Post by Richie3Jack on Apr 15, 2014 10:06:50 GMT -5
Growing up in Upstate NY and only being about 2 hours from the Canada border the main golfers that were talked about as far as the all time great ballstrikers were Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Lee Trevino and George Knudson.
It was quite common to have Canadian tourists come into our area. We are about 3-4 hours from Toronto and only 2.5 hours to Montreal and Ottawa. It used to be you didn’t even need a passport to get into Canada. You just went to the border, they would ask you if you were there for business or entertainment and they would let you through. In my 5th and 6th grade years our school took us to a field trip to Upper Canada Village. And I knew many people that were either born in Canada or had relatives still living in Canada. In fact, my uncle Brian who married my dad’s sister is Canadian.
Canadians tend to be very soft spoken, but they have a very deep sense of national pride. Particularly when it comes to sports. So I had never seen Knudson swing a club until about 5 years ago. Even though Knudson was from the Central part of Canada (Winnipeg), the Canadians made it be known how great of a ballstriker they thought he was. Ironically, Moe Norman was located closer by in Kitchener, Ontario. I never heard anything about him until the GOLF Magazine and Golf Digest articles were written about him.
Speaking of Moe, he and George were good friends. They both loved ballstriking and eschewed putting. They would play golf together and get a money game going. But instead of basing it on score, they would give something like $50 for each fairway hit and $50 for each green hit and $200 for each flagstick hit on the approach. Then when their ball was on the green they would simply pick it up and go to the next hole. No need to let that silly putting get in the way of their fun.
In fact, George stated that he never tried to have the mindset of 1-putting. He wanted to just 2-putt. Why? Because that was less stressful for him. Knudson was very big on not being stressed in any way, shape or form. In fact, that is why he wore sunglasses, he didn’t even want to have to squint his eyes at any time during a round of golf.
And it shows up in these videos of George taking on Al Geiberger in match play. Simply a tremendous display of ballstriking while a horrible display of putting.
The big thing about Knudson is that he was a very big fan of Hogan. This is what I’ve come across with most Canadian golfers. I think it goes along with their culture, preferring the understated personality with brilliant precision. I think they were more apt to root for Jordan Spieth than they were for Bubba Watson. Bombing the driver doesn’t seem quite like their personality.
CLICK TO ENLARGE
So with that, George wanted a flatter swing like Hogan. George was fairly tall for a golfer at that time, so he would flex his knees more. The main different we see between Knudson and Hogan at the top is that Hogan’s elbows were closer together and the right elbow was lower than the left elbow. This would present more of a laid-off look which at times Hogan did. Knudson’s elbows were further apart and the right elbow was about the same height to the ground as the left elbow. This made a little more of a across-the-line look.
What’s also interesting is Knudson’s knee action. Knudson appears to straighten the right knee slightly into p3. But from p3 to p4 it appears to retain its flex. If you look at the caddy view pictures, take a look at his left knee. It kicks in at p3. But at p4 it kicks out. Perhaps that is not quite p4 and more like p4.1, but the DTL pics show the same thing.
On the downswing George shallows out the shaft plane quite nicely. He then uses more of a CF inline move release. The swing direction being fairly square to the target and the path being a little to the right. However, with irons he was very CP. This may be partially why he was such a great ballstriker, he used CF nicely on the driver without going too far CF and used CP perfectly with the irons. So he could hit the trajectory windows needed without losing a lot of compression.
He was much more ‘squatty’ with his irons than his driver. He appeared to have moderate club head speed for the time and was just ultra precise. If he reminds me of a modern day golfer, I would go with Matteo Manasserro
3JACK
It was quite common to have Canadian tourists come into our area. We are about 3-4 hours from Toronto and only 2.5 hours to Montreal and Ottawa. It used to be you didn’t even need a passport to get into Canada. You just went to the border, they would ask you if you were there for business or entertainment and they would let you through. In my 5th and 6th grade years our school took us to a field trip to Upper Canada Village. And I knew many people that were either born in Canada or had relatives still living in Canada. In fact, my uncle Brian who married my dad’s sister is Canadian.
Canadians tend to be very soft spoken, but they have a very deep sense of national pride. Particularly when it comes to sports. So I had never seen Knudson swing a club until about 5 years ago. Even though Knudson was from the Central part of Canada (Winnipeg), the Canadians made it be known how great of a ballstriker they thought he was. Ironically, Moe Norman was located closer by in Kitchener, Ontario. I never heard anything about him until the GOLF Magazine and Golf Digest articles were written about him.
Speaking of Moe, he and George were good friends. They both loved ballstriking and eschewed putting. They would play golf together and get a money game going. But instead of basing it on score, they would give something like $50 for each fairway hit and $50 for each green hit and $200 for each flagstick hit on the approach. Then when their ball was on the green they would simply pick it up and go to the next hole. No need to let that silly putting get in the way of their fun.
In fact, George stated that he never tried to have the mindset of 1-putting. He wanted to just 2-putt. Why? Because that was less stressful for him. Knudson was very big on not being stressed in any way, shape or form. In fact, that is why he wore sunglasses, he didn’t even want to have to squint his eyes at any time during a round of golf.
And it shows up in these videos of George taking on Al Geiberger in match play. Simply a tremendous display of ballstriking while a horrible display of putting.
The big thing about Knudson is that he was a very big fan of Hogan. This is what I’ve come across with most Canadian golfers. I think it goes along with their culture, preferring the understated personality with brilliant precision. I think they were more apt to root for Jordan Spieth than they were for Bubba Watson. Bombing the driver doesn’t seem quite like their personality.
CLICK TO ENLARGE
So with that, George wanted a flatter swing like Hogan. George was fairly tall for a golfer at that time, so he would flex his knees more. The main different we see between Knudson and Hogan at the top is that Hogan’s elbows were closer together and the right elbow was lower than the left elbow. This would present more of a laid-off look which at times Hogan did. Knudson’s elbows were further apart and the right elbow was about the same height to the ground as the left elbow. This made a little more of a across-the-line look.
What’s also interesting is Knudson’s knee action. Knudson appears to straighten the right knee slightly into p3. But from p3 to p4 it appears to retain its flex. If you look at the caddy view pictures, take a look at his left knee. It kicks in at p3. But at p4 it kicks out. Perhaps that is not quite p4 and more like p4.1, but the DTL pics show the same thing.
On the downswing George shallows out the shaft plane quite nicely. He then uses more of a CF inline move release. The swing direction being fairly square to the target and the path being a little to the right. However, with irons he was very CP. This may be partially why he was such a great ballstriker, he used CF nicely on the driver without going too far CF and used CP perfectly with the irons. So he could hit the trajectory windows needed without losing a lot of compression.
He was much more ‘squatty’ with his irons than his driver. He appeared to have moderate club head speed for the time and was just ultra precise. If he reminds me of a modern day golfer, I would go with Matteo Manasserro
3JACK