Peter, it is surprising to me that in the excerpts of Bertholy's book you have put up so far there is barely mentioning of the importance of adequate tugging of the lead side. A lot of information however about the trail hand being used to keep the angle deep into the down swing. There seems to be some unbalance, IMHO , the trail side retaining of the angle is only useful if the lead side is really pulling the golf club along.
The trail hand/arm being used primarily for retaining the angle till impact leads me to believe that it is not being used as a power source in the swing. We are thus having a swing which is, as was custom at that time, mainly lead side pulling oriented.
I feel that there are likely people on this forum having problems relating to the Bertholy Method - those with a short back swing (difficult to have a drop of 12 inches ) and who are trail side arm/hand oriented. will have to do a major conceptual change re. to their golf swing.
It always intrigues me that golf instruction sometimes tends to result in such dogmatic statements. Bertholy is rather strong on condemning the trail side as was done by many other golf instructors of that period.. My fun, strange enough, last year when I found this forum, was discovering, after nearly 30 years of pulling the golf club, the active use of my trail hand/arm.
Went only a few days ago for the first time hitting some balls with a 8I. I did swinging in a variety of ways to re-discover the multiple sensations of a golf swing. I readily found that the sa trail side hitting action, by far, gave the least dispersion in direction and trajectory. Short back swing, hands slightly separated on the grip, using a semi extended trail index finger for sensing the shaft and applying pressure on it during the swing.
Peter, are you now trying to bewitch me back to a puller type of swing when I just discovered on this forum the exquisite pleasure of simple sa hitting with my trail side hand/arm ? IMA is fun and relatively easy, Bertholy proposes an arduous and long struggle to get to golf nirvana, and as I discovered, rather risky for my fragile wrists. But, no pain no gain.
mandrin
