Post by Richie3Jack on Feb 18, 2014 9:43:57 GMT -5
Doug Sanders was before my time as a player. The only things I knew about him were his flashy clothes, that most horrific missed short putts in the history of missed short putts and of course that super short and super flat backswing.
When I think of Doug Sanders I think of my friend Kevin that I grew up playing golf with. From a pure talent perspective, Kevin had a lot of it. I’ve seen him be able to do just about everything incredibly well on the course, from driving to putting to long bunker shots to flop shots, etc.
The problem with Kevin is that he had horrendous mechanics and even crazier was he could completely do a 180 in his mechanics in 1-day. Some people refer to this as ‘spectruming’…going from one extreme to the other. And for Kevin I had seen him, quite often, swing as upright and take the club as outside more than Eamonn Darcy. He would hit it REALLY GOOD for 2-3 weeks and then it would completely fall apart to the point where you would think this was not the same player.
Kevin would then ask for advice and we, in our non-mechanical brains, would tell him that he’s taking the club too far outside and needs to take it more inside. And by the next day he would be swinging like Doug Sanders and hitting it really well. That’s before it would collapse 2-3 weeks later and we would say ‘you’re swinging as flat as Doug Sanders’ because we couldn’t think of another golfer that swung that flat.
Since we didn’t have cameras, Kevin would stop believing us before he just simply could not hit the ball anymore. Anyway, I have never come across a golfer that could so quickly go from one extreme to the next
(CLICK TO ENLARGE)
P1 – Nothing really out of the ordinary here. The feel are flared. The only thing a bit unusual is the grip. The hands look more split apart from each other.
P2 – He gets his hands a bit wide, but no hyperextension of the left arm. The big thing about this backswing to me is figuring out how Sanders was able to swing this short because I believe that the brain tells the body to keep swinging until it feels like it has enough leverage to initiate a downswing with power.
P3 – We start to see some of how he was able to execute the short backswing. You can’t tell from this angle, but this picture shows him turning the left shoulder downward so his shoulder plane is more steep than flat.
(CLICK TO ENLARGE)
The other part of the equation is the lack of wrist cock. Lastly, he keeps his elbows close together.
This provides the feeling of ascent and allows him to generate enough leverage to where he feels he can initiate the downswing. And for such a short backswing, he has as much shoulder turn as many longer swings.
I think this is a good swing for higher handicaps to understand because it shows the difference between the body pivot moving the club in the backswing and the role that the arm swing plays in most golfer’s swings. For Sanders, his backswing was all body pivot from p2.5 or so. And if you’re a golfer looking to shorten your backswing, then you really need to figure out how to reduce the amount of arm swing thru pivoting the body and getting the elbows closer together.
P4 – He would be p3.5 for most golfers. There’s not a lot of hip turn or hip and knee slant here in part because of the shortness of the backswing. The difficult part I would believe is to get that sequencing and body rotation. With a longer swing one can start rotating the body on the downswing because they have more time to do so since the hands have to travel a longer distance into P5 and P6. With Sanders’ swing, the distance to p5 and p6 for the hands is shorter, so the body rotation needs to be quicker.
P6 – This is really good. His body has moved laterally, getting the CoP towards the left foot with the body rotating. There’s no excessive axis tilt here either. His head stays back and I think that is to help him get the ball in the air. I believe Sanders was a very low ball hitter and would explain his playing well at the British Open.
P7 – If you look at pictures of younger Sanders he looks in fantastic shape and has a bigger upper body. I think that was vital for his swing since he had to rotate so quickly in the downswing and needed the arm and grip strength to not flip. But I would think if you played with him and got to see that he could strike the ball you would think you were in for a long day against him because the swing is so short that it seems ridiculously simple.
3JACK
When I think of Doug Sanders I think of my friend Kevin that I grew up playing golf with. From a pure talent perspective, Kevin had a lot of it. I’ve seen him be able to do just about everything incredibly well on the course, from driving to putting to long bunker shots to flop shots, etc.
The problem with Kevin is that he had horrendous mechanics and even crazier was he could completely do a 180 in his mechanics in 1-day. Some people refer to this as ‘spectruming’…going from one extreme to the other. And for Kevin I had seen him, quite often, swing as upright and take the club as outside more than Eamonn Darcy. He would hit it REALLY GOOD for 2-3 weeks and then it would completely fall apart to the point where you would think this was not the same player.
Kevin would then ask for advice and we, in our non-mechanical brains, would tell him that he’s taking the club too far outside and needs to take it more inside. And by the next day he would be swinging like Doug Sanders and hitting it really well. That’s before it would collapse 2-3 weeks later and we would say ‘you’re swinging as flat as Doug Sanders’ because we couldn’t think of another golfer that swung that flat.
Since we didn’t have cameras, Kevin would stop believing us before he just simply could not hit the ball anymore. Anyway, I have never come across a golfer that could so quickly go from one extreme to the next
(CLICK TO ENLARGE)
P1 – Nothing really out of the ordinary here. The feel are flared. The only thing a bit unusual is the grip. The hands look more split apart from each other.
P2 – He gets his hands a bit wide, but no hyperextension of the left arm. The big thing about this backswing to me is figuring out how Sanders was able to swing this short because I believe that the brain tells the body to keep swinging until it feels like it has enough leverage to initiate a downswing with power.
P3 – We start to see some of how he was able to execute the short backswing. You can’t tell from this angle, but this picture shows him turning the left shoulder downward so his shoulder plane is more steep than flat.
(CLICK TO ENLARGE)
The other part of the equation is the lack of wrist cock. Lastly, he keeps his elbows close together.
This provides the feeling of ascent and allows him to generate enough leverage to where he feels he can initiate the downswing. And for such a short backswing, he has as much shoulder turn as many longer swings.
I think this is a good swing for higher handicaps to understand because it shows the difference between the body pivot moving the club in the backswing and the role that the arm swing plays in most golfer’s swings. For Sanders, his backswing was all body pivot from p2.5 or so. And if you’re a golfer looking to shorten your backswing, then you really need to figure out how to reduce the amount of arm swing thru pivoting the body and getting the elbows closer together.
P4 – He would be p3.5 for most golfers. There’s not a lot of hip turn or hip and knee slant here in part because of the shortness of the backswing. The difficult part I would believe is to get that sequencing and body rotation. With a longer swing one can start rotating the body on the downswing because they have more time to do so since the hands have to travel a longer distance into P5 and P6. With Sanders’ swing, the distance to p5 and p6 for the hands is shorter, so the body rotation needs to be quicker.
P6 – This is really good. His body has moved laterally, getting the CoP towards the left foot with the body rotating. There’s no excessive axis tilt here either. His head stays back and I think that is to help him get the ball in the air. I believe Sanders was a very low ball hitter and would explain his playing well at the British Open.
P7 – If you look at pictures of younger Sanders he looks in fantastic shape and has a bigger upper body. I think that was vital for his swing since he had to rotate so quickly in the downswing and needed the arm and grip strength to not flip. But I would think if you played with him and got to see that he could strike the ball you would think you were in for a long day against him because the swing is so short that it seems ridiculously simple.
3JACK
