Backswing basics that are virtually unknown

The most important difference between a swing machine, like Iron Byron, swinging a golfclub and a human being doing the same thing, is that the machine starts from the top and has only to swing the club down and through the ball. We humans utilize a backswing.

When you swing a club, you hold it at one end (with your hands, part of your nnn pound body). At the other end, there's a weighted clubhead. Even though you can't readily see it, the shaft bends a bit, from a tiny fraction of an inch to several inches, because of the twirling of the clubhead around your hands.

When you swing the club back, the faster you swing it, and the more abruptly you stop the backswing, the more the shaft will bend. If you can start the forward stroke immediately after the backswing ends, the shaft will retain, even increase, the bend, or flex, into the downswing. As the club approaches the ball, the shaft will be convex forward (bent away from the target side of the ball).

But inevitably, as the clubhead catches up with the hands, the shaft will kick forward and move through the straight position, so that it is concave forward. As it does this, the face of the club moves from open (toe back) to closed (toe forward). 

The greater the bend is initially, and the longer it is retained, the more clubhead speed will be generated, and the more rotation of the clubface will occur. That means longer, less accurate, shots.

I call this "working the shaft." As I've stated many times on this blog, I'm not a very strong, or even moderately strong, person. Small muscles on a large frame do not make for 300 yard drives, and at almost 69 years old, those muscles have not gotten bigger or faster. So it goes.

But.

I've learned to take the club back BRISKLY, and brake the rearward action with a braced right side -- from the ground up: my right (back) lower leg retains its position, and pushes forward as the club moves back. My right arm is braced, and I push it forward, retaining a low elbow flex. This "loads" the club, producing a maximum bend, and I push forward as fast and as hard as I can (again, I'm not that strong) which gives me my maximum accelerating clubhead speed.

It's a feel thing. I try to feel the retention of the shaft bend. Most of the time, I can.

I know most golfers think the backswing should be slow, and the forward swing should be long a fluid, but watch the two best ballstrikers of the 20th century pro ranks in their primes -- Ben Hogan and Lee Trevino -- and their backswings are twice as fast as Phil Mickelson. 

They were/are both several inches shorter than I, so I don't take the club back as far as Hogan with the driver (neither of them took the shorter clubs back very far). Also, I'm not very flexible, so a long swing is always going to be "hit or miss" with miss more likely than hit, for me.