The classic grip was more in the fingers, promoting a faster hand action, and the classic golfer typically aligned slightly right of the pin and positioned the ball further back in his stance (centre for the 5-iron and even nearer the right foot for the short clubs).
Foot action was also more pronounced, with the left heel lifting high off the ground in the backswing, basically because the thick tweeds the players wore restricted easy movement. The arms were also kept close to the body, the right elbow tucked in at the top, the left on the follow through, and the overall action was quite rotary on a flattish plane. The classic swinger also hit against a ‘firm left side’ which, with his set-up and swing shape, produced theoretically a right to left shot, hopefully a draw.
The modern swing, in contrast, has much more emphasis on body movement. The legs drive, the hips turn, the arms follow and, in theory, the bottom of the arc is extended through impact, keeping closer to the ground for longer and hitting the ball further.
The modern grip is more in the palm of the left hand, more neutral, and exponents talk of “taking their hands out of the game.” They align square or more open to the flag and generally position the ball for all clubs (except the driver) some two inches inside the left heel. With lighter, less restrictive clothes, modern swingers roll their left foot on the backswing and stretch their arms a little further away from the body, creating a more lateral and upright swing, with the clubhead travelling more down the line to the target. All this tends to produce, particularly with modern clubs, a higher ball which flies left to right, hopefully as a power fade.
CLASSIC OR MODERN: BOTH CAN BE RIGHT FOR YOU.
Now what you as a club golfer must further appreciate is that using a hands and arms swing, a classic action, today is not wrong because it is outdated. Equally, it is not imperatively right to use a leg driven modern swing just because most top Tour pros do. The classic swing developed because of the whippy shafted clubs used in earlier times and the need to hit long, low shots under the wind on the firm turfed links. The modern swing is an evolution based on the technology of much stiffer, lighter shafts and the need to hit longer, higher shots, particularly on the stretched, lush courses in the US.
Some top pros appreciated this evolution and quickly adopted it, one being Tony Jacklin. When he started to play on the US Tour in the late 1960’s, he had a classic hands and arms swing. But then he studied the action of fellow pros like Jack Nicklaus and Tom Weiskopf and was soon convinced that he was not making adequate use of his legs to suit the courses they played. The change for him, which simply meant bending his knees a bit more and driving with his legs, took quite a time. Teaching pros today advocate practising a swing change sixty times a day for three solid weeks to groove it. For Jacklin, it involved hitting thousands of balls on dozens of practice areas and he believes he ended up with a slower, more rhythmic action which hit the ball further than he’d ever done before.
Doug once tried to change his swing in a similar way, having read of the ‘new’ Jacklin swing in his favourite golf magazine. He did it in a desperate attempt to cure his hook and hit a few balls on the practice ground one day, taking his remodelled swing onto the course the next. There he found to his horror that he had developed a pernicious push-slice, the ball flying right at forty five degrees to his intended line and then curling even further right, to end usually out-of-bounds, almost level with him. When, in desperation, he tried to revert to his ‘old’ swing on the eighth, he started to take deep divots, advancing the ball only thirty or forty yards forwards at a time. It took him a month in the end to cure his ‘cure’. What he should have realised from the start is that any small swing change, never mind a major reconstruction, demands practice, practice and yet more practice before it can begin to work. Doug, as a club golfer, should also have consulted his club pro before he started and have been guided by him throughout the change.
With the basic differences between the classic and modern swings however, there is one thing you must be very clear about. The hands and arms alone do not solely create the motive power to propel the ball. The whole body plays a part, while the legs are certainly active, not frozen as some would believe. Equally, with the modern swing, while the lower body drives, the arms must swing down fast and free. Both actions are essential motive forces that add power to the swing, be it classical or modern.
Body power is generated by coiling the upper torso against the resistance caused by a flexed right knee and solid feet – a good foundation is all important. These are released automatically on the downswing. The hand and arm action supplies power to the shot by working as a swinging unit and with both forces, good leg action is essential for rhythm and balance during the swing, but perhaps it is not such an important source of power as some have argued. Try hitting a few balls with a 6-iron with your feet together, knees touching. Seve Ballesteros can hit a ball well over 200 yards on his knees.
So what every golfer should be aiming for, whether he has a classic or modern swing, is a balanced combination of hand and arm action and body action which results in the club face hitting squarely through the ball with maximum speed directly towards the target. It is in trying to get this balance, this timing, right that the club golfer can go disastrously wrong.
Too much body action is the major factor that wrecks the timing of many golfers. Often swinging back too far with their hips, with no resistance from knee or feet, they think about using their lower body action too much on the downswing and consequently don’t swing their arms freely enough.
A SWING CHANGE TAKES A LOT OF PRACTICE.
CUTTING EXCESSIVE BODY ACTION, WITH KNEES TOGETHER.
One reason for this may stem from TV programmes and videos that analyse the swings of top players in slow motion. The couch golfer watching Couples or Woosnam, say, may note that their lower bodies move towards the ball before their arms seem to start the downswing. Not appreciating the natural fast hand and arm action of the top pros, the golfer copies the body action alone. Worse still, he may copy bits of the swings of different pros, dovetailing some of Couples’ technique with parts of Woosnam. In that case he should realise that if Couples tried to copy Woosnam’s swing and vice versa, they would probably both have handicaps in double figures.
Copying the top pros without understanding what they are really doing has befuddled golfers since the earliest days of the game. There’s an inevitability about this search for ‘the secret’, shown in P G Wodehouse’s writings on Sandy MacBean and his book How to Become a Scratch Man in Your First Season by Studying Photographs. But today golfers often pick up some very bad habits from trying to copy their favourites – like taking too much time over their shots. They see the Tour professionals preparing to drive, discussing club selection with their caddies, teeing up, putting on their glove and then stepping up to the ball. Then just when you think they’re getting ready to strike, they stop and walk behind and check the line again, throw some grass in the air to check the wind and study the tops of the trees before finally taking up their stance. And then, sometimes, lo and behold, they have a few more practice swings just in case. It’s even more protracted on the greens, some professionals stalking the line of their putts clockwise, counter clockwise tapping down pitchmarks, plumb-bob lining up the hole. Several practice putts, another look here, another look there, all adds ten, fifteen, twenty seconds per shot to the round of golf. It’s no wonder there are so many five-hour rounds played today.
SET A PERSONAL TIME LIMIT FROM THE START