believe in fixing one error with another.

 

There is a good test to determine whether you are actually swinging your club in the direction of the target. If you can produce a straight on target ball flight then you have swung in the direction of the target. That is the only way to produce that ball flight. If that feels like you are swinging to the right of the target, keep feeling that but understand that you are actually swinging in the direction of the target. Its just what you have to feel to swing in the direction of the target.

 

Steve

 

FEEL ain't REAL

[Moleman]

There is a good test to determine whether you are actually swinging your club in the direction of the target. If you can produce a straight on target ball flight then you have swung in the direction of the target. That is the only way to produce that ball flight. If that feels like you are swinging to the right of the target, keep feeling that but understand that you are actually swinging in the direction of the target. Its just what you have to feel to swing in the direction of the target.

 

This is golden for me! If my 'swing towards the target' is producing dead left pulls then I'm not actually swinging in the direction of the target. My swing which feels like it's going right, according to the evidence of the ball flight, is straight towards the target!

 

Big help, thanks Steve..

[PepsiDuck]

Played in my first competitive team event this weekend since switching to MDLT and really struggled with my swing from tee to green. I lost more than a dozen golf balls off the tee over 36 holes and only hit the green maybe 30% of the time from 130 yards and in.

 

The struggle I have is with the forward swing...is there a definitive way to determine whether you're swinging with your lead shoulder vs. your upper arm vs. your forearm vs. your hands?

[airjammer]

When I do it correctly my upper arms reconnect to chest/side very early in transition. Kinda like my arms are moving towards the target but my shoulders are staying closed a split second longer. I think Steve mentioned this in one of his posts a while back. If that isn't happening then you aren't swinging forward with your upper arms it really doesn't matter what else you used.

 

 

[birly-shirly]

Played in my first competitive team event this weekend since switching to MDLT and really struggled with my swing from tee to green. I lost more than a dozen golf balls off the tee over 36 holes and only hit the green maybe 30% of the time from 130 yards and in.

 

The struggle I have is with the forward swing...is there a definitive way to determine whether you're swinging with your lead shoulder vs. your upper arm vs. your forearm vs. your hands?

 

My experience is that if I initiate the fwd swing with the shoulders, I tend to lose height and hit a lot of fats and shanks and pull hooks. If I think about maintaining my height, then the feeling of my arms initiating the fwd swing is much clearer to me.

 

When my hands get overactive on the fwd swing, I tend to get a lot of thin and fat contact, and again pulls. Making both hands passive and responsive is work in progress. It's much easier for me to feel this in chipping and pitching and then to try and carry over similar feels to the full swing.

[juststeve]

Pepsi:

 

Consult the faults and fixes sections of Manny's book, try to identify what happened to you, and look to his suggestions. It may be overactive shoulder, or it may not.

 

You're not ready to employ the swing successfully on the golf course until you can consistently do it on the practice tee. I'm talking about thousands of successful repetitions. If you can't produce good ball flight, over and over, on the practice tee, don't expect to do it on the golf course.

 

Steve

[PepsiDuck]

When I do it correctly my upper arms reconnect to chest/side very early in transition. Kinda like my arms are moving towards the target but my shoulders are staying closed a split second longer. I think Steve mentioned this in one of his posts a while back. If that isn't happening then you aren't swinging forward with your upper arms it really doesn't matter what else you used.

 

My experience is that if I initiate the fwd swing with the shoulders, I tend to lose height and hit a lot of fats and shanks and pull hooks. If I think about maintaining my height, then the feeling of my arms initiating the fwd swing is much clearer to me.

 

When my hands get overactive on the fwd swing, I tend to get a lot of thin and fat contact, and again pulls. Making both hands passive and responsive is work in progress. It's much easier for me to feel this in chipping and pitching and then to try and carry over similar feels to the full swing.

 

Do you all feel that swinging with the shoulder feels more like the "back" of the shoulder while swinging with the upper arm feels more like the "front" of the shoulder? I've been so focused on trying to keep my lead shoulder back on the forward swing (so that I'm not swinging with my shoulder) that I'm swinging with my forearms and hands rather than the upper arm. So in doing this, I feel that I'm not allowing the forward swing to happen freely...

 

My misses have been pulls and pull hooks of the tee and with my longer clubs; with wedges and short irons, the main miss has been a high, weak push.

[Hilts1969]

Anyone out there currently using this method? I just finished watching the video and its scary simple and seems to make a lot of sense...

 

No such thing as a simple golf swing theory and as this thread shows swinging back with your hands and sending the club to the target using your upper arms isn't going to do anything for the bast majority of golfers

[airjammer]

You shouldn't be consciously trying to do anything other than taking it back over your right shoulder with the hands then in one continuous motion with the upper arms move club in a arc toward the target. No keeping anything back or individual move. You are going to have to give up control especially with your hands. When I do what I'm supposed to do, my hands are very relaxed coming in the hitting area. They are unhindered and allowed to square the club.

 

For me personally, if I am underplane on my backswing which is a issue of mine I have no chance of hitting a good shot. The old adage of "keeping the club in front of you" is imperative for me.

 

 

When I do it correctly my upper arms reconnect to chest/side very early in transition. Kinda like my arms are moving towards the target but my shoulders are staying closed a split second longer. I think Steve mentioned this in one of his posts a while back. If that isn't happening then you aren't swinging forward with your upper arms it really doesn't matter what else you used.

 

My experience is that if I initiate the fwd swing with the shoulders, I tend to lose height and hit a lot of fats and shanks and pull hooks. If I think about maintaining my height, then the feeling of my arms initiating the fwd swing is much clearer to me.

 

When my hands get overactive on the fwd swing, I tend to get a lot of thin and fat contact, and again pulls. Making both hands passive and responsive is work in progress. It's much easier for me to feel this in chipping and pitching and then to try and carry over similar feels to the full swing.

 

Do you all feel that swinging with the shoulder feels more like the "back" of the shoulder while swinging with the upper arm feels more like the "front" of the shoulder? I've been so focused on trying to keep my lead shoulder back on the forward swing (so that I'm not swinging with my shoulder) that I'm swinging with my forearms and hands rather than the upper arm. So in doing this, I feel that I'm not allowing the forward swing to happen freely...

 

My misses have been pulls and pull hooks of the tee and with my longer clubs; with wedges and short irons, the main miss has been a high, weak push.

[PepsiDuck]

You shouldn't be consciously trying to do anything other than taking it back over your right shoulder with the hands then in one continuous motion with the upper arms move club in a arc toward the target. No keeping anything back or individual move. You are going to have to give up control especially with your hands. When I do what I'm supposed to do, my hands are very relaxed coming in the hitting area. They are unhindered and allowed to square the club.

 

For me personally, if I am underplane on my backswing which is a issue of mine I have no chance of hitting a good shot. The old adage of "keeping the club in front of you" is imperative for me.

 

This may be *the* underlying issue. After seeing the old video of MDLT hitting balls and the accompanying comments that it's ok to be a little inside on the takeaway, I took that as a green light to be as underplane as I pleased. I realized this near the end of my range session today.

 

The ball is clearly not as pleased when I'm underplane...

[birly-shirly]

Sorry for introducing that red herring, Pepsi!

I stand by the logic of what I originally posted and what appears in that video, but as I posted above, I too am now working on getting the club more on plane in the takeaway.

FWIW, I think if you are going to use video to check the alignment of the club as it swings parallel to the ground on the BS, then you need to be quite careful about camera placement. I've been putting my phone on the ground directly on the target line behind the ball, which seems to work well.

[gwlee7]

I would aim for the trouble off the tee so I would be sure to miss it.

[juststeve]

Any questions people have about the back swing can be answered from first principles. We SWING the club back. To swing the club means to move it on an arc, around a fixed swing center, without leverage. Since an arc has no straight lines in it the swing contains no straight lines. Since there are no straight lines in the arc the club must move back, inside and up simultaneously, immediately off the ball. Any other motion would not be a swing around a fixed swing center.

 

There are three reasons to prefer a swinging motion in the back swing to other forms of motion:

 

1. Having swung back it is natural to swing forward. If you don't swing back a change of intention is necessary to swing forward. Why make the game harder?

 

2. Swinging the club back, on an arc, induces an immediate turning response from the body which is in sync with the motion of the club. If you don't experience that its because you are not allowing it to happen. Relax and let it happen. In sync is good and can be automatic.

 

3. Swinging the club back on an inside, back and up path promotes the maintenance of the radius of your swing. The radius is established at address and is the distance from the butt of the club to your swing center. The more constant you can keep this distance throughout the swing the better your chances of meeting the ball solidly. Some of you may experience this as the hands remaining a constant distance from the body, but however you experience it, it is a good thing.

 

Steve

[chippa13]

I've found the best way to achieve that is to start my practice swing with my wrists/hands already set as they would be at the top of the backswing and the sole goal is to feel the clubhead pass over the back shoulder and come back thru the selected blades of grass. It really seems to ingrain that swing and turn feeling for me.

[SuperPunch]

I have tendency to get to close to the butt of the club at address and was wondering if there was a distance that MDLT preferred. Anything that he may have noted in a lesson or in the John Hayes book? I have his book and know that he wrote, I'm paraphrasing here, but he says to make a swing, but do it looking like yourself, but I think (hope) my standing too close to the ball is making it more difficult to properly swing. I also remember him saying his student was too close in the Golf Channel video, but don't remember hearing about any proper minimum distance. Thank you.