Here’s something intriguing right now. Check out a homunculus on Google for a creepy, grotesque-looking little guy. Sorry if he makes you uncomfortable, but he will help us think about the golf swing and what to concentrate on while learning an efficient golf swing. The fictional character model known as a homunculus is helpful to biologists and neuroscientists. The proportion of motor nerves distributed throughout the human body is represented by the homunculus. Areas with a high density of nerves are portrayed as being very large, whereas those with a lower level of enervation are proportionately smaller. Take a look at how large the hands are. They are huge!
The fact that the hands have been given a lot of enervation indicates that nature wants us to use them. This is confirmed in our daily lives. We use our hands a lot to interact with the world around us. We use our hands to operate a mouse and keyboard. We read, we drive, and we eat. We do everything with our hands, including cooking and working. The majority of what we physically do is done with our hands.
The golf swing then should not be any different. We choose to ignore all that nature has given us to use, which, as our homunculus model shows, is a sizable allocation, if we choose to ignore the role of the hands in the golf swing. And by doing so, we disregard the enormous feel and control that are at our disposal. Feel and control that can and should be used to strike the golf ball accurately and at will.
So it is clear that nature did not ignore the hands. But a lot of golf instruction does! Nature clearly intended for us to use our hands more than other parts of our bodies, as evidenced by the significant amount of enervation in the hands. Instead, the majority of golf instruction emphasizes the body’s function during the golf swing, frequently to the near complete exclusion of the hands. Or, even worse, there is golf instruction that completely ignores the function of the hands during the golf swing. These swing theories would have the player merely “hold on to the club, the hands and arms doing nothing… ” But this kind of instruction leaves so much untapped potential on the table.
A vast source of emotion and control is discovered by those who draw on everything the natural world has to offer. They frequently grow into very good players once they are able to control what is already within their conscious reach and harness it. In an interview with Life magazine, Ben Hogan claimed that his trade-secret lay in his hands.
Many golfers who are primarily concerned with their physical appearance do not make the most of everything nature has given them. They opt to only use body rotation to control their golf swings instead. Everywhere golf is played and practiced, you can find these players in large numbers on driving ranges and at golf courses. They are the ones who keep turning around until they are frustrated and go too far, which makes their problems worse.
A long story in itself explains why hand action is neglected in golf instruction in favor of body rotation. There are several causes. A certain amount of it is just plain old ignorance. Sometimes a player will have been fortunate enough to have a good swing naturally start the moment he picked up the club, and even though his hand motion is quite active, it comes naturally to him. A portion of it is custom or the repetition of what has been taught to one in golf instruction. Alternatively, you may not always understand how the golf swing works and how a mistake in your hand motion can and will ruin your entire swing.
For whatever reason, a large portion of golf instruction concentrates on the body’s function and pivoting. Nature, however, suggests otherwise. The homunculus asserts otherwise. The hands receive a disproportionately large amount of resources from nature compared to the rest of the body. Is Nature then in error? And is pivot-focused golf instruction accurate in its place? Is the emphasis of either Nature or Man correct? You know who to bet on, I believe.