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Growing up in Upstate NY, there were essentially 3 golfers that people in the area discussed when it came to the golf swing and ballstriking. The first two were Hogan and Snead. The other was George Knudson, a Canadian, and given that we were not too far away from Canada it made some sense as to why his game was revered despite not being a household name in the golfing world.
Knudson patterned much of his swing after studying Hogan. I often hear that Knudson was the 'closest swing to Hogan', but I don't see them being that similar. There are similarities, but some big differences were Knudson crouched down more as Hogan stood up more in his swing (presumably because of their differences in height) and Hogan in his best years had a much longer swing that Knudson.
In fact, check out these positions at P4 with a driver.
Here is also a great video of Knudson on Shell's Wonderful World of Golf putting on a ballstriking display.
So the results were certainly there and the alignments were very good and nothing overly flawed or 'questionable' so that his swing was very much based on excellent geometry and biomechanics throughout the swing instead of relying on hand-eye coordination and 'talent' in order to execute certain nuances to his swing.
But what do I think we can learn from Knudson's swing?
For starters, he swung the club pretty flat and thus he probably used something along the lines of standard club lengths and probably standard if not flat lies. But there's more to that as the clubs in his time were shorter. The standard 5-iron length would be about 37.5 or 37.75" long. Now the modern clubs have a standard 5-iron length of 38-38.25" long. The lies are also more upright now. Standard 5-iron lie angle is about 60.5*. In Knudson's day the standard lie angle was about 59.5*.
Knudson was 5'11" tall, yet easily could managege the shorter length and flatter lies because of his swing.
I think that's one of the big issues with today's golf clubs, they are longer and more upright, which is a band-aid way of helping get rid of the slice and allowing the golfer to hit the ball longer, but it also makes golfers stand closer to the ball and swing more upright than they probably should.
3JACK
2 comments:
Richie, you said "I think that's one of the big issues with today's golf clubs, they are longer and more upright, which is a band-aid way of helping get rid of the slice and allowing the golfer to hit the ball longer, but it also makes golfers stand closer to the ball and swing more upright than they probably should.".
Absolutely nailed it there!
Thanks. I should know. I played with clubs that were 5* upright and then went to +1" with 1* upright when I was in college. Currently my Mizuno's are +1/4" and 3* upright. But now that I've made some adjustments to my swing, those clubs are way too upright. I'll probably talk about clubshaft length in a future post.
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