This thread is the rake

Great post from Death Donkey, imo.

This from Brandel Chamblee: "As for you continuing to play, and making claim to some superiority because you do still compete, all I can say is I'm sure there is a lot left undone by you as a player that you are trying to make up for. " Was incredibly lame, and it doesn't need any explanation why..

I think Defrancesco makes his argument quite clear, and although Chamblee makes some good counterpoints, I think he's clearly the loser in the debate.

Then how did we get into this discussion? You questioned my defense of BC - then tried to prove every statement I made wrong.

Well, you said it. If BC, Ship, and myself are held to high standards about our quotes/posts, unfortunately, you are too. Just imagine if you were a tv announcer & rattled off that statement. You must remember, that statement alone is what caused this - I was not going to respond to someone using that tone and wording. You can say I've changed the questioning or whatever, and that you've apologized, but I chose not to reply because when someone uses that type of wording, it's obviously NOT going to be an intelligent, open minded discussion. That statement alone changed the tone & course of this debate - certainly putting me on the defense, not of BC's teaching, but of a person and my thoughts of him, which has somehow led to head lowering in the swing.

Yes, that & the fact that the background and shadows are inches different from on picture to the next.

I 100% agree - (except about the poker part - I don't play poker or know anything about it). I'm known more as a "new school/high tech" instructor, and give over 100 seminars/year on technology, including the 2004 PGA Teaching & Coaching summit presenting "Teaching & Technology" - there are few instructors with more research based technology at their disposal than me, and I believe technology is huge part of improving - if used correctly. As far as the teaching side, I'm much more in Wayne's corner - I simply stated BC came off better than I expected & I gained some respect for him. I use technology such as 3-d motion capture, TrackMan, and high speed video in all my teaching, in addition to trying to tap into a players athletic ability. I think anyone who knows me (ask NXT) that calling me an "old school" teacher would be ridiculous. I'm only saying this because it seems the original point (why did I not reply to statements about BC) has become a who's right/who's wrong, old school vs new school debate - on which I think you might view me on the wrong side of that fence. I agree with BC on the fact that many times on TV (& in forums) we're asked to make "blanket" statements about the golf swing - I know NXT has watched me give hundreds of individual lessons (he can attest to my method and technology use), and during a private lesson you can get specific, and, outside of excess head movement, or forward (in front of the ball) head movement, I rarely address it - I believe it is an effect, not a cause.

I agree again - I said the same thing earlier in this thread.

I also agree- my old assistant is coming in town today & the rest of my week is filled with work, golf, several bottles of wine, and watching the Masters. I won't have much time/energy to continue to debate Wayne/BC.

I don't know what that means.

Got to work and had a minute so I thought I'd throw this pic of AK up here from the top to 1/2 way down.

You said Tiger's head barely moves in fairway bunkers.

You are right, I should have chosen better words. Let's be careful about implying my one statement being responsible for anything that your wrote.

Nope. Look carefully at the shadow alignment from previous AK photo and note that it's just from the way I edited those two photos together. The below picture proves again this camera barely moves.




...change the question again. AK does almost all of his lowering during the backswing. I could show that with the swing I'm using too.

AK's a hack!

This.

This as well. I know BC was getting shots taken at him as well, but he came off pretty poorly in that conversation imo.

That's the thing, there isn't a right answer to the question of if the head should lower. Different types of players do different things with their head. That's the heart of the conflict here.When BC or Miller go on and on and on about the head dropping and raising they speak in absolutes, when it's not black and white.

I promise you that if you take two swings from TW, one where he stripes it and one where he misses the fairway, and ask one of the tv analysts to look at it, they will have no clue which one is the good one and which is the bad one. The differences are minute. So to rail on and on about his head dropping when he hits a bad shot but ignore it when he hits a good one is just ignorance.

......

The head lowering is just one example of BC being wrong (or inflammatory for the sake of being inflammatory). Unfortunately being a TW fanboi and having the Golf Channel on all the time makes me a glutton for punishment.

The video referenced in the BC/WD conversation followed Pebble where BC made some really silly comments. Basically said TW had too much forward shaft lean which is odd enough, but the two things that really were just flat wrong were that "TW is coming over the top" and "his wedge swing is one of the steepest on Tour which is why he takes such big divots now" and then says Phil is more shallow. Both of those things were easily disproven by WD by using the same exact video BC used to talk about it. Here is the video if anyone wants to watch it. The TW/Phil wedge comparison is hilarious after hearing what BC says. Starts at 5:45 or so. He's just wrong, like flat out wrong, and 15 seconds of research would have shown him that.

I guess my point is that it's completely ok to have a different opinion about the way to swing a golf club. But BC is consistently demonstrably wrong about basic things that aren't swing theory.

To be fair he's not the only one. Miller is bad. Kostis is bad. There was a couple week stretch when Phil was playing well when they were going on and on about Phil keeping his trail leg more flexed and that's why he was hitting it better. Again, very easily demonstrated to be incorrect, and maybe more importantly, teaching all the hacks watching something that will hurt them.

the thread kinda got derailed by your back and forth with jk3a so i wasnt 100% sure what side of the fence you were on. however, its clear now that you are an advocate of the more "new school" approach. it was also very clear to me from the start, that you are very knowledgeable in the golf swing and have much to offer.

i understand your view, that although you may not agree with BC's thoughts on the golf swing, you believe he handled himself well in the FB debate. i think the arguement with jk3a has run its course and is now only nit picking. However, it seems like the common consensus(at least on this forum, but i believe its far more reaching) is that BC does have his foot in his mouth most of the time when it comes to discussing the golf swing. its not about sweeping generalizations or allotted screen time. you cant say water runs upstream or the sun rises from the west and then claim there isnt enough allotted time in a TV segment to fully explain myself.

huh?

if this thread is the rake, what is the game?

dont like rake, dont enter the discussion.

The more you fire your body while maintaining your posture, the more your head drops, like tiger and most pros.

If you fire your body and lose your posture, your head will be more level, nicklaus style.

This thread is what is becoming wrong with this forum. I think the OP was a legitimately good question, and there are some incredibly well thought out posts in this thread, but as a whole there's too much flaming going around lately.

What do you mean by maintaining posture? spine angle?

yeah. the term spine angle is kind of misleading because it's moving and twisting all over the place in 3d

A better term than spine angle for what people are trying to get at is inclination to the ground.

Side bend.

i agree. it got derailed.

can you imagine how many fist fights there would be if everyone talked like they did on the internet in person?

makes alot of sense.

+1, and true for other 2p2 forums. i am afraid better posters won't want to particpate any longer

Awwww... this is in my top5 2+2 threads ever. I guess I see the flame/personal issues you have but the sheer weight of the discussion is awesome, timely and relevant. Also isn't the brunt of this discussion flames being born by regular posters anyway?

Thank you, doc, for posting some of that conversation many of us would have no way to find. I assure you that for many of the readers here it brought a lot of relevance to what each arguing side was saying.

after some more thought this makes a lot of sense in the downswing, but what about the head lowering during the backswing?

wayne d's explaination does seem to make sense here.

Was looking for something else when I came across this gem....simply amazing the way this played out. I guess we will see if I was right that my man was the right guy for the job!

wow, can hardly remember even starting this thread, let alone writing all those following posts.lol

after watching a instructional video from your buddy with another "dr. swing guy," something just clicked, and all these movements and sequencing wrt the swing i was attempting, just started to come together. i started to realize from their instruction what was really taking place and why. i guess i am a very analytic type that needs to understand the reasons behind why things work, and they do a great job of explaining what is happening during the swing from both a bio mechanical and physics standpoint.

i saw this vid shortly after i heard of tigers new swing coach and attempted to implement some of the teachings into my game even before tiger's debut at his tournament. then when i watched tiger's interview, where he says he is hitting it farther with less effort, i was like wow, im experiencing the same thing! and it makes sense why.

so, i hope the best for your buddy as imho i think he is definitely the real deal. i only wish you were able to divulge more of this info about his teachings when this thread was started. i could have won so many more nassau bets.

This is pretty cool that you were telling us about this guy years ago and now he has the most high profile golfer on the planet as a client. Here's hoping the two of them are amazingly successful.

hard to believe a thread with last post in december is on page 2....

anyway, re-grunching here but a a couple of things about golf vs poker instruction;

1) golf instructor has eye to see what you're actually doing. no real parallel in poker.. you can do it yourself with video but nowhere near as good for a bunch of reasons.

2) certain things i don't think you'd ever figure out on your own. proper posture for one thing