GOLFTEC's Magic Move... and Flexibility (Video)

Golf Digest published an article about this concept back in September 2019, and this is the companion video that Nick Clearwater made to better illustrate the concepts. It's about what GOLFTEC calls "the magic move" (spoiler alert: it's shoulder turn) but I saw something else in this video that stood out to me. First though, here's the video:



You may have noticed that Nick says, contrary to popular belief, the ability to make a full shoulder turn is NOT a matter of flexibility. And if you watch the video, you'll learn a number of things you can do to get a better shoulder turn without doing a bunch of flexibility exercises.

But here's the deal: Near the end of the video Nick compares a typical pro swing to a typical amateur swing, both of which he has recorded during this video. However, if you pay attention to the numbers that show each swing's hip and shoulder turns in degrees, you'll see that the difference between the two swings is created almost entirely by the lack of hip turn in the amateur swing. Let me put that another way, just in case I'm not being clear:

If you subtract the amateur hip turn in degrees from the pro hip turn, you'll find that it's almost exactly the same difference as the pro shoulder turn minus the amateur shoulder turn. In other words, both pro and amateur have turned their shoulders the same amount, and the two shoulder turns would be identical if their hip turns matched.

So it sounds to me as if hip turn is actually the Magic Move in the golf swing, and maybe you should focus a bit more on your hip turn and a bit less on shoulder turn. Just saying...

And just for the record, it's been eight Mondays without a Limerick Summary. *sigh*