A Sample of Leslie King's Golf Technique

Jeffrey Jenkins left a comment on my post about Manuel de la Torre's death asking if de la Torre (and Ernest Jones, who was a big influence on him) taught a swing technique similar to a British teacher named Leslie King. I thought some of you might be interested to learn a bit about him.

King taught a method known as the Swing Factory, which he developed back in the 1920s. It's based around a free arm swing -- that is, the arms swing independently of the body and thus pull the body around, rather than the body pulling the arms around. King taught a large number of people, but his most famous student was probably Sean Connery. King taught him how to play for the James Bond movie Goldfinger. King also helped Gary Player and Juli Inkster, among others.



Here's an old Golfweek article that tells you a bit about King and the folks who continue to teach his swing method. (The school is Knightsbridge Golf School, in London.) In answer to Jeffrey, this article definitely says that:

He was very much on the same page as Ernest Jones, who ran a similar indoor school in New York. Both men believed in the importance of the arms in the swing.

And here's a link I found to a 12-chapter how-to booklet on King's swing technique. I've only browsed it but it looks very interesting. And since it appears that none of King's original instruction manuals are available here in America -- at least, all of Amazon's listings were for out-of-print editions -- this may be the best way to learn about what he taught. (There are some books by Steve Gould and DJ Wilkinson, however. You can find the list at the Knightsbridge site.)