This is the next installment in the Controlled Golf Swing series of articles.
From the shoulders our power travels down through the arms, and as to arm action also I believe the common conception to be erroneous.
Most people think they lift their arms to get them to the top of the back swing. With a modern controlled swing they do not lift them . . . the arms work absolutely subjectively to the shoulders, that is why they are controlled.
But, you may say, if I do not lift my arms how do I get them up to the top of my swing? To find the answer, think this out.
As you stand to the ball with the wrists slightly up, there is a straight line practically from the club head up the shaft and along your arm to the left shoulder, and as your hands are already waist high it needs only the inclining of the shoulders as we turn (on the pivot) to bring them shoulder high, without having altered their relative positions at all.
They have not been lifted. They have gone up in response to the shoulder movement. This accounts for the curtailment and the control of the modern swing.
Naturally, the more flexible we are the more we can get our hands up without breaking up this connection, that is, without moving the arms independently.
The triangle formed by our arms and a line between the shoulders should never lose its shape . . . it should be possible to push a wooden snooker triangle in between the arms and to leave it there without impeding the swing back or through.
Now to my mind the foregoing are the three basic feels of the golf swing the pivot, the shoulders moving in response to the pivot, and the arms moving in response to the shoulders.
These are the basic movements of a connected and therefore controlled swing, and they must all be built into the framework of your feel of the swing.
Of course there are many additional nuances and supplementary feels which you will build up and recognize as your game develops, but though you will add to these three fundamentals you will never alter them.
Therein lies much of their value.
You will get used to taking a sly look at them occasionally as you go round the course, and so long as you keep these three primary feels right, nothing much will go wrong with your game.
And if your game does go wrong, if the shots which you thought you had mastered desert you, all you need to do is to go back to the feel of these three basic points.
You just take a peep back at them, and then with one or two shots your mechanism will feel familiar again and all the other supplementary feels which you have built up by practice will be enticed back.
