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Michael J. Lavery, aka The Hammer Man Of Golf, has a most radical concept of hitting a golf ball. When you study the swing mechanics that he has developed you must first get past most traditional concepts of the golf swing in order to comprehend what he is doing with his approach to striking the golf ball with his driver, woods and irons. He takes the shortest back-swing in relationship to how far he hits a golf ball with all his clubs of any golfer in the world. There is a surprising amount of accuracy too. This is because the head of the club stays on the target line longer than normal.
Here is a list of the things that he does that go against traditional modern golf teaching.
His stance is too wide in the mode of Moe Norman.
He moves his left heel way off the ground as did Bobby Jones He does not hinge the left wrist on the top of the back-swing and the wrist remains bowed.
He does not initiate the downswing with the hips turning towards the target. Instead he pushes off the ground with his right foot with great force to initiate the downswing thus sliding the hips and his right foot is sliding forward before he strikes the golf ball. This is how he creates the lag with the short back-swing.
Because the clubs are so heavy (Driver G 7 and irons E 5)he is utilizing gravity to help create the force behind the strike. Thus the greater swing weight is creating more centrifugal force. The reason is because of the arc that he is able to create with his unique technique. When you see how far he is from the ball one gets the picture of the huge arc that he creates. Because his clubs are extremely heavy there is an added element that most people do not understand about the swing weight and the radius that he is getting from his technique. Because he releases the right hand off the club as he is striking the ball the left arm is able to maintain a bigger arc and the arm becomes an extension of the club. He trains with the sledge hammers and he has developed tremendous muscle density in his forearms plus a tremendous grip strength. This allows for the deflection factor. As the energy travels up the shaft he has such a firm grip on the heavy club that he is able to deflect the energy back to the ball. In the slow motion segments you can see the triangle that he creates in the follow through and you will notice that the head of the club is on a huge sweeping arc.
Uniqueness is what his swing is all about. It is obviously going to be criticized but that is OK with the Hammer Man. After all he has only spent tens of thousands of hours developing his hand eye coordination to be more athletic at hitting the ball. His background in sports includes baseball, hockey, football, tennis and squash. So the idea that he brings to the game of golf is why not be different and train to be a great ball striker. If one can run while bouncing a golf ball off the end of a ball ping hammer then just maybe one can think outside the box about hitting a stationary little white ball on the biggest playground in the world.
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