Lag Pressure, Sevam1, and TGM

Just an update. Thanks again to everybody that answered my last two poll questions. I now have two new poll questions up and would appreciate everybody answering both of them.

Anyway, Mike Maves made an update to his fabulous book 'The Secret Is In The Dirt' and I thought I would share a small excerpt in his latest update.

The point that I want to make and the thing that I want to express is that when discussing lag we should not be talking about an angle or wrist hinge and more importantly we should not be talking about holding lag or holding the angle or retaining this or that, because lag is an effect. If you are holding an angle or you are trying to let an angle deepen because you are allowing slack to enter the equation then you are creating what I call “false lag.” You are creating an angle with no pressure. Pressure being the operative word and the imperative element. If you are moving the body properly the goal of the downswing should be to get rid of the angles you created on the backswing and in transition not to try to artificially hold them. The catch is that if you are using the ground well and moving the body properly you are creating pressure in the handle that you are not strong enough to overcome.

I think this is such a great piece of information provided by somebody who has not read 'The Golfing Machine', but clearly understands it to a great deal. And I think Mike would be shocked at how much he and Mr. Lynn Blake agree upon on the golf swing and I think Lynn would be surprised how much Mike gathered from studying Hogan and Hogan's book '5 Lessons.'

Ted and I worked on this in our last lesson. Essentially at about 3/4th of the way back I would get a little quick and anxious and the startdown would be too fast. Homer Kelley talks about the start down being S-L-O-W for the 'hitter' who uses the drive loading procedure. What would happen when I got too quick is that I would come over the top a little, but I would more importantly lose the PRESSURE and could not drive the club into the ball with force and would instead just throw the clubhead into the ball, creating 'throwaway.'

It's something that people who start to understand TGM tend to overlook, the second imperative of the swing according to Mr. Homer Kelley. For those in the dark, here's the 3 imperatives again:

1. Flat Left Wrist (aka FLW) at impact.
2. Clubhead Lag Pressure Point.
3. Straight Plane Lines.

It's very easy for somebody to focus on the FLW at impact and the straight plane lines and think that will take care of everything. But one of the key phrases Mr. Kelley uses in the book is 'SUSTAIN THE LAG!' People get confused and work on 'sustaining the angles' and usually inevitably fail. The key is to 'SUSTAIN THE PRESSURE!' As Mike mentioned, if you can sustain the pressure, then you can sustain the lag.

The Taly is an excellent tool for understanding the proper mechanics and then feeling where the pressure is and then just go out and 'sustain the pressure.'

This Lynn Blake video with Tour golfer Colin Neeman does a great job of explaining it.








3JACK