Thought experiment-Why do we set up neutral?

[badpokerbadgolf]

If we know what impact position we want, why don’t we start from impact position and take a backswing and try to return to the impact from there?

[ShortGolfer]

I find my swing is affect by whether I follow through the impact position or not.

 

I recently took a shot where that wasn't possible.  The ball was precariously perched on loose leaves and attempting to do so would likely result in the ball moving.

I started with the club a foot behind the ball.  Turned out to be a nice shot onto the green.  Sometimes it is best to just play it as it lies.

Edited January 17 by ShortGolfer

[tatertot]

13 minutes ago, badpokerbadgolf said:

If we know what impact position we want, why don’t we start from impact position and take a backswing and try to return to the impact from there?

That's what "we" do ... 

[badpokerbadgolf]

7 minutes ago, tatertot said:

That's what "we" do ... 

Is it though?  Look at any pros setup and compare it to a picture of their position at impact, it’s definitely not the same

[badpokerbadgolf]

Dustin Johnson for example.  By neutral setup, I am referring to the body and not just the clubface angle

[tatertot]

2 minutes ago, badpokerbadgolf said:

Dustin Johnson for example.  By neutral setup, I am referring to the body and not just the clubface angle

Well ... You want a nice solid base to "launch" into your backswing and pushoff against. The right knee bent with the foot off the ground does not give you that base.

[badpokerbadgolf]

Wouldn’t the backswing be bigger though?  Allowing for more force creation so there wouldn’t be as much need for a “backswing launch” if there’s a longer runway.  Or maybe his weight is just preloaded on the front foot and the right leg being bent isn’t relevant and he can still make an explosive backswing from there.

[teddyironboy]

It's definitely a good drill at least.

[golferdude54]

Problem is if you set up your body like impact with open shoulders, open hips, more side bend…

 

Doing that in a static position thousands of times is going to injure your body through anatomically rotated hips, scoliosis, etc. You won’t be able to stand up normal at all, you’ll look crooked and certainly feel crooked.

[badpokerbadgolf]

Just now, golferdude54 said:

Problem is if you set up your body like impact with open shoulders, open hips, more side bend…

 

Doing that in a static position thousands of times is going to injure your body through anatomically rotated hips, scoliosis, etc. You won’t be able to stand up normal at all, you’ll look crooked and certainly feel crooked.

 

This doesn't make any sense to me.  Why would being tilted and sideways in a static position cause scoliosis if you do it thousands of times, but not if you're in those same positions (only one side) in a dynamic movement?   Even if it was true, you could counter it with a few minutes of stretching/yoga a day. 

[Cliffy2020]

Impact is a moment in time.  It’s not a static position, it’s circular.  You gotta rise above it.  You gotta harness in the good energy, block out the bad.  Feel the flow.  All good things.

[teddyironboy]

It's nice to start relaxed before making an athletic move. Examples being fielding or hitting a baseball. Proper impact position is awkward feeling.

[JayMas]

10 minutes ago, Cliffy2020 said:

Impact is a moment in time.  It’s not a static position, it’s circular.  You gotta rise above it.  You gotta harness in the good energy, block out the bad.  Feel the flow.  All good things.

👏👏👏

[badpokerbadgolf]

It's like a carousel, indeed.

[Soloman1]

Because.

[Valtiel]

9 hours ago, badpokerbadgolf said:

If we know what impact position we want, why don’t we start from impact position and take a backswing and try to return to the impact from there?

The more interesting way to approach this question is to instead say "Since no one *actually* does this, why is this observation that seems practical so wrong?"

DJ is a useful example because he is more extreme; very open hips at impact, lots of side bend, and open shoulders, and lots of right arm flex. You could put Morikawa, Hovland, Niemann, and anyone else with open hips and lots of side bend into this bucket here. If they *started* in their impact position then that is assuming everything moved together and very linearly to arrive in it, but they very much did not and that is the crux of it. All the various parts of the body move both at different speeds and at different times, and a certain amount of momentum is needed to arrive at this impact position. On average a skilled golfer is shifting twice as much pressure forward in the downswing than they are in the backswing. To use very "average" numbers, they are 50R/50L pressure at address, 80R/20L by some point early in the backswing, then shifting back to reach 20R/80L by impact. 30 back, 60 forward. Obviously this varies at every stage based on the player, but not by much and the ratios generally stay the same, which is the important part. If we *started* in impact position then we're presented with two potentially fatal problems:

- To shift from 20R/80L to 80R/20L in the backswing is a huge amount of movement which = more moving parts AND more potential momentum generation. With that big of a shift you're primed to generate a ton of speed and momentum in the downswing, far more than what most people can effectively manage or even know what to do with. You only see this type of action via the types of preset movements you see in the high levels of competitive long drive as it creates maximum power but with low accuracy/consistency. 

- To maintain a standard relationship and only shift back "30" taking us from 20R/80L to 50R/50L then we're functionally never getting our center of mass "behind" the ball. This is basically extreme Stack and Tilt which is functional with shorter clubs but becomes progressively more difficult as the clubs get longer. You're basically forced into a very negative AoA unless you start employing damaging compensations.

So If we *start* in our desired impact position, then we're just creating a ton of inefficiency, a bit like saying "if a pitcher knows where he wants to release the ball...



.....then why doesn't he start his wind-up here?"

[iacas]

I agree with most of that but let’s be careful and not confuse pressure and mass. It does not take much movement at all and can be barely visible to shift pressure dynamically from 90/10 to 10/90.

[MK7Golf21]

I’ve seen GG do drills of having the player get into impact position to feel it and then start the swing.
 

Matt Wolff’s trigger is to get a feel of impact. He goes into that impact position, then back to address and quickly swings. So it wasn’t a fluid swing motion from a starting impact position, just a trigger. 
 

I’m not sure I would do it for every swing for reasons mentioned above but could temporarily help with impact as a drill. 

[DaveLeeNC]

If I start my swing from kind of a P2 position where 

 

1) Left arm is not quite to 45 degrees 

 

2) Full wrist set with a flat left wrist 

 

3) Enough forearm rotation to get the club roughly vertical 

 

4) Just a bump of the right hip to the rear 

 

A number of swing issues (not all) that I fight go away.  This is not the swing that I use on the course (I don't like having the swing that people talk about at the bar after a round). OTOH, I am now making swing changes partly driven by what my 74 year old body won't do any more and no matter what I don't think that I will ever have the smooth and fluid swing of a few years ago (but even then it was not capable of an index better than 4 to 5).

 

So for now my starting position is conventional. Well, for RIGHT now my swing has just finished recovering from Covid (and rebound Covid) and is now coping with being in the middle of a pair of cataract surgeries. 

 

As a general statement starting "closer to your desired position at the top" would seem to be a more logical objective (where logical my well not mean correct). 

 

dave

Edited January 18 by DaveLeeNC

[badpokerbadgolf]

11 hours ago, Valtiel said:

The more interesting way to approach this question is to instead say "Since no one *actually* does this, why is this observation that seems practical so wrong?"

DJ is a useful example because he is more extreme; very open hips at impact, lots of side bend, and open shoulders, and lots of right arm flex. You could put Morikawa, Hovland, Niemann, and anyone else with open hips and lots of side bend into this bucket here. If they *started* in their impact position then that is assuming everything moved together and very linearly to arrive in it, but they very much did not and that is the crux of it. All the various parts of the body move both at different speeds and at different times, and a certain amount of momentum is needed to arrive at this impact position. On average a skilled golfer is shifting twice as much pressure forward in the downswing than they are in the backswing. To use very "average" numbers, they are 50R/50L pressure at address, 80R/20L by some point early in the backswing, then shifting back to reach 20R/80L by impact. 30 back, 60 forward. Obviously this varies at every stage based on the player, but not by much and the ratios generally stay the same, which is the important part. If we *started* in impact position then we're presented with two potentially fatal problems:

- To shift from 20R/80L to 80R/20L in the backswing is a huge amount of movement which = more moving parts AND more potential momentum generation. With that big of a shift you're primed to generate a ton of speed and momentum in the downswing, far more than what most people can effectively manage or even know what to do with. You only see this type of action via the types of preset movements you see in the high levels of competitive long drive as it creates maximum power but with low accuracy/consistency. 

- To maintain a standard relationship and only shift back "30" taking us from 20R/80L to 50R/50L then we're functionally never getting our center of mass "behind" the ball. This is basically extreme Stack and Tilt which is functional with shorter clubs but becomes progressively more difficult as the clubs get longer. You're basically forced into a very negative AoA unless you start employing damaging compensations.

So If we *start* in our desired impact position, then we're just creating a ton of inefficiency, a bit like saying "if a pitcher knows where he wants to release the ball...



.....then why doesn't he start his wind-up here?"

 

Lots of good points in here, it got me thinking for sure. 

 

Re: Your 50/50 vs 80/20 R/L principle-   

Quote

With that big of a shift you're primed to generate a ton of speed and momentum in the downswing, far more than what most people can effectively manage or even know what to do with. You only see this type of action via the types of preset movements you see in the high levels of competitive long drive as it creates maximum power but with low accuracy/consistency. 

 

This might be a correlation vs causation issue.  Can we be certain that this type of move actually causes less accuracy?  Or is it that the group who use it mostly are long drive bros who were never accurate ballstrikers the first place? 

 

I may be misunderstanding exactly how ground forces work, but if we are pushing off with the left foot early in the backswing, wouldn't there be more stability and also more force creation if we start with our weight preloaded on the foot we are pushing off from?

 

If the first "Ground Forces" move is to push off with the left foot, and all of the early lateral force is coming from that move i dont see the benefit of starting 50/50.  Maybe there's something with rotational forces and torque that dont work if the weight is started on the front foot.

[betarhoalphadelta]

1 hour ago, badpokerbadgolf said:

 

I may be misunderstanding exactly how ground forces work, but if we are pushing off with the left foot early in the backswing, wouldn't there be more stability and also more force creation if we start with our weight preloaded on the foot we are pushing off from?

 

If the first "Ground Forces" move is to push off with the left foot, and all of the early lateral force is coming from that move i dont see the benefit of starting 50/50.  Maybe there's something with rotational forces and torque that dont work if the weight is started on the front foot.

 

I'm not sure we're "pushing off" our left foot in the backswing. Feels vs real alert here, but in my last lesson one of my issues is too much lateral sway away from the target in the takeaway, and one of the feels to help avoid that is to feel the right hip working back WITHOUT pushing off the left foot. 

 

I'd have to see what golfers do for that first move on the takeaway i.e. if there's a momentary spike of pressure on the left foot, but I think the idea of "feeling" like it's not happening is because it's really easy to overdo it and end up with too much sway like me. 

 

Bear in mind as well that when you look at the measured movements in elite swings, there is a very slight movement of the pelvis away from the target, 0-1", in the backswing, but a significant move towards the target before/in transition and early downswing. You can see the trace of the pro in the below video, but I think relative to address, it's commonly a 3-4" shift towards the target at impact in pro golfers.  

 

If you preset at impact position you're probably thinking of some rotation of your pelvis and shoulders and getting the hands in front of the ball. But you're probably not recognizing that your pelvis might be shifted 3-4 INCHES closer to the target in a true preset of impact position than it would be in a typical address position. That's a LOT of shift that you'll have to take away in the backswing, stop before/in transition to recenter, and just a lot of movement in general to manage properly... 

 

 

[badpokerbadgolf]

14 minutes ago, betarhoalphadelta said:

 

I'm not sure we're "pushing off" our left foot in the backswing. Feels vs real alert here, but in my last lesson one of my issues is too much lateral sway away from the target in the takeaway, and one of the feels to help avoid that is to feel the right hip working back WITHOUT pushing off the left foot. 

 

I'd have to see what golfers do for that first move on the takeaway i.e. if there's a momentary spike of pressure on the left foot, but I think the idea of "feeling" like it's not happening is because it's really easy to overdo it and end up with too much sway like me. 

 

Bear in mind as well that when you look at the measured movements in elite swings, there is a very slight movement of the pelvis away from the target, 0-1", in the backswing, but a significant move towards the target before/in transition and early downswing. You can see the trace of the pro in the below video, but I think relative to address, it's commonly a 3-4" shift towards the target at impact in pro golfers.  

 

If you preset at impact position you're probably thinking of some rotation of your pelvis and shoulders and getting the hands in front of the ball. But you're probably not recognizing that your pelvis might be shifted 3-4 INCHES closer to the target in a true preset of impact position than it would be in a typical address position. That's a LOT of shift that you'll have to take away in the backswing, stop before/in transition to recenter, and just a lot of movement in general to manage properly... 

 

 

Of course the hips will have to make a full rotation also.  I don't see that as a bad thing, as it could create more momentum and speed.   Yes it is a lot of moving parts to manage, but that could be said for any golf swing. 

[bakere]

I've been experimenting with this lately. Not so much get to where I want to be at impact, but more just changing some body alignments at setup to aid in shot shape.

 

When I started golf 3 years ago it made sense to be as neutral as I could be so I could build the basics of a swing pattern with lessons. Now after developing a decent pattern I finally started changing setup alignments to match some of my preferences. I have a very strong grip, like external rotation in my right shoulder, and am always working to sidebend more through impact. With a neutral setup my misses, especially trying off speed partial shots were pulls and fats. This is because my clubface was in such a strong position if I released early at all the face was super shut. Awesome when I am trying to rip the ball. Horrible for actual golf trying to hit yardages consistently. By opening the club face at setup, and opening my stance with shorter clubs, I was able to match my face to path better, resulting in much straigher shots. Opposite for longer clubs, which I have a tendency to wipe a bit, by closing the stance a hair and lowering my hands/shutting the face I can get a straighter, more well struck, pull fade.

 

Now ideally I would love to have a neutral grip, stance, swing pattern etc. But at some point I think you have to work with your tendencies to create a pattern you are comfortable repeating.

 

 

[Valtiel]

5 hours ago, badpokerbadgolf said:

 

Lots of good points in here, it got me thinking for sure. 

 

Re: Your 50/50 vs 80/20 R/L principle-   

 

This might be a correlation vs causation issue.  Can we be certain that this type of move actually causes less accuracy?  Or is it that the group who use it mostly are long drive bros who were never accurate ballstrikers the first place? 

 

I may be misunderstanding exactly how ground forces work, but if we are pushing off with the left foot early in the backswing, wouldn't there be more stability and also more force creation if we start with our weight preloaded on the foot we are pushing off from?

 

If the first "Ground Forces" move is to push off with the left foot, and all of the early lateral force is coming from that move i dont see the benefit of starting 50/50.  Maybe there's something with rotational forces and torque that dont work if the weight is started on the front foot.

Good questions, and @betarhoalphadelta addressed the only concerning bit which is the idea that we "push" off our lead side to start the backswing. Even the fastest LD guys don't really do this, but they will do a version of starting with their weight way forward as sort of "rocking back and forth" trigger move like this. This creates both more momentum for backswing rotation and kicks off what looks like a sort of bouncing vertical force, almost like timing jumps on a trampoline, ultimately to facilitate the insane combo of vertical and torque forces that cause his lead side to fly off the ground at and after impact. These are all moves to create speed, and anything that creates speed with extra moving parts will inherently create inconsistency when it comes to accuracy, strike, and face control. Unfortunately it isn't as simple as "long drive bros that were never accurate", it's a pretty hard and fast physics problem. More speed = more pronounced gear effects on *any* mishit, even the slightest ones, and that means more curvature combined with that fact that more speed makes it inherently harder to hit the center of the face consistently, so a bit of a double whammy. There is an inverse correlation with speed and accuracy that is one part skill related by two parts simple physics. That is one of the reasons 2000 Tiger Woods was such a freak, because for that one year he was massively longer than everyone else AND measurably more accurate, a stat that has basically never been replicated and only been sniffed at again by Tiger during his second "prime" during the Haney years (06'-09'). 

Getting back to the topic of pressure shifting though, "pushing" often gets a lot of people in trouble because it's almost by definition excessive the purposes of using a stick to hit a ball on the ground. As @iacas helpfully pointed out, pressure shifting =/= mass shifting, and many folks that initially don't shift pressure correctly end up over doing it in the opposite direction and start doing things that resemble "pushing", and thus shifting larger amounts of mass, which almost always results in a host of problems. *If* the golf swing were only about creating lateral and vertical forces then big pushes back and forth would make sense as it would be the best way to create power, and you might consider presetting things in the way you described in the original topic. However to understand what you're supposed to *do* with the pressure you shift and how this enables all the weird and unintuitive rotational components to the golf swing (detailed in the video @betarhoalphadelta posted above) is to understand how excess pushing/shifting/momentum is actually detrimental. Everyone has a ceiling beyond which more momentum is "unharnessable" and starts to compromise all the little elements of consistency that are needed to play good golf, and to utilize the kinds of presetting/pushing sorts of ideas you're talking about would put most golfers into that category. There are however little trigger moves that many pros use that are very small versions of what you're talking about. Sometimes they are slight bumps forward to then kickoff a bump back, but often times they are the opposite, presetting the "back" very early to for the purposes of creating more time to get forward since shifts in the lower body are inherently more sluggish. 

If I had to summarize all this it would be to stress that the entire golf swing when fundamentally sound is a delicate balance of MANY little moving parts, and whether you realize it fully or not what you're suggesting would end up amounting to "lets take a couple of parts and create the potential to jack them up 3x because more should be better" which unfortunately is only going to practical for a tiny percentage of genetic freaks that do stuff like Berkshire does above. I hope all that makes sense!

[stryper]

Where you start does not guarantee where you’ll “finish” (at impact).  Best bet is to set up in an athletic position to give you the best chance of getting where you need to be.  Anything more contrived than that is a fool’s errand. 

[me05501]

I've played with lots of guys who don't use a neutral setup, especially with the driver.

 

There are plenty of people who just figure out what works for them and roll with it.