Why You Should Have Two Swings

By T.J. Tomasi

Universal Press Syndicate

Sam Snead told a young Johnny Miller: "Son, you'll either be a great driver of the ball or a great iron player, but nobody is both." I see this all the time in my students. They'll be hitting their irons well, but not their driver, and the next time I see them, it's just the reverse: They're killing the driver, but hitting the irons poorly.

I think that over their golfing life, the majority of golfers slide up and down a continuum ― the "driver good ... both mediocre ... irons good" continuum. The problem is that sliding back and forth means you can never maximize your talent. One part of your game is always in decline while the other is on the rise. And when you throw in a balky short game, it is a rare cat indeed who is firing on all cylinders.

Is there a way out of this bind?

Science sheds some light on this problem. Research shows that the angle of descent your club has at impact (called the angle of attack, or A of A) should change depending on the club. You maximize ball flight with the driver using a positive or ascending angle of attack, i.e., you catch the ball on the upswing with the driver. But with the 3-wood through wedge, you need a descending or negative A of A.

And the story gets more interesting.

If your goal is to have the club path looking at the target at impact (square to the target), then with all clubs except the driver, your swing needs to be not only descending but also outside-to-in. Every tour player tested on the high-tech measuring technology called TrackMan documented this, and hundreds were tested.

When you put the driver in your hands, you need an ascending angle plus an in-to-out path or "horizontal swing plane," as the TrackMan scientists call it.

Now comes my surmise: It's logical that golfers who hit their driver well but not their irons, practice their irons until they fly correctly. By doing this they unknowingly teach themselves to swing outside-in with a negative A of A. The problem occurs when they apply the descending iron path they just perfected to the driver, which of course causes the driver's ball flight to decay while the irons prosper.

So now these golfers focus on their troublesome driver, and the swing gradually morphs to inside-out/ascending until they're hitting the driver well again. But when they unconsciously apply this driver-specific combo to the irons, it ruins the iron ball flight. And so it goes, back and forth for their entire golf career.

Next week I'll explain how you can incorporate this two-path concept into your swing.