What is the role of the right arm and right hand in the Golfswing of the vast majority of Golfers?
What is the role of the right arm and hand in the high quality swings of that small percentage of excellent golfers?
First, the right arm and hand play vastly different roles for the expert Golfer and the high handicap player. Very often, perhaps 90% of the cases or even more the difference is accounted for by these right hand and arm functions.
Why?
The number one enemy of the Golfswing is the innate "H_I_T__I_M_P_U_L_S_E"!!!!!! This Golfer's harmful reflex action manifests itself in the pesky right hand cast at the very outset of the downswing and sickeningly shows its ugly head with uncommon regularity by a repugnant right arm thrust during the downswing long before impact.
What harm comes from these cancers of the Golfswing?
The list is long! The right hand cast and right arm thrust are truly the boogeymen of the Golfswing. Once the right hand cast has occurred at the outset of the downswing the fine Golfswing chance is irretrievably lost! The die has been cast! You have had it, brother! You are now going to hit a stinker! It's like jumping off one of the Towers of the World Trade Center. You're committed baby! Accept the junky golfshot that is about to squirt off your club, and grin sheepishly and bear it or hit the "Coors" early, for you just "ain't gonna have" much fun hitting golf balls this day. You are going to have to putt and chip like mad to break 80 even if your name is Nicklaus, and if your name is Sam Shovel, you are going to need S.O.S. pads to get the white paint off the toe of your driver. The cast and the thrust kill centrifugal force, destroy all chances for a correct plane, dissipate clubhead speed, destroy the proper path of the clubhead, both as to length and direction of the path, and not that these are not enough, the poor caster-thruster usually tears up the fairway with a "F_A_T? divot weighing no less than a $20 steak. Our golfer would trade places with the invisible man at this point, pain throbs in his right wrist, feels like a horse stepped on it, he is sure he has broken his wrist and says to his playing partner with the aplomb of a James Bond, "my caddy underclubbed me."
The right hand hits in the finest golfswings, make no mistake about that, and it hits harder than the left hand for most fine players. The trick is to prevent it from hitting prematurely and improperly. The right hand must never cast and when the right arm hits it must hit in what I call the "Claw" position, never in what I call the "ROD" position. To familiarize one's self with these Claw and Rod positions, study the sequence picture of the great players in your back issues of GOLF.
""""C_A_U_T_I_O_N"""" Never, but never deliberately hit with the right hand and arm on any full golf shot. There are only a few specialty shots where deliberate hitting with the right arm and hand are done and then, of course, never at the outset of the downswing but only in the impact area.
When the right hand does its proper hitting in the fine Golfswing, it is most assuredly of an involuntary nature and when the right arm hits, it must only hit as a "Claw" and never as a "Rod".
....
Now let us deal with the bromide: Keep the right arm passive for it is so wicked, so cancerous, that it is total evil. No way! The right arm is not evil. It is not a cancer. It is wild, but that is not evil. The right arm and upper right quadrant are like the wild horse. Because the wild horse may kick and bite you does not mean that you should shoot the horse. What it means is that you patiently and intelligently train that horse to the point where he will serve you faithfully. So it is with the right arm. It is not a cancer. If the right arm is a cancer, surgery is required at the shoulder. But on the other hand, if it has a cancer, and it has the innate premature hit-impulse we correctly identify, isolate and eliminate the cancer, and subsequently use this wonderful but misunderstood wild horse of a right arm to our advantage.
...
Dominant-Right-Arm-Golfers will never reach their potential nor will they be able to perform as well under stress as the Dominant-Left-Side-Golfer. Also, their playing careers will be shorter and a greater loss of distance will occur sooner as they grow older.
You most assuredly will have to teach the right arm and hand when to hit and how to hit involuntarily by a special conditioning program. My Bertholy-Method is just such a program and the good training device that we make, use and sell, the Swing Pipe, aids greatly this particular elusive development.
Now the right arm has another valuable function and the most elusive of all. The right arm must create containment of the power through right arm retention. The upper right arm must be conditioned to pull the right forearm closer to the right arm bicep while the forearm must be conditioned to cock and hold back the right hand until the magic elusive moment of R!!E!!L!!E!!A!!S!!E!!___P_O_W_!!!!!
As president of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to the Golfer's Right Arm, I soberly suggest a day be set aside for all true golfers to honor the Right Arm. A commerative stamp to be issued and a golf Right Arm lapel pin to be worn by all true golfers.
