Post by Richie3Jack on Dec 19, 2013 10:10:02 GMT -5
I have always liked Arnold Palmer as when I first started to play golf I asked my dad why he was so popular and he replied ‘because golf was always thought of as a game for the wealthy and Arnie made it a game for the common man.’
Unfortunately, despite his efforts the game seems to always want to revert back to a game for the wealthy. The last movement came in the early 2000’s where there was a real boom of golf course properties with exorbitant membership fees. I remember when I moved to Atlanta I simply could not afford a membership anywhere. It was mostly courses with private equity ownership deals consisting of having to purchase over-priced homes starting at $500K. If not, you were looking at minimum $10k initiation fees. While the people from Atlanta are usually slow to learn any lesson, I would think that they learned their lesson here as the majority of those courses went belly up. Many of those courses were bought out by Canongate Golf which owns 23 courses in the Atlanta area and they were smart enough to provide a business model with an affordable membership fee.
Anyway, I think golf is making a slow, but steady comeback. But when I think of The King I think of what he brought to the game and developed and I can only think that down the line the industry will trample all over that, again.
As far as his swing goes, it’s pretty common to think of Arnie’s whirly bird finish. The key is to understand what could have caused that. He was also known to hit it long and low with this dynamic, piercing ball flight. I love this video of Arnie’s swing because he just looks like he pulverizes the ball.
So, let’s take a look at his swing sequence:
I think this is good p1 position for a golfer. He is not using a 'flat spine' so his eyes can look directly at a ball. As Mike Maves said, you should be able to look at the ball at address like you would try to read a menu. You would not have your chin up and look downward to read a menu. The feet are flared. Arnie wasn't flat or upright with the lead arm in the backswing and the right foot flare helped with that. Grip is neutral (I prefer a stronger grip for release purposes, but Arnie had more than enough grip strength to release it how he desired).
He noticeably turns the left shoulder downward here. And he also brings the club well inside. This will get the hand path inward. He has quite a bit of torso rotation at this point as well which explains why he brought the club so far inside.
The camera angle from the caddy view is a bit high and that's why we see his right arm so far above his left. He's still fairly centered over the ball and his right leg is basically straight with the right knee looking like it is locked. I'm not a fan of locking the rear knee because it can cause a lot of downswing sequence issues. The hips can end up turning too much too early and lose their range of motion. And if you're overturned at p4 the body may have issues rotating enough in the downswing. Clubface is also closed which would start to help promote the low ball flight as it de-lofts the club at impact.
I also think this is where we could possibly see that 'whirly bird' finish...Palmer's method of preventing the clubface from closing any further so he didn't start hitting duck hooks.
I do not believe the DTL view is p4. Instead it looks like p4.2 or so. The main reason is if we look at the previous frame from DTL, the hips are much more rotated. They would not become less rotated at p4. They would only become less rotated as he transitions to the downswing. His clubface is also no longer too closed. However, I still feel that the whirly bird finish was likely as a reaction to his closed clubface at p3.5. When he hit bad shots, he was probably not getting the clubface to square up as much. His head is very stable from the caddy view. It has not even swiveled that much. Elbows are fairly close together. That combined with getting the #3 PP on the side prevents him from getting across the line.
Arnie was know to find trouble off the tee. I think he was a unique bomber because he likely didn't hit it high, but generated so much club head speed that he could still hit it long. And with the spinnier persimmon heads and balata balls, he could blow it by many of his contemporaries. Today a bomber has to hit it very high in order to bomb it past his contemporaries. However, for the caddy view I think we see why he had some issues off the tee as his hand path is quite narrow. This will likely steepen the attack angle and lower the launch angle and can cause some issues with controlling the face angle. However, I find that these narrow hand paths tend to work better for iron play. Given how great of a player Palmer was, I would believe that he was a dominant iron player, particular from the Danger Zone which was probably 150-200 yards back in those days. I think his driving was probably overall above the average, mainly because of his distance. His accuracy and precision likely left a lot to be desired, but he was such a great scrambler and trouble shot player that it didn't matter. I think he was probably a lot like Phil Mickelson, but instead of being poor off the tee like Mickelson, he was probably near the average in effectiveness off the tee.
In TGM terms, this would be considered a classic single plane shift. He goes up the elbow plane and then shifts to the shoulder plane. Some may find that his shaft plane is a bit steep and call it 'over the top.' But, his shaft is pointing right at the baseline. He just has the left arm out a little more than say, Ben Hogan.
So when looking at this position I am generally more focused on how the club is angled with relation to the baseline. Brendon de Jonge is often considered to come 'over the top', but in reality he has the left arm jutted out more. This will still likely produce a steeper attack angle and De Jonge's attack angle is at -4 to -5*. I would be that Arnie's is probably in the -3 to -4* range.
Not much to tell here because it's not at p6. Shoulders look a few degrees open and the hips look about 10 degrees open. The Center of Pressure appears to be shifting leftward and not backwards or towards the left heel. This means he'll generate power with the rotation of the hips and torso, but won't 'spin out.' The clubface looks pretty square to me.
Lots of fantastic stuff here and I think it shows why I feel he was a great iron player. The only thing missing here is a lack of extension which will keep the attack angle steeper and promote that lower ball flight. We can also see the lack of extension as there is not a lot of side tilt going on here either. I love how his right knee has 'kicked in' towards his left leg without over flexing and making the shoulders rotate too vertically. This isn't the best swing for effective driving, IMO, but I think it would promote incredible iron play.
I didn't show p10 from the caddy view because I wanted to show the lack of body extension that Palmer had. This would keep the attack angle fairly steep along with his more upright shaft plane at p5. This would help explain the whirly bird finish. Between the closed clubface at p3.5 and steep attack angle he could not afford to close the clubface. I've seen on Trackman and FlightScope where I will hit a low tumbling slightly pull-draw where the path is not an issue, but the face angle being closed 2-3* at impact is. To play golf at Arnie's level, he simply could not afford to hit those shots. And thus he had to do whatever he could from closing the face at impact, even by 2 degrees.
3JACK
Unfortunately, despite his efforts the game seems to always want to revert back to a game for the wealthy. The last movement came in the early 2000’s where there was a real boom of golf course properties with exorbitant membership fees. I remember when I moved to Atlanta I simply could not afford a membership anywhere. It was mostly courses with private equity ownership deals consisting of having to purchase over-priced homes starting at $500K. If not, you were looking at minimum $10k initiation fees. While the people from Atlanta are usually slow to learn any lesson, I would think that they learned their lesson here as the majority of those courses went belly up. Many of those courses were bought out by Canongate Golf which owns 23 courses in the Atlanta area and they were smart enough to provide a business model with an affordable membership fee.
Anyway, I think golf is making a slow, but steady comeback. But when I think of The King I think of what he brought to the game and developed and I can only think that down the line the industry will trample all over that, again.
As far as his swing goes, it’s pretty common to think of Arnie’s whirly bird finish. The key is to understand what could have caused that. He was also known to hit it long and low with this dynamic, piercing ball flight. I love this video of Arnie’s swing because he just looks like he pulverizes the ball.
So, let’s take a look at his swing sequence:
I think this is good p1 position for a golfer. He is not using a 'flat spine' so his eyes can look directly at a ball. As Mike Maves said, you should be able to look at the ball at address like you would try to read a menu. You would not have your chin up and look downward to read a menu. The feet are flared. Arnie wasn't flat or upright with the lead arm in the backswing and the right foot flare helped with that. Grip is neutral (I prefer a stronger grip for release purposes, but Arnie had more than enough grip strength to release it how he desired).
He noticeably turns the left shoulder downward here. And he also brings the club well inside. This will get the hand path inward. He has quite a bit of torso rotation at this point as well which explains why he brought the club so far inside.
The camera angle from the caddy view is a bit high and that's why we see his right arm so far above his left. He's still fairly centered over the ball and his right leg is basically straight with the right knee looking like it is locked. I'm not a fan of locking the rear knee because it can cause a lot of downswing sequence issues. The hips can end up turning too much too early and lose their range of motion. And if you're overturned at p4 the body may have issues rotating enough in the downswing. Clubface is also closed which would start to help promote the low ball flight as it de-lofts the club at impact.
I also think this is where we could possibly see that 'whirly bird' finish...Palmer's method of preventing the clubface from closing any further so he didn't start hitting duck hooks.
I do not believe the DTL view is p4. Instead it looks like p4.2 or so. The main reason is if we look at the previous frame from DTL, the hips are much more rotated. They would not become less rotated at p4. They would only become less rotated as he transitions to the downswing. His clubface is also no longer too closed. However, I still feel that the whirly bird finish was likely as a reaction to his closed clubface at p3.5. When he hit bad shots, he was probably not getting the clubface to square up as much. His head is very stable from the caddy view. It has not even swiveled that much. Elbows are fairly close together. That combined with getting the #3 PP on the side prevents him from getting across the line.
Arnie was know to find trouble off the tee. I think he was a unique bomber because he likely didn't hit it high, but generated so much club head speed that he could still hit it long. And with the spinnier persimmon heads and balata balls, he could blow it by many of his contemporaries. Today a bomber has to hit it very high in order to bomb it past his contemporaries. However, for the caddy view I think we see why he had some issues off the tee as his hand path is quite narrow. This will likely steepen the attack angle and lower the launch angle and can cause some issues with controlling the face angle. However, I find that these narrow hand paths tend to work better for iron play. Given how great of a player Palmer was, I would believe that he was a dominant iron player, particular from the Danger Zone which was probably 150-200 yards back in those days. I think his driving was probably overall above the average, mainly because of his distance. His accuracy and precision likely left a lot to be desired, but he was such a great scrambler and trouble shot player that it didn't matter. I think he was probably a lot like Phil Mickelson, but instead of being poor off the tee like Mickelson, he was probably near the average in effectiveness off the tee.
In TGM terms, this would be considered a classic single plane shift. He goes up the elbow plane and then shifts to the shoulder plane. Some may find that his shaft plane is a bit steep and call it 'over the top.' But, his shaft is pointing right at the baseline. He just has the left arm out a little more than say, Ben Hogan.
So when looking at this position I am generally more focused on how the club is angled with relation to the baseline. Brendon de Jonge is often considered to come 'over the top', but in reality he has the left arm jutted out more. This will still likely produce a steeper attack angle and De Jonge's attack angle is at -4 to -5*. I would be that Arnie's is probably in the -3 to -4* range.
Not much to tell here because it's not at p6. Shoulders look a few degrees open and the hips look about 10 degrees open. The Center of Pressure appears to be shifting leftward and not backwards or towards the left heel. This means he'll generate power with the rotation of the hips and torso, but won't 'spin out.' The clubface looks pretty square to me.
Lots of fantastic stuff here and I think it shows why I feel he was a great iron player. The only thing missing here is a lack of extension which will keep the attack angle steeper and promote that lower ball flight. We can also see the lack of extension as there is not a lot of side tilt going on here either. I love how his right knee has 'kicked in' towards his left leg without over flexing and making the shoulders rotate too vertically. This isn't the best swing for effective driving, IMO, but I think it would promote incredible iron play.
I didn't show p10 from the caddy view because I wanted to show the lack of body extension that Palmer had. This would keep the attack angle fairly steep along with his more upright shaft plane at p5. This would help explain the whirly bird finish. Between the closed clubface at p3.5 and steep attack angle he could not afford to close the clubface. I've seen on Trackman and FlightScope where I will hit a low tumbling slightly pull-draw where the path is not an issue, but the face angle being closed 2-3* at impact is. To play golf at Arnie's level, he simply could not afford to hit those shots. And thus he had to do whatever he could from closing the face at impact, even by 2 degrees.
3JACK
