A.J. Bonar article in Golf Magazine

[jeffy]

I sent the following to Golf Magazine yesterday in response to the suspect cover article by A.J. Bonar. I doubt it will be of interest to many here, but those who have read and studied "The Search for the Perfect Swing" may appreciate it.

To the Editor:

Many aspects of “The Instant Power Move” article disappointed me, such as the tabloid-like hyperbole, including the provocative, but clearly false, claim that Bonar’s “Magic Move” is “The Secret Nobody Told You!”.

What was particularly annoying, though, is the misrepresentation of the content and research conclusions of the seminal work The Search for the Perfect Swing. The article claims on page 75 that the book’s findings were directly responsible for the creation and widespread acceptance of the “Square-to-Square” method of the 1960’s. In fact, the book debunks the notion of maintaining a square face throughout the swing and makes many of the points central to Bonar’s approach. Chapter 16 of the book, which is titled: “Wrist Action: Squares and Rollers”, analyzes both the “square” method, as well as its counterpart, dubbed in the book the “roller” method. The chapter begins as follows: “As we said, in any good golf swing the clubface must be rolled through something like a right angle, within the plane of the swing, by the way the player uses his body, shoulders, arms, and forearms...”. The chapter concludes that the extreme “square” method, which reduces the roll to the 60 or 70 degree range, will be “weaker” because of the loss of some of the “screwdriver action” derived from closing the clubface through impact (page 94). The “roller” will, on the other hand, generate more clubhead speed by increasing the degree of rotation to 120 or 130 degrees (page 95). The “roller” is obviously the method Bonar endorses: on page 95, there is an illustration of Christy O’Conner, a “free ‘roller’”, at the top of his backswing with a cupped left wrist position and wide-open clubface identical to that demonstrated by Bonar in the first box of the article’s fold-out section. Further, the authors note on page 95 that fear of hooking may cause a “roller” to “quit” on shots, and emphasize that “a player who rolls a lot going back, must fearlessly roll a lot coming through”. This advice is virtually identical to Bonar’s “Magic Move”. Significantly, despite what is implied in your article, the authors of The Search show no preference for either method (page 97): “The essential point is that there is nothing wrong with either one of these methods...”.

Your article implies that flaws in the authors’ research gave rise to decades of faulty instruction; however, the book in no way made the conclusions that Bonar alleges. Specifically, the following statements and conclusions by Bonar are flatly contradicted by the contents of the referenced book:

1) “Among their key findings, the authors concluded that golfers can’t use the hands to reliably manipulate the club on the downswing.”

The book concluded something quite different: that when the downswing is underway, it is impossible to “save” the shot through a last-ditch manipulation of the hands (page 102). This remains unchallenged today: human reaction time precludes it. As far as timing the respective methods’ downswings, the authors noted that the primary argument advanced by the “squares” was that less rotation would make the swing easier to time (page 94), which they concede is “probably” true. However, they also point out several shortcomings of the “square” method, as well as note certain advantages of the “roller” method.

2) “The clubface, they added, must stay fairly square through impact.”

Not so; on page 96, the caption of illustration 16:3 states that an argument made by the “squares” in favor of their method is that the clubface will remain more square to the clubhead arc. However, they note that “This is a purely mechanical argument, which takes no account of the greater difficulty most golfers have in swinging” in such a manner. Further, on pages 74 and 75, illustration 11:2 is a swing sequence of Ben Hogan. The caption, titled “Near perfection”, reads in part that Hogan’s ”left forearm rotation is allowed to continue naturally after impact (pictures 13 and 14), no attempt is being made to hold the face square to the clubhead arc”. On page 73, illustration 11:1, the caption reads in part: “To hold the clubface square to the line like this...” is “An almost impossible position, at least on a full shot”.

3) “The Search gave rise to the theory of square-to-square...”

To the contrary, as should be obvious by the foregoing discussion: the square–to-square theory was well established by 1968, given that the authors devoted a chapter of the book to analyzing both it and the competing point of view, which is now espoused by Bonar. As already stated, the authors did not endorse either method over the other.

4) “But the book was flawed, Bonar claims. It dubbed a square clubface king but ignored the fact that all good players close the face by about 120 degrees in the two feet before and after impact.”

Complete nonsense: the authors nowhere dubbed “a square clubface king” and make plain that, in the most extreme case, the club is rotated through at least 120 degrees (60 degrees open in the backswing than a corresponding amount in the through swing) and as much as 260 degrees in the case of a “free ‘roller””.

5) “That second lever, the rotating clubface, imposes tremendous energy on the ball, he says. But by swinging with your big muscles, you lose the lever”.

Again, both are a totally false statements. The rotating clubface, powered by the hands and arms, adds power to the clubhead, but not a “tremendous” amount. On page 81, the researchers, through the application of physics, calculate that to generate 100 mph at impact requires delivering about one-and-a-half horsepower to the clubhead. Since at least an equal amount of energy is assumed to be used to swing the arms and rotate the body, the total amount of energy required in the downswing is at least three horsepower. The researchers further calculate that an average man can generate about one-and-a-quarter horsepower from the arm muscles, meaning that the rest of the power needs to be supplied by the “big muscles” of the body. There is no biomechanical reason that both the big muscles of the body as well as the hands and arms cannot be simultaneously applied in the downswing; in fact, doing so is the only way to generate maximum clubhead speed (page 81).

The great modern day teacher Jim Hardy began his 1990 PGA Teaching and Coaching Summit presentation by stating, in effect, that there is nothing new under the sun in golf instruction, just a process of continual rediscovery of well-established truths. The text of The Search for the Perfect Swing makes clear that Bonar’s method was well established forty years ago (as was square-to-square) and that your article could have been written relying solely on material from the book. I assume that neither Connell Barrett nor any “fact checkers” at Golf Magazine researched The Search to verify what turned out to be bogus claims by Bonar. Obviously, the text of your article should be corrected before it is republished elsewhere or posted on golf.com, and a retraction of the false claims published. No doubt you will also want to apologize to The Search’s authors.

Very truly yours,

Jeff