Posted by: tom.guerry (tom.guerry@kp.org) on Mon Dec 4 08:58:16 2006

Jack -

Applying learnings from the golf swing to hitting does require caution, however, I have found it can be done with a big upside. The upside is understanding better the sequence of motion and synching of weight shift and the distinct roles of the front and back sides and how they blend.

What I have found is that the best swing to use for comparison sake, however, is the old fashioned hickory shfat swing which required maximal arm action.

With the move to the metal shaft, golf mechanics underwent a huge change best exemplified by Hogan and has diverged more and more from the golf swing that resembles hitting enough to afford a useful perspective on how to swing in hitting.

The ONLY adequate source descrbing the old fashioned swing is Bobby Jones, with perhaps the greatest of all instructional works ever - BOBBY JONES ON GOLF.

Unfortunately, the game has eveolved and what he describes no longer applies so well to the modern game, BUT it does apply to the areas in hitting that tend to resist giving up their secrets by video/surface/analysis alone - particularly how a good swing plane gets created and adjusted.

I have found that this fits extremely well with your hitting swing model, becasue you discovered and describe best the KEY difference between golf and hitting which also turns out to be the key between average and great swings - how the top hand and back arm are used.

In Jones golf swing, he had a sense of the different roles of the back and front sides, top and bottom hands, and he "sqaured the club" NOT with forearm rotation (on full out shots which most resemble hitting with power) but by torso rotation with a well connected lead arm/front side with timing controlled by backside/back hand action.

As swingbuster points out, One of the intended/useful uses of the "swing down" cue is to encourage increasing weight shift so that the player does not reverse pivot and let the weight fall back prior to contact which usually will result in/or be a sign of inadequate/premature unloading resulting in compensations to avoid or minimize deceleration before contact with degradation of timing.

Here is another golf source that gets at the usefulness of thinking in terms of how planes need to be formed in golf. A letter to and answer from Jim Hardy, author of the golf book, THE PLANE TRUTH:



READER QUESTION:Would it be fair to say that the percentage of one-planers among PGA teaching professional is higher than the average among weekend golfers? I ask because I recently took a lesson from a teacher I would now—having read your article—regard as a one-planer (with predictable results, me seeing myself in the two-planer model you describe). Care to hazard a guess what percentage of golfers overall are one-planers vs. two-planers?
-- S.S.

Hardy responds:
S.S.: Interesting questions that you pose. I do not know the percentage of the two swing types and would hate to venture a guess. However, I can tell you my theory on how they end up in either swing type. A plane contains two elements due to the location of the ball with respect to where we stand; 1) circular, due to the side-on nature of standing beside the target line, not on it; and 2) up and down, due to the ball located on the ground. Given these two elements, I think that people, when they start the game, certainly without realizing it, sense one element more than the other. They either sense the game is side-on, like baseball and swing more around, becoming one-planers. The others primarily sense the ball being on the ground and swing more up and down, becoming two-planers.

Both beginning forays have their pluses and minuses. The more rounded one-planer will tend to top (bad news) until he learns the importance of maintaining a consistent spine angle and a better body turn. However, he will probably never suffer bad slicing (good news).

The two-planer will, on the other hand, more easily get the ball into the air (good news), but will probably slice (bad news) until he learns to time the swing of the arms and the turning of the body.

http://www.golfdigest.com/instruction/index.ssf?/instruction/gd200505planeletters.html

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Again, I would caution that the "old fashioned Jones type swing" required max arm action which inclluded a 2 plane pattern to permit better arm control of the swing.

Therefore, a baseball hitter would tend to be more conscious only of trying to swing around the body which can lead to poor coil/casting/slicing/poor plane match/hitting around the ball UNLESS he can learn better use of the back side "top hand" [top hand in hitting] which also means better synched weight shift and NO reverse pivot.

This is one way "swing down" can be a useful cue EVEN though as Williams points out, you always want a swing that is upsloping through contact.

IF you are intertested, I can present the Bobby Jones info and suggest how it might be translated to shed light on optimizing swing plane creation and swing timing.

Jones also has the HUGE advantage of MANY hours of instructional video that is not only available, but easily accessible via the golf channel or accessible on the net for Christmas shoppers looking for something to get the swing eccentric who seems to have everything.