The golf swing is defined by Homer as, “The Hinging Action of an Angular Motion on an Incline Plane.” Homer called this the nuts and bolts, heart and soul of a golf swing. The absence of the Flat Left Wrist at impact is the bane of the game. Homer stated that he would not teach a student past that point until they can learn not to bend their left wrist. There is no use or point to go any further because the more information you give them the more confusion will result because nothing works, nothing can work if you bend the left wrist. The science behind this is that the clubhead moving on a flat plane is two-dimensional which means that it has length and width but it has no thickness or depth. So, as soon as you bend the plane line, bend your left wrist, or throw the club, your clubhead orbit becomes three-dimensional and the problems are such where nobody can solve. The machine that you have is the geometry which is the alignments that you are going to have; the physics are the forces you’re going to generate. A mechanical device has structure so these things must be held in a certain place. Feel is your structure. You feel alignments and forces. Clubhead throwaway is an extremely useful tool. To throw the clubhead through the ball will produce a certain result. You can control a result when you understand it but if you do it unintentionally your in trouble. Never do anything unintentionally. You can do anything you want intentionally because there is a way to do it. You can have all kinds of forces operating if you keep them in alignment for then they would be harmonious. The #3 Pressure Point does thrust in Hitting but it does not have to. In Hitting, the Right Arm Thrust is against your thumb. #1 Pressure Point is the real power of the Hitter. One is more inclined to have more thrust on #3 as a Hitter but it doesn’t have to be. You can also divide the Pressure between the two. The problem with the average golfer is he doesn’t know if he is a Swinger or a Hitter and the golfer gets lost in the variations. The more one mixes the components of Swinging and Hitting, the poorer the player and the less consistent that player will be. You cannot be both. If you do try to be both, you will pay a price. Almost all tour players claim that they are swingers for they say that there is no way you can hit a ball, but they are all trying to use right arm thrust. They all say you got to have some right arm in the stroke. Before you start a pattern you must decide if you are going to be a Swinger or a Hitter. The epitome of skill is to use all 9 plane line variations with 3 hinge actions, Hitting or Swinging. When you can do this you have absolutely nothing to fear from anybody. It is not all that much but you will find that the biggest problem is that when you tell somebody to swing out to right field to exaggerate the inside-out, the ball goes over their to. There is only one reason for this because they habitually do this because they align the clubface to the clubhead path. What happens is that divergence produces curves. So to control the curves you have to control and not fear the variations and the alignments. There are 9 plane line variations because you
have the plane line, target line and the stance line. Any 1, 2 or 3 can have the same relationship with the target. There is no wobble in the clubhead attachment; the grip has to control the club. The basic precept of the system is that it is a hands system. You watch your hands, the hands are the information center, communication center, and they are the only way that you can send information to the clubhead or from the clubhead. The hands are the only way that it can be done with enough precision to call it alignments. If you use pivot control hands you don’t have the precision and alignments. I show how to use pivot control hands. It’s not taboo but it’s just that I feel that the hands controlled pivot is a much more accurate way to proceed. Psychological needs must be met. If you do not like one procedure there is one that you can like. The procedures are unlimited and all you have to do is find one that fits. These are all according to law. I voice no opinions, I quote nobody including myself. The hinge assembly controls the clubface alignment. It is similar to the hinge action of a door, meaning that the door goes according to its hinge. All three hinge actions executed on an incline plane which is different than a door for it is operating on a door jam. The hinge action never varies it is what it is. A horizontal hinge is one where its plane of motion is horizontal. Vertical hinge is exactly the same way thing as if you hung the door from the ceiling. You just call it vertical hinging because it’s plain of motion is vertical. Everything that moves from a hinge has hinge action. It is always the same and is at right angles to the hinge pin. There are only three planes which are vertical, horizontal and someplace in between. The clubshaft lays full length on a flat tilted plane. The plane is the heart and soul of the golf swing. In 2-F it states that it is the one thing that everything else must comply with. The plane does not comply with anything or anybody it is there and unless you operate according to that plane the heart and soul of the game is gone. This is plane golf. The plane being inclined is what gives the problems. The clubshaft always points at the plane line except when they are parallel. The lever assembly is driven by exerting pressure against it. You have to move it so you have to apply pressure to it. The items in 1-L are practically axioms that you lean on real hard. No portion of the lever assembly can swing forward independently. This is in reference to the bending left wrist, it is a straight line. If you bend it then you have lost your in line position and centrifugal force will be working against you.
Regardless of how the lever assembly is driven it moves in a circle. You think that because it is driven by the right hand you think it’s going to be driven into the ground. You swing it real sharp it might go into the ground. It moves in a circle. A disputed point is that wrist action is not clubhead velocity for impact. Remember that when you go through impact the clubhead and the hands are moving at the same rate of speed. They have to be. So the clubhead cannot be passing the hands during impact or it wouldn’t be stationary. You can’t change that instantly. Uncocking the wrist does not contribute anything to impact velocity. Uncocking of the wrist is a very tricky thing. Hinge action is actually a downward motion. The wrist action is not a forward motion of the clubhead it is a downward motion. With swinging the uncocking of the wrist is exclusively a centrifugal motion. With hitting, no centrifugal force. When you take the club back with a frozen right wrist, you bend the elbow the left wrist bends and the right wrist hasn’t moved. This is the proper way to hit. So when you straighten the elbow the left wrist uncocks and that’s what uncocks it. So, centrifugal force has no place in hitting. With a swinger you uncock and then roll. Hogan makes the point that his left wrist is all uncocked and he hasn’t even started to hit the ball yet. This is true. He didn’t say why but that is the way it works when you do it right. The swinger uncocks and then rolls. That tremendous speed that you have is what gives you the clubhead speed for the roll and it works out just delicious it comes on the same line and everything is just beautiful. With a swinger it is a sequence release. With a Hitter the roll and uncocking is simultaneous and they have to be, because the right arm is doing the whole thing. It is laying back as it closes so the rolling and uncocking is all going on at the same time and it simply has to because the hands are working that way. You can’t uncock the left wrist without straightening the right arm and you can’t straighten the right arm without having this closing action. As you bend the right arm and don’t move anything else, just bend the right elbow and you’ll get a closing motion of the clubface.
The lever assembly must be driven through impact by an on plane force moving towards the plane line. The on plane force for a swinger is centrifugal force it’s on plane and the clubhead is on plane so it is an on plane force. For the hitter the right forearm is on plane when you start driving.
It is mechanically on plane in relation to the body because the minute you turn the forearm loses its plane. At the top it is not on plane with the plane, but the clubshaft is on plane with the plane. You have to be on plane with the clubshaft in a different manner. The right arm must be always on the aft side of the club. This is a part of the Flying Wedges. It must be driven by an on plane force and this is where people get into trouble because you cannot get the force on plane and the right forearm and everything else on plane, and almost everybody’s right forearm is too high and they flip the club through impact. The reason is if it stayed with the right forearm you’d miss the ball. This is why weight and so forth has such tremendous importance to the on align swing is because you have to have that certain force to maintain the feel that gets you on the ball. Homer stated that he found that when he was playing and practicing and working on these things it made no difference to him, the swing weight of the club at all including the putter or any other club. Because the pressure point pressure will swing the lighter clubs faster and the heavier one’s will have more momentum. So they will come out pretty much the same and there is not that much difference. The reason was that he felt that he was always on plane. He was behind it all the time. He was not flipping it. The clubshaft has to stay on plane. One must do what they must do to keep it on plane. You do not change the idea of staying on plane to fit anything else without some type of special consideration. Homer stresses over and over that he did not find anything that you can’t use if you use it properly, that you can’t use intentionally and have a very useful application. There is something in every application that is useful in some situations. So when Homer stated don’t do something he is speaking of the uncompensated swing. Homer states that the procedures of both Hitting and Swinging, listed in the back of the book, are close approximations to the uncompensated swing. No demand that you have or need that you have, that can’t be executed scientifically. Every little thing in some way but, don’t do anything unintentionally. Learn to do all these things intentionally and you’ll be a lot better off than if you just try to hide them under a basket. In the book, “In Search for The Perfect Swing” they never mention the difference of swing radius as an element of force. We needed a book like this but they should have not gone into teaching golf and they should have just stayed with the scientific aspects. Homer spoke to John Roberts of the rules committee, who mentioned to him that the authors were not going to write the 2nd Edition as mentioned in the 1st Edition because after all that work it was so full of flaws that they felt hopeless. Homer even wrote a letter to Gary Wiren claiming the above, and he asked Homer to write up where these errors were. So Homer took ten of the major errors and sent to Wiren but he never heard anything back from him about them. Homer makes the statement that he doesn’t argue with Wiren because he felt he could beat Wiren just as often as Wiren could beat him so, it doesn’t get anywhere and it would just not make any sense to argue.
Many people think that the clubhead force is at right angles to the clubface but it is not. It is a right angle to the clubshaft. The clubhead is aligned so when it comes into the ball, impact will be of such, that it can have a straight away trajectory. All duffers think that the only way to hit the ball with full force is to have the clubface going towards the target. This is not true. The force is at right angles to the clubshaft and anytime you change that you go through a lot of work and you lose a lot of power. The thing is that you are generating power by developing clubhead speed and it is the mass of the clubhead and not the face of the club that determines how that’s going to be applied, what direction it is working. If you try to hit the ball in the direction by applying that force in a direction contrary to that particular requirement you’re going to lose power. You’ll not only lose clubhead speed but you will also have compression leakage in that the clubface is making a motion during impact and this releases compression at the ball will not go as far. The clubshaft and the clubhead center of gravity is not the same. The Longitudinal Center Of Gravity is the sweetspot. The sweet spot is a pinpoint and is not a great big mass. It is a pinpoint from which a plump bob would pass. Anytime you feel the clubhead you feel the sweet spot so you can hit with absolute confidence that you are directing the sweetspot. If you do not feel the clubhead you are feeling the clubshaft and you are driving the clubshaft into the ball. The pictured plane in 1-L is the clubshaft plane. The center of gravity plane is the plane of the sweetspot. This is the one that Homer is working with in 1-L. The clubshaft rotates around the sweet spot. The sweet spot does not rotate around the clubshaft because centrifugal force is holding this in a line and anything that wants to rotate is going to have to rotate around that sweetspot. So do not worry about the clubshaft because if you can feel the clubhead you feel the sweetspot and that’s what you are actually working with. That’s what you want to hit with and it is not a great big area, it can’t be and there’s no way because it is one point which is the center of gravity. This should give you a great deal of security for you drive that right at the impact because that is where the club must hit the ball. 2-F Shanking. “When in doubt, “Turn” the Clubface so both the Clubshaft and the Sweet Spot will be on the same Plane at the Start Down. When you’re at the top and on plane with a turn and the club lying on the plane, the sweet spot and the club are on the same plane. So you start them both down towards impact, which is a Swingers Procedure. Now if you rotate the wrists the clubshaft will rotate around the sweet spot because it is moving and centrifugal force is going to enforce that and you can’t possibly get off line. Even if you felt the clubshaft at the top, centrifugal force, if you are aware of it, could change the feel from the clubshaft to the clubhead and then you are in align and so you start it down towards the ball with both on the same plane and the sweet spot will be the one that will get there. Homer states that this was one of his major discoveries. That is, the clubshaft rotates around the sweet spot. The sweet spot is what you feel. The sweet spot is what you hit the ball with, from the fingers. Most people do not have a #3 Pressure Point to define the clubhead feel. Clubhead feel is clubhead lag and this is what your #3 Pressure Point is telling you the lag of the clubhead, the direction and all that stuff. There is actually a formula for ball speed. The Coefficient of Restitution says the ball will leave the clubface according to that coefficient of restitution, which is a certain percentage of the
approach speed, which is about 70% at high speed and on low speeds it can be 80%. The formula then is that the ball leaves the clubface at 70% of let say 100 mph approach so the ball leaves the clubface at 70 mph. The actual air speed is going to be the clubhead speed, plus that 70 mph because the clubhead is moving and it is separating from the clubhead. So if the clubhead is going at 80 mph and it leaves at 70 mph it has to be going 150 mph. If you lose speed and get 40 mph at separation, you still get the 70 so you will then get 110 mph. There is a lot more to getting yardage than swinging fast. Resistance to impact deceleration because the ball hits the club as hard as the club hits the ball so; the club slows down in the same proportion as the ball accelerates. There is impact deceleration which is different from release deceleration which is a product of Conservation of Angular Momentum. If you have a 1 pound weight on a string and its 2 feet long and you swing it around and let the string fly out to 4 feet long it will not go as fast, it will slow down and if you shorten the string it will speed up. Homer demonstrates this on his swivel chair where he sits on the chair and starts spinning and he puts his legs out and he slows down, pull them back in and he speeds up. When he does this with his arms there appears to be no apparent change simply because of the relative mass of the leg in proportionate of the body and the mass of the arm in proportionate of the body. Homer called this momentum transfer. The club doesn’t lose speed by being extended because it is a part of this big mass and it is not as affected in proportionate. Conservation of Angular Momentum is if you have a pound at 2 feet and a pound at 4 feet you’re going to have to have the same momentum but at 4 feet it has the momentum at a much slower speed. The Hitter is up against this. To have centrifugal force you must have 2 divergent forces one making it go one way and the other making it go another way. So gravity pulls one way, centrifugal force pulls it another way so you get orbits. Centrifugal Force varies with the speed. This is why they have to set the stationary satellites that will stay at a certain point above the Earth at 22,500 miles. They set it there because at that point the Centrifugal Force that will hold it out there is exactly equal to the gravity that will try and pull it in and there will be no change. If they went further out then the surface speed would be greater than the pull of gravity and it would take off. The central nature of the swinger is that centrifugal force is constant at a given speed and it won’t speed up or slow down. They had this in the book, “In Search Of the Perfect Swing.” They had three swings and two of them were Hitters because they didn’t bring the club down parallel so that one was a Swinger. The one Swinger came down and at release the 100th second increments were exactly equal. They never mentioned this in the book. The Hitter, whose club was pointing up because he was going to hit and he wasn’t going to swing, his first increment was the largest, his next was smaller and his impact increment was the smallest of all three. But, the 3rd increment of that release for the Hitter was still longer than the increments of the Swinger. This is not a law, it just happened to be, and what it showed is that the Hitter can still swing a clubhead faster than a Swinger might swing. People always ask if you can Hit as far as you can Swing. Here it shows you can and that it depends on the player.
What ever speed you have at release it will maintain. Any effort to speed it up during release is a waste of time because, in the first place, it would destroy the rhythm of Centrifugal Force and in the 2nd place Centrifugal Force will oppose you because it doesn’t want to go any faster. So, in trying to exert right arm pressure against a swinging clubhead runs into the opposition of Centrifugal Force which does not want to go any faster. It becomes counter productive. It usually results in Clubhead Throwaway because you overtake it due to it normal position would be a Centrifugal Force alignment and if you push it ahead of that you will have Clubhead Throwaway. You don’t change Centrifugal Force; you offset it by going in a straight line. There is no Centrifugal Force in anything that moves in a straight line. How does a Hitter avoid Centrifugal Force? Loading the entire lever assembly and not just the club and then staying ahead of Centrifugal Force. Centrifugal Force is there because you cannot move in a circle without it so you must stay ahead of it. This takes energy so you have to push harder to hit. As a Hitter you do not want it dictating clubhead speed conditions or anything else. It is a right arm thrust and you’re going to control it that way so you must stay ahead of Centrifugal Force. A Hitter would desire to override Centrifugal Force and it has the effect of staying ahead. Centrifugal Force does not want to go that fast so you stay ahead of it and the only way you can do it is to have thrust against the #3 Pressure Point. As long as you have thrust, that is what’s doing the accelerating, not Centrifugal Force. When you are Swinging you can feel #3 Pressure Point but it is the resistance to the clubhead in change of direction. There is a resistance to the change in direction when you pull the club down lengthwise as you go around in a circle and there will be a feel there. Number 3 Pressure Point applies no thrust when Hitting. Number 3 Pressure Point is always sensing and thrusting but only to the extent of the Swinger of sensing the feel and resisting the clubhead effort to bend the wrist back. The Hitter will feel this much more because the Hitter is not only sensing but he is also opposing, he’s thrusting and all the energy the stroke has will be coming from the sensing of the #3 Pressure Point. Now it thrust in Hitting but it is not all thrust. Number 3 Pressure Point does thrust in Hitting but it doesn’t have to because you really are applying right arm thrust against your thumb (#1 Pressure Point). The Number 1 Pressure Point is the real power of the Hitter but you can divide it between the two. So there is more inclined to be a thrust on the #3 Pressure Point with the Hitter but there doesn’t have to be. If the Hitter does not stay ahead of Centrifugal Force then it will get ahead of you. The general result will be clubhead throwaway. It will get past the hands. Tour players all claim that they are Swingers that there is no way you can hit a ball but, they are all trying to use right arm thrust. They say you got to have some right arm in there and they say to much right arm. Ben Doyle says, wrong right arm, and this is right.
Most players are a combination of both and the more they are mixed (hitting and swinging) the poorer the player and the less consistent they will be. Before you start a pattern one needs to decide if they are going to be a Hitter or a Swinger. Because there will be total confusion if you try to do them both at the same time. If a person wants to play at a high level one should learn to do both. It is not all that different to execute once you are familiar. The clubhead travels down and out until it reaches the low point. The clubhead must stay on plane which means that it must go down and out until it reaches low point which is opposite the left shoulder which is the lowest point the club will reach. The only time that you actually can geometrically and mechanically hit down the plane line is at low point where the clubhead is as far down as it can go. It goes down and out simply because it’s an inclined plane. Not because you are throwing the club out or anything. It’s just because it’s on an inclined plane and it will go down and out to the low point where it then has to start back up and in. Homer advises that the feet be the same distance apart as the shoulders, because you can see exactly where you want it. You can see that the left shoulder is out over the toe and right out from there is where you want to set the ball and you want to go to low point just past there. Every time you make a compensation for a flaw you lose yardage and consistency but mostly yardage. Most tour players and pros are such good athletes that they can manipulate it and make it come out pretty good but, they still pay a price. According to the Laws you have to pay a price or they couldn’t enforce themselves. You must go through the low point otherwise you pull the club in or you go outside of it, you go right down plane. It isn’t throwing the club out and across, it is merely staying on plane. The low point is further out than the impact point simply because it is further down plane. So, throwing the club inside out is not the same thing. There is nothing wrong with that for you do that to produce a hook and it’s perfectly legitimate. Divots are taken down and out, just not down. Homer expressed this as one of his big problems. He was taking some of the biggest, fattest divots for he was going just down. Hogan said to hit right down in it, or slam down in to it or something like that. So Homer did this for years. The thing is you’re going down plane so the clubhead is going down plane and you’re taking the divots down and out. It is strictly according to ball position. The farther back it is the more upright the swing the deeper the divot. The flatter the plane and farther back it is the more it goes out instead of down and you can get away with it. When the ball is back you should have a divot in proportion to the incline plane but there should be a divot.
You should never attempt to take or not take a divot. It should be purely the result of ball position. If the ball is close enough to low point you can’t take a divot and you should not take a divot at low point unless you’re lying in mud. Another little thing is that the force of impact will drive a 9 iron down and with a 2 iron it will drive it back. So there is a different ball action on the club. It is not all that great but it is there. Why would one move the ball further back for short irons? The clubshaft is shorter, you’re bent over more, you want to hit down more, because most people realize that you will get more backspin. The more you hit down the more bite you will have. Would one want to place the ball in approximately the same point for all clubs? With this you run into the aiming point concept. The clubshafts are all different lengths. The longer clubs just take longer to get there; they have farther to go so you have to release a little bit earlier to get them there at the intended hand position. So you can leave the ball in the same position but you aim at a point behind the ball. You can also have an aiming point at a certain place and move the ball back and forth would be the opposite. The aiming point is usually the ball for a 5 iron, to get through impact. If you find that it is, then shorter clubs you want to move forward of the ball because you are going to release later. With the longer club the aiming point would be back of the ball so you can bring them all in at the same alignment. The biggest question to this is if we still watch the ball? The best way to answer this is do you watch the ball when you hit an explosion shot? What you do is that you pick a spot in the sand and you aim at it. So, you look at the spot which you will be directing the club. Now in the trap shot you want the club to go into the sand and you are setup to do that. But if you have setup where the club will meet the ball before it hits the ground and you aim at a spot back of the ground it still won’t hit the ground. Because you are setup so you’re left arm would have to be pulled out of the socket to hit the ground at that spot. So it is perfectly safe to get setup with the ball and aim at a point an inch behind the ball because you have a longer stick. But swing at the point and not at the ball. You can use the aiming point concept at any time. It is always useful even on a very early release. The advisable and the most dependable is the impact hand location, where do you want the hand to be at impact. That is determined at impact fix and the hand is usually over the left toe. If you make a point of coming into impact with your hand over your left toe, it is not at all difficult, it’s a normal say a random release of some kind. But when you come to a true snap release you cannot think that fast and it’s like trying to out think a computer. You use the aiming point there because you throw it at that and let it fly and the laws of physics will take care of it and take it away from you and it is so effective that one of the best ways to execute it is to execute as though you are not going to release the club at all. Then you get the perfect snap release, Maximum Trigger Delay. Aiming point can be used however you find it convenient. The way you would use it for early random release is just by playing around, by being a golf nut. You ease off on the pressure point
pressure you’re not going to come into the ball so hard. Homer advocated that you never swing faster or slower you increase or decrease the pressure point pressure and then you’ll automatically swing faster without any change in effort or procedure or anything else. You increase or decrease the pressure by the loading at the top. The heavier the clubhead comes in, the heavier the load and the faster you’ll have to get to release before you lose it. There is a limit to that too. You can swing so fast where most people couldn’t keep it from flying out. When you swing it fast enough, centrifugal force will take it away from you before release, and then you’re dead. Homer states that he had found that he could push his forefinger against the clubshaft so hard that he felt if he were a little stronger that he could pick his feet right up off the ground. If you have enough loading against the hands your leverage on the clubhead is so slight, and your so use to throwing the club that if you throw it without letting the #3 Pressure Point do the throwing, if you leave it there with all that loading there is nobody strong enough to drive that clubhead out of the loading, if it’s heavy enough. You only got about an inch from the fulcrum to the power and load is out about 3 feet. It’s the Law of Leverage that you don’t have enough leverage to unload it. Leverage had been derided a lot but it’s there. When the ball hits a 9 iron it goes down, it drives it down. The clubhead drives it down. When it comes into a 2 iron it drives it back. There is a little down but largely back. With the 9 iron there is a little back but a lot of down simply do to the angle of the impact will drive the clubface into the ground. Both of them are being driven down and back. The ball hits the clubface with the same force as the clubface hits the ball. That’s Newton’s #3 Law. They act in the same force but not in the same direction due to the angle of the clubface only. Any vertical club would not be driven down at all. It would be driven back only. The more tilt the more down and less back. Newton’s Third Law states that for every acting force there is a reactive force that is equal in magnitude but opposite in direction. Equal in magnitude, any impact. This is impact deceleration. The club always slows down and you can’t stop it but you can control how much it slows down, by the force of the ball. You slow down during release because of COAM is another thing. The Swinger doesn’t have anything to worry about if he’s a true Swinger and uses his momentum transfer. The clubshaft starts up and in after low point but the thrust continues down plane during the follow-through. Because the force must be on plane it will be driving toward the plane line even after impact because you haven’t passed the point where the arm will be coming up and the thrust is down. What Homer was trying to get across here is, don’t quit, and stay right with it. I think in the book, In Search For The Perfect Swing that they made a good point that people stay with the club simply because it gives them more clubhead speed because they stayed with it longer. But it doesn’t really and they never mention the fact that during release the clubhead cannot possibly speed up. There is a change in velocity but it is a product of mass x velocity. Now if that product changes there is acceleration, which means that if you maintain the angular motion of an extending radius there is acceleration but the clubhead hasn’t changed speed at all. The idea is that there is acceleration but there is no difference in clubhead. Clubhead speed is
constant with a Swinger and it’s slowing down with a Hitter and there is no way you can get out of it. You cannot change the speed during release. This is where the endless belt effect came in. Realize that there is no point in trying to exert any force during release. If you’ve got force moving, you keep it moving that’s all. You only got, from release to impact, it can’t be over 3/100’s of a second and you don’t have a whole lot of time to make any changes in anything. So don’t figure on the clubhead speeding up. It is misinformation that leads you to do the wrong things. Sustain The Lag is a very good axiom to follow. You keep those hands going through impact. This is what the basic motion curriculum is all about. That is the heart and soul of it, that you do not make any adjustments or compensations because of impact and it’s as if it has never happened. This is what Pros have been saying all along. Bringing the whole club onto the ball goes along with the bent left wrist. You should be bringing the whole primary lever assembly into impact and should be traveling at the same rpm. You think you can get a lot more clubhead speed if you throw it a little bit but you have lost a lot of power, compression because the clubface is deviating from it’s perfect circle alignment and you will lose compression. The clubhead will seem to go faster if you throw it and stop your hands and let the clubhead go and it is a fact that it does go faster. Because anytime you shorten the radius, it speeds up. So when you stop swinging from the shoulders and swing from the hands it will speed up but look at the radius power you have lost. Not only that but the clubhead is passing your hands, the clubface is getting out of alignment and this is what causes most topped shots. Duffer’s is throwing the club and coming up over the top. The Plane Line controls the Clubhead Line-Of-Flight. Clubface alignments control the Ball Line-Of-Flight. You cannot play good golf without being conscious of your target. But at the same time you must realize that if you are hitting an inside out motion, and the plane line is inside out, that you must stay on the plane line and it must not be diverted to the target line in the process, which is what usually happens. Or, you align the clubface so it goes out on the plane line which is the usual thing. You cannot really understand this until you can swing on any plane line and put the ball in any initial direction that you want. You have to be able to do this with comfort. You know that if you put it back in your stance where it will produce a hook it’s going to produce a hook. You must be able to swing on an inside out, outside in, and square plane and make the ball go in a given direction. The plane line controls the clubhead and the clubface controls the ball. Steering the ball is the number one enemy for the golfer. The Clubface needs to be square to the Line-Of-Flight only at a point of Separation. Everybody seems to be instead of lining up to the target they line up to the right. For centuries they have been telling golfers that the clubface must be square at impact. Their swinging, so their using Horizontal Hinge Action if they like it or not which means the clubface closes very strongly and if it’s square at impact it’s going to be closed by the time of separation. You got ¾ of an inch with a driver at 100 mph. Everybody who had it square at impact had the ball going to the left, because the clubface had closed during impact. So they began lining it off to the right. Some
said it was the eyes but it is the unintentional pulling of the ball because of coming in square at impact. There is no difference between the impact interval of a driver and a putter it’s the distance of the impact interval. As far as can be figured, impact interval is .0004 of a second. When you use hinge action with putting, which is an absolute essential, you do so to be consistent. You can say you’re a good putter and be a good putter in execution but not in your alignments which may not seem that important of a thing to change. But remember there are some days you putt very well and some days you don’t and it’s because your feel is different. But if you use a definite hinge action, which means you keep the left wrist vertical to some plane and the clubface has to come in. Also hinge action determines rhythm and they really have never defined rhythm, they don’t know what it is. People define it as pace. Homer found that rhythm is that the clubshaft and left arm be kept in line. When one gets ahead of the other you have lost your rhythm. Rhythm is dependent on the hinge action and is due to the #3 accumulator. If you do away with #3 accumulator you will always get angled hinging rhythm and travel. Rhythm and pace are different and rhythm is based on hinge action. Changing the plane angle has no effect on the plane line. You can change the angle but the line never changes but it does affect ball position. The point here is that you can have any plane angle on any plane line. What it does is tilt the toe of the clubshaft up and down but this has nothing to do with plane line. What Homer had in mind here is that it has to do with raising and lowering the clubshaft and toe but in talking about hinge action it does not alter the clubface motion whether it is down or up. It doesn’t change the rhythm or anything except that as you raise and lower the toe. The reason why the ball goes right or left as you raise and lower the toe is due to it changing the clubface alignments. The way to see this is by using one of those magnetic type pointers on the clubface. Put a pointer on the clubface and raise the toe and see where the clubface now points. The steeper the plane the farther the forward the ball has to be to get closer to low point so you won’t go down so far. Clubs are designed to be about halfway between shoulder plane and elbow plane. And the only hope you have is that you hit the ball before you hit the ground and there is nothing that Homer knew of that can avoid the raise and lower the toe of the club for effecting direction. Homer makes the statement that if you have never stood in an incline plane with a hole in it and move a club on it, you cannot believe that it goes through the waist and that the right shoulder stays right on that same plane. The right shoulder stays on the same plane as the clubshaft and hands for quite a ways. It should be on the same plane until after impact. From the top through start down the right shoulder should stay on plane as that of the hands. It is inconceivable to most people until they stand inside an inclined plane.
Homer mentions that though he mentioned the Flying Wedges in the 1st Edition he did not know how important they were, not even in the 5th Edition. Stance Line, Plane Line and Flight line are normally parallel. The important word in this statement is, normally. If it isn’t your compensating, getting some special affect but normally they are parallel. The Flight Line is the line that you want the ball to start on. The Flight Line is the one you’re aiming at and the Path is where the ball goes. For any Line of Compression (through the ball) every Machine must produce identical Impact alignments. What we are trying to do. The relations of all Machine positions and motions can be described by a geometric figure, meaning triangle, squares, and rectangles. Everything has a geometric relation to everything else. In summary of The Machine in Chapter 1, it is the 3 Functions of the club which is the clubshaft, clubhead and clubface. This is part of the Triad, the 3 Imperatives, executing the 3 functions through the 3 stations. The difference between the Imperatives and Essentials is that a lot of people are playing good golf without the 3 Essentials. But, the Imperatives are so important that Homer states he will not go on to Imperative 2 and 3 until students have acquired Imperative #1. You simply cannot play golf with bending the lead wrist. The information will become more and more confusing because they won’t learn because nothing works and so why mess with them when there going to come up being mad about the whole thing anyway. The Imperatives are the most important. Homer did state though that he tried to avoid that 1 Imperative is more important than the other. The Flat Left Wrist is terribly important but without clubhead lag or a straight plane line their not going to get anywhere either. Homer considers them to be equal. One must maintain a Flat Left Wrist until the end of Follow-Through. It can go to the finish if they stay with it properly for this does assure that it will not bend at all.