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Chris - Tomasello told me that the body does absolutely nothing purposefully to initiate the downswing. Just toss the club straight down into the ground with the right forearm. This is nothing new. Harry Vardon said the following things. 1)"The club, it will be noticed has been started on the downtrack without any alteration of the pose of the body." (2)"The club should start down without the body turning." (3)"The downswing starts by a dropping of the elbows. What you term a 'pull down' but even more so where a downswing follows a movement begun by a purely body action, such as full shifting of weight from right to left before the club gets under way, would surely be putting the cart before the horse. The clubs and arms must lead on the downswing, just as they should on the upswing. Not the hips and body first, which means shifting the weight as a preliminary to body turning, as so many teach. That would be good advice to follow if you wanted to cultivate body sway; but it is body action of every sort that you want to keep to a minimum." (4)"There may be the slightest shifting to the left, or bracing movement on starting down, but it should be very slight indeed." (5)"The main function of the body is to furnish leverage, but not power; of the wrists, a connection only, like a universal joint, between between the club and the golfer.They should not be used for propulsion." (6) "If I simply swing, largely with the arms and club,letting all the effort be the natural result of the swing, and not the thing that produced it, taking care that the club is leading all the way through and not the body or any part of it, the ball will be struck with the finest degree of delicacy but with enough percussion at the clubhead to whisk it away two hundred and fifty yards or more."
I think the bracing movement Vardon spoke of is an instinctive move to slow down and stop the backswing pivot so the right arm can can fire thereafter against the brace. So the little sit or hip slide we often talk about is actually a braking action to stop the backswing and give you some ground force to hit against. Think about Vardon for a second. Joe Norwood assisted Vardon on one of Vardon's American tours and studied his method assiduously. Tommy Armour studied Vardon assiduously. John Jacobs was also a convert, and Butch Harmon has all of his instructors read Jacobs' book as their required textbook. Harmon basically taught Woods to swing like Vardon. Keep that right heel down.
So if using a right anchor on the backswing helps you eliminate body muscling of any sort to start the downswing then do it. And keep asking Delaware about it, He knows his stuff. In fact, The right humerus probably initiates the right arm swing more so than the triceps, rendering right forearm action as more passive than Kelley or Tomasello thought during normal Hitting or "right arm swinging" strokes. I believe Delaware mentioned something like this in one of his posts.
Also consider the following quote from Frank Hannigan's foreword to A.W. Tillinghast's book, "Reminiscences on the Links": In Tillinghast, we have a link between the first national championship of the mid 1890's right on up to the era of Nelson, Hogan, and Snead. He both saw and played with almost all the greats. So it is fascinating that, when asked to pick his own all time Top Ten, the name at the top is Harry Vardon, not Bobby Jones, his number two pick. Vardon seems to us a relic, someone whose primary contribution was to bring 'rhythm' to the swing. But we somehow don't imagine Vardon being in the same league as a player whose moving images are preserved on film beginning with Jones. But Tillie says this, "Without hesitation, I name the great Harry Vardon as the peer of all golfers who ever lived. He was so close to absolute perfection, save for the occasional stabbing of his putts, that his monotonous immaculate stroking made the game absurdly simple."
We are asymetrical beings. If you are right arm dominant, get it ready and use it without delay. I don't think you'll inflame it with tendonitis, as some would say, unless you think you need to use it like a baseball pitcher. Pitchers don't have a club and must hurl their dominant arm much much faster than golfers do to create adequate velocity. Toss the arm lightly, smoothly and swiftly in both directions and let it lead throughout. There is nothing deliberate, slow, or heavy about it. Conduct a symphony with it, don't drag it around like a wet mop!
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