The Natural Golf Swing Read Online Free PDF Page A

could accomplish the move.
    I had no idea that the only way to maintain a firm left wrist was to use my legs, to transfer weight going back and through. My legs, however, moved very little then. I didn’t pay much attention to footwork. The reason? I was stuck on one of golf’s number one misconceptions: keep the head still. I tried to keep my head still and I couldn’t move. The only way I could get the club back was with my hands and arms.

    The hands and wrists are in the same formation at the start and finish.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE LEGS
    It didn’t take long to realize that it was far better to let my legs lead the downswing. Then there isn’t any restriction. The wrist won’t collapse. It’s pulled along by the leg drive. Otherwiseyou’re just flapping your arms and the wrist collapses. Poor shots result; you can’t get power or direction unless the left wrist is firm throughout. Neither can you maintain the hands and wrist in the same formation as at the start. That’s why you want to start the downswing with the legs.
    The hands just flip over when there’s a resistance. You’ve got to get the legs moving. This also keeps the hands quiet, or “passive,” as I prefer to say. Passive hands simply mean that we do nothing consciously with the hands during the swing. I didn’t begin to appreciate what this meant for consistency until I started using my legs. My hands now began to just go along for the ride, to hang on to the club.
    Think about it. When you walk, you’re transferring weight all the time, back and forth, to and fro. The same thing happens in the golf swing; we move away from the ball on our backswing and our weight transfers to our right side. We move through theball to our target and our weight transfers to our left side. If we swing with our hands and arms alone, we’re swinging with less than a full deck. And we’re setting up restrictions and inhibitions. But we want to develop a natural, uninhibited swing motion. We want total freedom of movement. How can we have that when our legs are rooted to the ground like tree stumps? Move the legs and the rest of the body moves. Footwork is so important.

    Top
, start, equal weight distribution;
centre
, loading, 75%-25%
bottom
, unloading, 0-100%.
    After I began to understand weight transfer and the importance of the legs in the swing, I ran into Harvey Penick. Penick is one of the great teachers of all time. All the golfers I admire have talked with him over the years and listened carefully to what he has to say: the list includes Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan, Mickey Wright, Louise Suggs, and Patty Berg. Now Penick told me: “Son, if you’re going to play this game for a living, you’d better learn how to use your legs.”
    Penick’s advice confirmed what I’d noticed on the range. And so I began to work on getting my legs into my swing. It wasn’t easy; I had some bad habits to overcome.
    I’d had a problem as a kid with balance. Because I used my hands as much as I did, I tended to drift. I was a bit of a flailer as I manipulated the clubhead so that I could get it on the ball. But I didn’t need to do that. Instead, I got my legs involved, and by doing so, I was able to eliminate some of the excess hand action. Now that my body was moving, my hands simply worked on their own. I didn’t have to do a thing with them, and what a relief that was. Like everybody else, I’d been seeing hand action while watching golfers. But I was seeing it wrong. It was poor observation on my part.
    Hand action is a result of the swing put in its proper form: what I call a “by-the-way-happening,” an involuntary action. It’s the legs that carry the arms and hands. The arms and hands merely go along for a free ride. This insight introduced muchmore consistency into my game. I learned that weight transfer is the means of moving the hands, arms, and clubhead.

    Load, 75%-25%; start, 50%-50%; unload, 0-100%.
    Still, my balance wasn’t what it could be. I