To add insult to injury, my beloved college football team lost again last Saturday!
Unfortunately, I witnessed the defeat in person as my team came into town to face the nation's #3 BCS team. It was a huge loss because it knocked us out of the coveted Rose Bowl.
At least we kept it respectable. We actually led at halftime but we couldn't keep the 'mo going through four quarters. Regardless, we lost and my depression has found new depths of despair. I don't feel like writing about anything right now, let alone golf! In fact, I vow never to write again until my team wins again. With only one more game left in the season, it may be indeed a very long time...
In the meantime, enjoy a newly updated
Swingvision video of Briny Baird hitting an iron off the tee. Oh yeah, Happy Friggin' Thanksgiving.
Last Saturday, my top-10 BCS-ranked college football team went down in flames to a crappy inter-conference team that my high school team could beat.
It was an embarrassing defeat that shot our season to holy hell. This comes on top of my pathetic NFL team scrapping the very bottom of the AFC cellar. As a result, I've been sent into a very deep and dark depression. As you can understand,
the last thing I want to do right now is write about friggin' golf!
I apologize to the handful of souls who visit this site weekly. However, I have made an appointment to see my therapist and maybe she'll bring me out of this funk soon. In the meantime, enjoy the
Eye of the Tiger post that I have updated with a video of Tiger Woods swinging the driver. You can learn so much from these videos! Good luck, and bye for now...
As I have written before, all great swings, whether they be single-plane/two-plane, steep/flat or fast/slow, have one thing in common:
the hands are ahead of the ball at impact.
It is truly a key position for proper ball-striking. Equally as important, if not more important, is the fundamental action that produces this key position.
It is a wrist/forearm motion known as
supination. Ben Hogan emphasized that through impact, the left wrist and the back of the left hand (of a right-handed golfer) should gradually supinate.
In other words, they rotate from nearly a palm-down position toward more of a palm-up position coming into the ball. At impact, the back of the left hand faces toward the target and the knuckles of the left hand should face the ground.
In addition, the left wrist should be flat or bowed through impact.
In the April 1956 issue of Golf Digest, Hogan wrote, "I've noticed one thing that all good golfers do and all bad golfers do not. The good ones have their left wrist leading at impact. It seems a small thing, but I've found it to be universally true. At impact the left wrist of a good player is slightly convex, while that of a poor player is generally concave."
This is all easier said than done. Proper supination with a flat or bowed left wrist is an advanced concept and one that it very difficult for the average golfer to learn. The vast majority of golfers instinctively flip their left wrists forward through impact believing that such an action will produce the optimal results: maximum distance and trajectory. Unfortunately, this couldn't be any farther from the truth.
As with most things in golf, intuition must be thrown out the window. Instead, think of rotating your left wrist without breaking it.
Supination is probably the single most important action in the proper golf swing. Unfortunately, it is also probably the least understood. If you are a golfer and have never heard of "supination" before, you owe it to yourself to fully understand this concept and ensure that it is a part of your swing. If you need hands-on assistance, your friendly neighborhood PGA teaching professional is your best bet. In the meantime, check out this helpful
tip on supination. Also, here's a good reference for all the wrist actions in the golf swing:
The 6 Actions of the Wrists and Forearms.
Labels: Supination, Swing Tips
Unfortunately, I witnessed the defeat in person as my team came into town to face the nation's #3 BCS team. It was a huge loss because it knocked us out of the coveted Rose Bowl.
