Swing and power to improve your game 

I have known cases of such players who improved their swings and their games without intending to, simply because they came across and adopted a better conception of the swing. The truth is, of course, that just as if we appreciate good manners we will become good mannered in spite of ourselves; so also, if we appreciate the true ethics of the golf strokes, we will become good golfers.

Why do I use the word "ethics"?

 Well, because golf is a matter of ethics, that is (according to my dictionary) "relating to manners or morals." To prove this, cast your eye round the club room. The chances are you will find the most modest man in the club is also the best player and that he is out in the caddie shed. I have never known a great golfer who was not modest, and that goes for Walter Hagen, who in spite of his showmanship was a charmingly modest fellow and a great gentleman.

I hope that the reason why I have wandered off into moral implications here is clear. Our subject is power and power like fire is a good servant but a bad master. Uncontrolled power is the very devil—in golf or anywhere else.

In golf, power must be controlled in two ways: in the matter of morals and in the matter of mechanics. The mechanical control we may liken to the control of a motor car. The power at golf—the gasoline—is represented by the nails in our shoes, no gasoline, no power! But this power is not applied direct; it works through a clutch, and the clutch in the golfer's mechanism is the hips. That is where the power is gathered up, given its right direction, and put into action or not. Then the
hands we can compare with spark plugs—get them operating too soon or too late in the cycle of operations and your swing backfires. Your swing like the, ignition on your car must be timed.

Without suggesting that this comparison should be pressed too far, it has its value. One of the points it emphasizes is that clutch slip must be guarded against —that is, there must be no slip, no sloppy movement in your hip work. We must be fully conscious of how our hips should operate. If the right hip twists inwards as the hips return on the forward swing, we will have swung from in-to-out—that is, correctly. But if the right hip is allowed to slip outwards and around on the downward swing, this result cannot be achieved. This is because the club head performs the same actions as does the right hip; they are connected (as regards direction) by the right shoulder.

Sign up to your free golf ecourse

The effect of bringing our right hip inwards with a twisting movement is to guide the right shoulder in the way it should go. The right shoulder is totally subjective to the right hip; so, when the latter is braced and twisted inwards, the shoulder follows, coming inside and behind the ball—in-to-out.  Do not think that all this is a digression from our subject, power. For power must be guided as well as produced. We find that it is comparatively easy to drive the ball far; the difficulties begin when we want to add "and straight"; that is when we want our power applied with great accuracy. And in this matter of the accurate application of power, hip brace and movement are fundamentally vital.