It seems like many, many moons ago when my golf coach introduced me to the methods of Bobby Jones, Sam Snead, and Patty Berg. I am so grateful. My back aches watching some of players today. Of course they are high performance athletes, not an old duffer past his prime. The classic swing has never let me down.
Amazing how Sam Snead was so limber even well into his 70s and 80s. I heard stories about how Sam Snead was still able to kick a low ceiling from the floor in his mid 70s. And it even shows in his swing where his swing is so flawless even in advance age.
He could walk through a doorway, stop, and kick the top of the door frame over his head. I watched him hit golf balls at the Legends of Golf tournament in Austin when he was over 70 years old. He hit it so pure it was incredible!
I have a friend of mine who I caddy for on the PGA tour and he told me the only way to stop shanking the ball was to feel like I was swinging as hard and as low left as I possibly could. The minute I did this I started hearing nothing but high draws. Because I was swinging so far to the right that now I feel like I’m swinging so far to the left that I’m actually swinging on plane
This is similar to what the mighty Tom Watson said about finally discovering the secret of the golf swing. - He was on the range in 97' (I think) said he started to visualize hitting the ball with Cory Pavin's practice swing. - Cory does this crazy over the top drill as part of his pre shot routine. Watson said it cured him from over extension, hitting it fat and hitting it out to the right.
I talked about what Tom Watson said about Pavin early in My Swing Evolution in the Tiger Hogan Impact video. Now, revisiting it I can see much better why it works! Great ear, Lincoln to pick that up.
@@MiracleSwingExperience - Sammy also had the best pre shot routine and waggle of any golfer, though I'd put J. Daly up there to, Look, waggle, smash...
This is amazing ..I first saw this old footage about 10 mins before I saw this. I picked up the inside OTT straight away and then tried this myself ... Immediate relaxed power ..and full clearance ..can't wait to get to the range tomorrow 🤔
Hey Christo! Been watching a lot of your videos which focus emphasis on the great Hogan, Snead and other vintage golfers and, at 58, with 100% permanent and total disability from my 20 years in the army, I had to come up, as well, with economical means to gain distance and consistency, without further hurting myself. I believe one of the keys to Snead's whip left is that hip turn, hard left and slightly up, BECAUSE, he rotated the left knee behind the ball in the back-swing, AND, because of this, the left heel lifted in order to accomodate that knee shift, naturally. I see a lot of people trying to replicate this left heel lift by lifting the heel. That's wrong. It happens because of the knee shifting behind the ball. The SUDDEN shift from Snead's sillky smooth backswing, to violent shift left, results naturally from him firmly falling onto that left heel because of the great, relaxed, backswing. I created a way as well, taking an arrow and taping a handle onto it, to stimulate, further, the fast twitch muscle fibers and short, abrupt turn in the swing, which I now incorporate in all my practice sessions, not hitting the ball until I see the tip slice through the ball, as on this video. Hope it helps and can gain you, even more advantage. Loving the journey...: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-aAbYlMi1eXo.html
Looks pretty cool. I just swung a few times using this method and I like how once I reach the top of my swing it feels like gravity wants to take over and start my downswing. This could be a very nice tempo fix for my swing. I'm going to take this to the range.
The key to Snead was the fact that he aligned himself 10-30 yards (depending on wedge to driver) RIGHT of the target. If you consistently and purposely align yourself RIGHT of the target, a pull or pull-draw will work great.
Correct to a point. Snead hit a dead pull as I point out in a comment above. A pull hook is an unplayable shot no matter how far right you aim because the axis spin on the hook prevents the ball from staying in the air long enough to control distance with any club at all
Hello from the Philippines, was lucky to have watched Sam in the early 80's at a club in Buena Park CA and my very first impression was "over the top"! Wow I should have copied that oh so many years ago! Thanks for your passion for the game!
Wouldn't it be more accurate to describe it as inside and then on plane? He's not actually OTT relative to the target base line, but relative to the inside takeaway it is. Just a loop to me, which all good swings have so that the motion can be continuous. Just rare to see in/over, it's usually out/under. Seems Snead's choice of the in/ out loop is the more rare choice of loops. Obviously the miss with it is horrific left. And it's a testament to how gifted he was that he was so successful with that type of miss in play. However the power is immense with this loop because of the opportunity to slightly pull the ball. I understand he actually played a 2W with a driver soleplate, due to the dynamic loft situation with his mechanics obviously. I suspect the crucial personal trait to make this rarer of the two loops work was his extraordinary flexibility and rhythm. From what I know of him he probably was the greatest athletic specimen to ever play the game.
Christo, hi! My presentation will be tomorrow. They postponed because more people wanted to come. About this video, don't you think Mike Austin swing looks like Sam Snead? Best Regards
Over the top of which plane? Shaft or Shoulder. You know Snead preached 'swing in the slot' in his book "key approach". I will put screenshots in the FB group. But he NEVER swung over the top of the "shoulder plane" like a slicer, ever. That and is hand actions are flawless, when he got older his hands would get him in trouble, spraying his shots farther left than normal. He REALLY emphasizes "pouring it on" with the trail hand through impact.
His hips stay back so well....when he clears the left, it makes the club look like it is moving over the top, but in reality it is the bottom half that is moving around and away changing the relationship. The 'over the top' move is the bottom dropping away from the "top". His plane stays the same.... Notice how close together his feet are... and this likely promoted his great hip movement.
Many manual labour men of Sneads Day had very powerful arms. They were used to swinging hammers, sledges etc. This swing action of taking the club deeper to the inside is actually the result of the trail shoulder clearing during the initial take away. It sets the hands on the proper path to start. Once that was achieved the elbow raises the club upwards and the humerus bone opens up the armpit. If you did not bend your elbow and elevate the shaft you would move your head off the ball and get your weight behind you in a negative position which would cause you to get your body into a blocked position prior to impact. Essentially you would end up hitting the ball out to the right big time and compensate with a flip of the club face to try to square the club face. Obviously not a very effective strategy to accurate and powerful ball striking. So the trail shoulder draws the hands to the inside and clears the trail hip so the arms can rise in front of the chest and have all the room in the world to let gravity drop them into position without becoming blocked through impact! It’s a beautiful repeatable action that requires very little maintenance on the range to remain consistent! Mike Austin was also a classic swinger holding the world record of 515 yds with old persimmons driver 43.5 inch shaft trip stiff flex and hitting a Balata Golf ball! That’s precision ball striking at its finest while being able to consistently out drive everyone else on tour of his day by 100 yards all day long!
not correct at all. malaska does not teach a hand path on the downswing that is above the path on the backswing. He teaches the hands going down roughly the toe line on the downswing and the shaft tipping out and thus getting the club head much closer to being on the target line earlier in the downswing. In fact, it is the exact opposite of what Snead is doing since he is shallowing the shaft which is dropping it behind the hands whereas Malaska teaches tipping the shaft forward so that it is in fact outside the hands. Couldn't be more different.
This "inside over the top" is more an appearance. His shoulders were square to his alignment, but his feet were shut, so it would only appear as if he was slightly over the plane. I do the same thing, as it makes the hip turn freer while maintaining the accuracy. It also slightly blocks out the lead side on the way down, allowing a free release, giving the low left look. These things are more appearances, based on the stance line. But his shoulders were always properly aligned.
@@MiracleSwingExperience 84 victories. 2 unaccounted for so that makes it 82 official. He was too good. But have you heard of Bobby Locke? Was banned because he was "too good". Maybe look into him, I heard Mr. Player say he was the greatest putter there ever lived.
Great video & kudos for your appearance on the Ben Hogan tv special! Awesome! I remember from long time ago somebody called Snead's swing an "intentional pull" and that he always aimed right. All that with persimmon, too!
xsauceda; I dont think he played a pull hook as that would be trouble all day long. In fact, he played a straight pull. aimed right and hit an intentional pull.@@MiracleSwingExperience
It's not really over the top. Look at how the head of the club stays put as his hands move slightly forward as the downswing starts. That flattens the swing and starts the whipping motion. Over the top players move the clubhead outside the line. Snead is moving his hands back to where the belong while the clubhead stays put.
@@MiracleSwingExperience Yes very similar. Hands go back well inside, then at the the top they move forward. But just as with Snead, the clubhead stays put -- it doesn't move forward. So the club flattens out relative to the hands and arms. This starts the whipping motion. Easy to see here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dMDPIqRf0zs.html
Sam Snead has the same kind of move Mike Austin used. Austin had a hell of a power move and if you follow what he’s saying, you get the same power without having to rotate as hard.
My Swing Evolution look into Steve Pratt, he has the most simple explanations for what Austin was doing. What you teach is the same, just with more rotation!
Mike Austin loved Sam Snead's swing and and marveled at what he called Snead's "sweet" swing. He had uncommonly high praise for Sam Snead's swing. Remarkable praise from a guy that was very critical of most other swing styles.
hi Christo he seems to dance, perhaps like watching Astaire golfing, that loose free fast style is awonderful thing to model as best as one's own body can. cheers
Hello MSE,If you're truly serious about effortless power and doing the over the top from the inside swing the right way, then check out ALL of Mike Malaska's youtube videos. His member site is even better. I learned from Hogan's book and the timing and practice it took just didn't work for me. When I joined Malaska;s site my game went to a higher level. He explains the swing and how inertia, momentum, and opposing forces create speed and accuracy.
Club comes out and ‘over’ because he’s a rotator not a slider. Stays centred on the backswing so he doesn’t have to shift left coming down. Can squat and rotate. Palmer was the same. Rotators are much more powerful than sliders.
You are mischaracterizing what Snead is doing. His hand path on the downswing is above the hand of the backswing, but what you are not discussing is the extent to which he shallows the shaft in transition; so the club still approaches very much from the inside.. You need to distinguish between the hand path and the direction of the shaft. Some teachers, like Monte Sheinblum, would refer to this as 'over the top from the inside' and what this means is that two things appear to be 'over the top' The first is the downswing hand path, as noted above; it is above the backswing hand path. The second and more important is the shoulder rotation which is 90* to the spine basically , which just means there is little if any right lateral bend or a sense of the right shoulder going down. In many downswings, the right shoulder goes down out and forward. His goes out and forward. But this works because in shallowing the shaft or laying it down so to speak the downswing is shallow and from the inside.
I thought I mentioned it but purposely slowed down the shallowing of the shaft in my editing. But, if I missed something, thank you for covering it for me.
@@MiracleSwingExperience Maybe you did. if so, I apologize. The key is that the club was approaching from the inside along what Bradley Hughes and John Erickson refer to as the 4:30 line.. The pull is typically a longer flying shot in part because it is the result of a slightly closed clubface which reduces spin. Snead played a pull if my memory serves my right. If you look at a number of contemporary players who swing as much to the left post impact as Snead does -- e.g. Dustin Johnson, Matt Kuchar (both with very different backswings, the former upright, the latter flat) -- they play pull fades whereas Snead's was a straight pull. Incredibly silky smooth move isn't it; and very powerful as well. The man had incredible flexibility into his 70s.
Never said he did. And , btw, some of Snead's were not four round affairs either. What Tiger has done has surpassed and perhaps lapped Snead. Foreign competition was nill in that era.@@billenright2788
At the top of the swing, you can see his hands 'flatten' slightly to shallow the downswing. It's a small but important difference between his swing and the 'over the top' hacker swing...Also, Sam keeps his hips in front of his shoulders during the downswing. Whereas the bad swingers will move their shoulders in front of their hips. Sam could hit it 300 yards with a hickory shaft...
Players that have a more aggressive right side drive, with the right hip and right knee and like Hogan, keep the club face on line more. Less right side drive means more active hands, like Snead, which I I don’t think can be so consistent. Watch the Shell Hogan vs Snead match, Hogan was super straight compared to Snead.
Christo, my impression of Snead has always been a very free swinger, whereas, I always thought Hogan was trying to lock everything down. As if one of them was more of a "natural" than the other. Does that make sense?
Sam hit a pull hook. He aimed right, then slightly over the top. I would steer way clear of any OTT move or trying to swing left. This is the move that hackers make to a fault. I know a few pros that make those moves, sure. Hogan said you want to hit from the inside and that was the move of better players and pros. You dont see any hackers hitting from the inside or hooking. Just my 2 cents.
Great content as usual. Interesting that 2 of the greatest drivers of the golf ball Sam Snead and Bruce Lietzke were both instide out swingers. Bobby Jones as well. None of them were really known as range rats either. The mechanic Miguel Jimenez who never practices either swings like that too. Ray Floyd had that rolling inside move too. Sort of sets the A swing concept on it’s head.
I think this is because Snead was left-handed, and was thus playing golf back handed with his left arm/side in a pulling motion. This is where his squat came from as well, His left leg leading and pulling his swing forward and round.
Snead was not left handed, you might be thinking of Ben Hogan, that many people have written that he was left handed because his first golf club was left handed, but Hogan explained that it was the only club he could get his hands on at the time.
Not sure how this swing can be described as "over the top." He takes it away deep inside, then up, but then it looks like he just drops from the top and then his arms and hands follow his left turning hips with a low left finish.
I am always surprised by how wrong these comments can be. I teach many of the same moves that GG does and the part of the swing that GG and many others including Dana Dahlquist and Larry Cheung teach (that I share) are 1. shallowing as a result of 2. rotation to start the downswing and 3. the squat in transition, that is, the knees and both legs going external. The classic GG move is a more upright backswing than Snead displays. Snead is a model for the 3 reasons above. It is also worth noting that Snead and Hogan are very much models for Mac O'Grady as well with whom I had the privilege of working as well. It is worth noting that many golfers who shallow the shaft in transition have a downswing hand path that is above and to the outside of the backswing hand path. It is easy to be mislead by this fact to infer that the swing is over the top. When one uses the phrase 'over the top' it is essential to specify 'over the top of what?'
Jules Coleman Didn’t Mac promote more of level right shoulder and the manual straightning of the right arm to the right pocket to flatten...that contradicts Hogan’s “free ride”
@@jennifergilmour I have no knowledge of him teaching any such thing, but I leave it to him to speak for himself. He's better at that than anyone. But I wonder what you mean by a 'level right shoulder' ? In the backswing the left shoulder goes down out and in towards the sternum. The right shoulder obviously goes up back and around. So I don't know what level refers to. You could mean that he preferred a flatter shoulder turn, but that would not be true at all. He certainly at some point advocated a centered turn where the shoulders are turned as described above roughly in the middle of the distance between the front and back feet. He was among the first vocal advocates of a centered turn. Then in the downswing in transition the lead shoulder stays down and the centers move forward two inches or so and the hips rotate, the hands get in front of the body at p6 through rotation and not as a result of an unfolding of the right elbow. So I don't know what you are referring to. Just look at the videos of MO'G on You Tube. I don't think you will see any active straightening of the right arm. I can't give away anything Mac teaches as that is his intellectual property and no one else's. What I can say is just what is in the public domain on You Tube and what I am sure is not accurate. Just look at the videos. Not a flat shoulder rotation. No one who was a Golfing Machine Student would do that since all believe that the the clubhead or handle should point at the target line or be parallel to it and a flat shoulder turn would have the handle or head pointing way outside the target line. And most GM students and followers are not big shallowers. Everyone shallows some but not a great deal. The big shallowing moves have arisen as a result of the work of Sasha McKenzie and Chris Cuomo. Of course there were lots of shallowers long before them, e.g. Hogan. But what they have done is show the impact of shallowing on squaring the clubface at impact without excessive forearm rotation.
Jules Coleman Morad and GM advocate the laser drill with butt of club pointing at ball line and not big fans of flattening the club...Hogan and Snead point a little outside ball line ...big flattening...I don’t see how Mac can use that aspect of Hogan...but then all the genius ball strikers did a lot of things in the golf swing that they don’t or can’t convey
I agree. His hips are dropping / clearing out which changes the relationship between the hips and the upper body making it look perhaps over the top, but its not. IMO. Agree.
U hit the nail right on the head. He is so far from over the top….not sure where he’s coming up with this over the top kick he’s on. He says he’s over the top now but watch his swing….again Anthony but over the top. Standard OTT Is hips moving toward ball, straightening legs, right shoulder high at impact, and most importantly a very steep angle of attach with the shaft. None of these legends are not any where near this. To me…this is just a money grab for him trying to sell a new series to give the average player hope that over the top will take them a long way. 🤷🏻♂️🤦♂️
Isn't his swing just a very natural, one piece swing, without any artificial adjustments to try and engineer some particular result? I don't see him contorting himself in some way to get an inside or over top path or any other particular path, other than a natural circle around his body. He just pulls the archery bow back and lets it fly naturally without any manipulation of the motion. The club just flies and twirls around so effortlessly, without any impedance, taking advantage of gravity and the pendulum effect. It's a friction-less pendulum. He also adds power from his own movement, but he does nothing to impede the natural swing of the club. At least that's how it appears to me.
no@@MiracleSwingExperiencecristo-he hit a huge cut -a controlled slice more like. was a hoot to watch . he would not play the masters as there wasn't enough room to fade the ball on most holes. take a look at his swing. amazing a pro could win with a ball flight like that but he did. hey called him leaky as his shots always l;eaked right
Some of the best "looking" swings have not won tournaments. Some ugly swings have won majors. You gotta play with what you got. Swinging a golf club beautifully and playing golf are entirely two different things.
Very true, I've played with loads of really low handicap golfers, nearly all had "quirky" swings, great impact but rarely text book. They all had great short games though.
No-one explains Sneads forward press. HOW he does it.. does he push laterally .. if so does his left left move too.. or does he turn his press in slightly. People say he was ALWAYS long and accurate.. well look at his game at 51 against Jack Nicholas.. is on ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-qMnrQYyxOho.html In this match at Pebble beach where he lost by a stroke to Nicholas his shots were quiet erratic. The point is... Sam's swing is incompletely looked at.. including whee he positions hands at the top of his swing.. almost as though it is assumed we all know. I read somewhere .. that he slots it between his right shoulder and ear.. alah Fred Couples. Lastly, the forward press can lead to reverse pivots if it is not mastered as snead performs it. Arguably too.. the left knee of modern players does not kick in as much. From what I can gather is his swing is ground up.. he press off the inside or rolls his right foot.. and rolls his left foot on the backswing. In on swing analyses it shows Sam's head to be absolutely still.. not sure this is entirely correct. Need to be careful in breaking down swings into the the sum of their parts.. afterall... a lot of these moves happen naturally - It is a feel game - and often our interpretation of what is happening is not accurate. Swing styles vary - arguably fundamentals stay the same .. although that is not entirely true... and body sizes dictate a lot of nuances in the swing too, not least the equipment being used in different eras and golf bags. Golf is a mental game whereby .. most golfers have a swing thought.. the trick is not to over do whatever gem you have in you head.
GraceAddy16 It’s usually referred to as “inside over the top”. He’s so deep at the top of the backswing his over the top move doesn’t make the ball slice. Bobby Jones and Hale Irwin do the same.
Hi Christo, I've been following 'My Swing Evolution' for many years now. Please keep up the great work. As a student of the game such as yourself, for this Sam Snead topic, please check out this new kid, ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-rVtp2d8UlXI.html (see 3:18). His swing coach, George Gankas, really emphasizes Sam Snead squat style. By the way, as you may know, Matt Wolff is also with George. Matt's downswing squat & hip turn are just awesome to watch ... ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-lhieKAZMIWw.html
