Directional Changes

Sonny says on Friday, "Get your hands back where they started!  Come on!"  And "Watch my right hip, see it stay in place until the hands go through?  That's what you need or you've got no room for the hands."

I dive back into Athletic Motion Golf and look up hips motions.  Here we go, Pros versus Ams, hip movement...

One of the interesting things that pros do is move their right hip during the backswing and leave their left hip almost motionless and in the setup position.  Amateurs on the other hip, don't move their right hip, but rotate their left hip.  To state this differently, pros rotate around their spine and amateurs rotate around the right hip.  Pros move things out of the downswing path and Ams move stuff in the way.

When the club comes back down you need room for arms and hands to return to the setup position.  If the left hip is in the way, you will have to do something - and it frequently is not pretty - to hit the ball at all.  The pros have left the arm path open, the Ams have to move the left hip out of the way.  But there is another problem, there is not enough time to rotate the left hip out of the way.  So we Ams will stand up or early extend or come over the top.  Frequently, we have to slow something to do that, so we also get slower swing speeds.  If the path is clear, there is no slowing down and you can swing harder/faster with no conflicts and no swing path conflicts.

I spent most of Saturday thinking about this, but for a couple of reasons I didn't go to the range.  Today allowed time to get there and I spent most of my time making sure that I was doing some of this.  I found the ability to easily come from inside to outside for all the clubs.  There was more room for things and it was fairly easy to do. 

This Monday is an interesting golf day.  Normally we play just after the Seniors and go about about 9:30 or so.  But tomorrow it's at 11 since there is another group after the seniors.  I talked it over with Rich 2, I suggested some pickleball in the morning and then mosey over to the course.  Nope, R2 likes his P-Ball on Tuesday and Thursdays, apparently only!  We then agreed to get there about 9 and play the short course then play the long course.  So 27 tomorrow and a good test if I can make this change.