He was a thoughtful golfer who really wanted to understand and learn touch but had doubts and had never been exposed to touch: “How can you say that touch covers everything in a golf swing? Where are the mechanics that underpin the fundamentals of a golf swing?” To me, of course, I had to begin at the beginning, and I will get deeper into that a little later. But this golfer didn’t understand the truth about touch. He lacked exposure. My answer: “All those mechanics you seem to believe in live under the roof of touch.” He looked at me, perplexed. I continued, “Touch does have structure, but maybe not in the way you would think about structure.

“OK, let’s go over how we create a complete swing thru touch.”

“Can we all agree that if the club is ok then the swing is ok? Meaning if the club consistently satisfies the dynamics of impact, then we can assume how you do it is inconsequential; that is just your way.”

He agreed, so we began. If the club’s patterns govern all swings, then all the movement from beginning to end is ok. All the muscles, all the joints, how they move in sync with each other. Agreed?” He said yes.

“So you see, the club governs the structure, not how you uniquely move your body. Of course, we talk about the hands because, through the automatic brain, they engage the entire body. But focusing on the hands does not exclude a touch golfer from feeling other areas of the body during the swing, especially as they learn the kinematic flow. Their hands provide feel for the club, but the brain also automatically organizes the swing as the movement travels through the body in the kinematic flow direction and sequence. “Kinematic flow” is a term I coined to describe when areas of the body move. Like a slinky, no segment of a slinky ever gets out of order unless you impose a force other than the energy in the slinky; it’s always in sync. When a golfer learns the kinematic flow of a golf swing, they are never out of sync.” If you think about it, professional golfers’ swing patterns never change shape; when they have problems, they get out of sync, for a variety of reasons, usually from fear of a mistake or anticipation of a problem. But it makes no sense to me for them to try to change body position to fix a synchronization problem. And the same holds for amateur golfers. So the question is, how do we remain in sync more often? Well, we know rhythm and pace play a major role in it. No one disagrees with that. Tempo plays a role. But for us a complete picture, visualizing the entire kinematic flow, is the most reliable way to remain in sync.

Now I had his attention. I continued, “Furthermore, the only constraints in touch golf are the club’s dynamics at impact.” Touch golfers have the club pattern in mind and rely on feel feedback loops to pattern their swings. They use pictures in their minds; that’s where a touch golfer properly uses explicit awareness. Visualization. They learn to visualize from several angles or points of view. A touch golfer never asks why or how. Those are the questions that befuddle mechanical golfers to no end. The touch golfer is only into noticing when and what!” So they have the pattern in mind, which we help them with by using pathfinder exercises. And then they learn to picture and feel the kinematic flow. The kinematic flow line is a vagus line; it wanders its way thru the body. The touch golfer learns the flow direction and the when of movement, not how or why. Then he asked a very good question, “So where does the kinematic flow line begin and end?” “I’ll get to it, but to me, the best way to picture it is by swinging from the front-end exercise. Jack Nicklaus once said he wished he had the guts to swing the club from the front end on the tour. He practiced his golf that way every day in Palm Beach at home. The front end is when you begin the swing with the club in the air in front of the golf ball; this provides the momentum to begin swinging back without any force coming from you. You use gravity and momentum to get going. It’s the perfect way to do it. I believe it’s one reason Nicklaus never grounded his club before swinging. He was trying to capture that front-end momentum without doing it. By beginning in the air, he had the closest thing to the smoothness of the front end and could feel with a soft pressure in his hands the weight of the club he was swinging, never forcing the movement to get going. BTW, Nicklaus had the best kinematic swing of all time. And there were several in that era. Weiskopf, Crampton, Geiberger, to name a couple. Those were excellent kinematic swings, and you might notice they were developed before the modern mechanical era. They were also the longest on tour at the time. He looked at me a little stunned. This was a language and concept he had never been exposed to. Now I had his attention. “Can you explain further?”

Ok, I would really rather not explain because a picture does it more justice. But here I go.

The kinematic flow begins in the clubhead as it moves back; the flow travels up the shaft to the left hand, up the arm to the shoulder, down the left side from the shoulder thru the left leg to the foot. On the return, it travels from the left foot up the leg all the way up the left side to the left shoulder, down the left arm to the left hand, and down the shaft to the clubhead. That is the vagus line. If you learn that sequence which tells you when to move, you’ve got it. You dont need to know how. When a golfer gets out of sync, it’s the kinematic flow that’s screwed up.

And it’s understandable why golfers get confused. When you begin building a house, the framework is the base structure — it’s internal. You build out from there. But in golf, it’s the opposite. The structure is a function of the distal external parts: the hands. That’s why touch is so necessary; in fact, the remainder of the body depends on the intention of the hands to create the entire path of the club. The entire swing structure, or patterns of the club, emerge from a very clear picture and feeling in the hands. Now, with that said, the swing can be felt through the kinematic flow picture. That is where you can feel the flow movement in sequence by visualizing the sequence of the vagus line.

“You just need to remember: the way you focus will determine how effective your practice will be. Visualization is key to not interfering with automaticity. The club’s pattern at impact is the only constraint. The body must always be allowed to move with its built-in intelligence. This strategy maintains freedom of motion.

Remarkably, he asked again, “Please, can you explain further — ‘kinematic flow’ — in more detail?”

“Ok so the flow has both direction and sequence in both the back swing and the thru swing.

The vagus line signals when to move, and we don’t care how you move.

The hand path pattern dictates the shape, and the kinematic flow tells you when to move; you feel it from the picture you have in mind. So you marry the picture to the feeling. That’s it.

Look, we are getting too complicated when a picture would really simplify it. Instead of explaining, I will show you an animation, and you will see it clear as a bell. But for now, I need to help Alex over there. He’s a young junior; if you pay attention, you’ll see how quickly he learns without any rules or much direction from me. As with anyone, he has built-in movement intelligence; my job? I will show him how to get in touch!

Get in sync,
The Golf Mystic