Post by Richie3Jack on Dec 16, 2013 10:04:21 GMT -5
Tom Weiskopf has one of the forgotten golf swings. When I first started playing golf my dad wanted me to emulate Weiskopf's swing because I was a tall kid and he loved his effortless power that he could generate. And he was generally considered to have one of the premier swings in his life. I'm not quite sure why his swing is not discussed that much these days. In general, I think it's a swing with solid mechanics but not in the same spectrum of Hogan's, Snead's, Nicklaus' or Mac's swings. But, I would have thought that give his fluid motion that it would have been something that more of the golfers in today's internet age would have analyzed ad nauseam.
Here we can see that fluid motion in real time:
The only thing I could think that held Weiskopf from being discussed more was that he was a Grade A, world class shit head. I have a bunch of friends that work in the sports media and most of the time if I ask around enough, I will hear something good about some athlete as a person. Some may be miserable and in particular mean to the press, but typically there are some people with good words and good experience with that athlete. Off the top of my head the athletes that I've never heard anything but wholly negative remarks are Reggie Jackson, Keyshawn Johnson, Brett Myers and Latrell Spreewell. I've never heard anything but negative about Weiskopf. Although this is from the non-sporting press type of people. And that may be an even bigger indictment against Tom. I remember reading years ago about Weiskopf insulting an amateur that he was paired with in the Senior US Open so much that the USGA got involved and profusely apologized to the amateur and even afterwards Weiskopf's explanation was to the effect of 'I can't help myself.'
Anyway, here's a look at a swing sequence from the caddy view
P1: Even golfers back in the 70's preferred having both feet flared at address. What I have seen doing the different analysis of players from this era is that they would have the left foot more flared than the right one. Usually 2-5* flare with the right foot and 10-15* with the left foot.
There are some people that don't like flaring the feet at address. I generally prefer it, particularly for higher handicaps, because it can allow the left arm to not get so upright and promotes more of a pivot based backswing than an arm swing backswing. Typically golfers with more right foot flare get a bit more flat with the lead arm at p4. Here's a look at Weiskopf
He's a little upright here, but not by a lot. Furthermore, it appears that he only has a slight straightening of the rear knee which likely means that the hips stopped rotating at about P3 to P3.5 and his arms lifted from there.
What I really dig about Weikopf's backswing is that he starts with the head behind the ball at address and maintains a nice steady head. One can over-extend the spine (i.e. Natalie Gulbis) or get the head moving a bit to the left (i.e. Zach Johnson when he's not swing well) and then have to 'back up' in the downswing. There's no chance of Weiskopf doing that and I believe that is one of the reasons why he had such terrific rhythm.
I also don't think he had a '1-piece takeaway.' But, he keeps a nice little swing radius in the backswing. He never hyperextends the left arm which can throw off your rhythm and his wrist-cock seems to occur very naturally.
On the downswing, we can see something very noticeable...Weiskopf does not have a lot of lag. However, he was a very long hitter of the ball. Nicklaus didn't have a lot of lag either and bombed it. Part of the issue with having a lot of lag is that with the driver it can be problematic because the face angle is more likely to be open and the dynamic loft will decrease. For Weiskopf and Nicklaus, they could generate a lot of club head speed and not having a lot of lag allowed them to hit the ball high. And if you want to hit the ball long, you had better hit it high.
The other part is that Weiskopf had a lot of 'leg drive' and then has reverse C type of finish. This was very typical of the 70's golf swing with Nicklaus, Miller, Tom Watson and Weiskopf being big examples of it. And when you have the top players all doing it, the public will follow.
Sometime in the 80's the golf instruction world decided that was a bad idea. But the leg drive helps move the Center of Pressure of a golfer's swing to the left foot. It provides enough lateral motion of the body to counter the rotational motion and produce a path that is more square than it would be outside-to-in (too rotational) or inside-to-out (too lateral).
Part of this is done by Weiskopf by him keeping his right foot on the ground at impact. That will provide that lateral movement to help counter some of the rotational movement.
His release style reminds me a lot of Louis Oosthuizen who also hits it a long ways for his size and is generally a very good ballstriker. He also won 1 major...the British Open and is known for his silky smoothe swing. So with that in mind, it doesn't surprise me that Weiskopf was very long and I'm guessing that he hit it super high. I don't have any DTL sequence of his swing, so it's a bit difficult to hypothesize what his ball flight was (draw or fade).
3JACK
Here we can see that fluid motion in real time:
The only thing I could think that held Weiskopf from being discussed more was that he was a Grade A, world class shit head. I have a bunch of friends that work in the sports media and most of the time if I ask around enough, I will hear something good about some athlete as a person. Some may be miserable and in particular mean to the press, but typically there are some people with good words and good experience with that athlete. Off the top of my head the athletes that I've never heard anything but wholly negative remarks are Reggie Jackson, Keyshawn Johnson, Brett Myers and Latrell Spreewell. I've never heard anything but negative about Weiskopf. Although this is from the non-sporting press type of people. And that may be an even bigger indictment against Tom. I remember reading years ago about Weiskopf insulting an amateur that he was paired with in the Senior US Open so much that the USGA got involved and profusely apologized to the amateur and even afterwards Weiskopf's explanation was to the effect of 'I can't help myself.'
Anyway, here's a look at a swing sequence from the caddy view
P1: Even golfers back in the 70's preferred having both feet flared at address. What I have seen doing the different analysis of players from this era is that they would have the left foot more flared than the right one. Usually 2-5* flare with the right foot and 10-15* with the left foot.
There are some people that don't like flaring the feet at address. I generally prefer it, particularly for higher handicaps, because it can allow the left arm to not get so upright and promotes more of a pivot based backswing than an arm swing backswing. Typically golfers with more right foot flare get a bit more flat with the lead arm at p4. Here's a look at Weiskopf
He's a little upright here, but not by a lot. Furthermore, it appears that he only has a slight straightening of the rear knee which likely means that the hips stopped rotating at about P3 to P3.5 and his arms lifted from there.
What I really dig about Weikopf's backswing is that he starts with the head behind the ball at address and maintains a nice steady head. One can over-extend the spine (i.e. Natalie Gulbis) or get the head moving a bit to the left (i.e. Zach Johnson when he's not swing well) and then have to 'back up' in the downswing. There's no chance of Weiskopf doing that and I believe that is one of the reasons why he had such terrific rhythm.
I also don't think he had a '1-piece takeaway.' But, he keeps a nice little swing radius in the backswing. He never hyperextends the left arm which can throw off your rhythm and his wrist-cock seems to occur very naturally.
On the downswing, we can see something very noticeable...Weiskopf does not have a lot of lag. However, he was a very long hitter of the ball. Nicklaus didn't have a lot of lag either and bombed it. Part of the issue with having a lot of lag is that with the driver it can be problematic because the face angle is more likely to be open and the dynamic loft will decrease. For Weiskopf and Nicklaus, they could generate a lot of club head speed and not having a lot of lag allowed them to hit the ball high. And if you want to hit the ball long, you had better hit it high.
The other part is that Weiskopf had a lot of 'leg drive' and then has reverse C type of finish. This was very typical of the 70's golf swing with Nicklaus, Miller, Tom Watson and Weiskopf being big examples of it. And when you have the top players all doing it, the public will follow.
Sometime in the 80's the golf instruction world decided that was a bad idea. But the leg drive helps move the Center of Pressure of a golfer's swing to the left foot. It provides enough lateral motion of the body to counter the rotational motion and produce a path that is more square than it would be outside-to-in (too rotational) or inside-to-out (too lateral).
Part of this is done by Weiskopf by him keeping his right foot on the ground at impact. That will provide that lateral movement to help counter some of the rotational movement.
His release style reminds me a lot of Louis Oosthuizen who also hits it a long ways for his size and is generally a very good ballstriker. He also won 1 major...the British Open and is known for his silky smoothe swing. So with that in mind, it doesn't surprise me that Weiskopf was very long and I'm guessing that he hit it super high. I don't have any DTL sequence of his swing, so it's a bit difficult to hypothesize what his ball flight was (draw or fade).
3JACK
