Grey Poupon and Your Right Knee

Here’s a universal truth: We like to deal in universals. Its easy to put ideas and concepts into little boxes, and turn them into rules that supposedly govern the way all of us behave. It gives us clarity, order. Method to the madness, if you will. In fact, big chunks of 20th century science has been based on this concept. We want to explain things to ourselves, and to do that we need rules.

Lets talk about one “rule” that’s existed in golf instruction for the last decade or so. For a long time, it’s been taught that the optimal golf swing is one where the golfer’s trail or rear leg (right leg for RH players) keeps as much flex as possible during the backswing. This is done in order to create “stability” in the lower body, and increase the amount of “X-factor” in the golfer’s swing, by limiting the hip turn. Check out this explanation of the idea. Note: This isn’t a good thing to focus on for most players. I do NOT endorse it.

What does this have to do with Grey Poupon? Lets talk about the food industry in the early 1980′s. At the time, there was one kind of mustard on the market, the standard yellow kind. Then, Grey Poupon came along with a mustard revelation: Dijon. Their mustard was a better quality of seed, made with wine, had a kick for the nose. And it took the mustard world by storm. The condiment guys took this to mean that Grey Poupon had broken the paradigm for mustards, that the Grey Poupon mustard was a far superior type of mustard. A game changer. A mustard to aspire to. A perfect mustard, even. The fact that people loved Grey Poupon became a universal, a new rule that explained how we all consume condiments. But really all Grey Poupon did was offer choice, a new way in a one-dimensional world.

Now, back to golf. Lets put this in the context of a golfer’s trail knee. The conventional wisdom in the golf world over the last 10 years or so (maybe longer) has been to retain as much flex as possible in the trail knee during the backswing. Yep, that’s right, keeping the trail leg flexed is the yellow mustard. See the following recent magazine image from Top 100 teacher Brian Mogg: 

Contrast that little gem with the following comparison of Rickie Fowler, created by Sam Quirke an instructor from the UK who is well versed in the swing method known as Stack & Tilt. One of the tenets of the Stack & Tilt swing is to consciously straighten the trail knee during the backswing, as Fowler illustrates here:

Yep, you guessed it: Straightening the trail leg is the golf world’s Grey Poupon right now.

Ok, back to the mustard for a sec. Even though Grey Poupon wasn’t necessarily a better or perfect mustard (at least not to everyone), it filled a taste preference for millions of people.  They loved that it was different from the yellow mustard, that it gave them choice, that it filled a need that they hadn’t even known they had. Here’s the gem from Malcolm Gladwell on the topic: “There is no good mustard or bad mustard, there is no perfect mustard or imperfect mustard, there are only different kinds of mustard that suit different kinds of people.”

I mentioned above that most of 20th century science was spent searching for absolutes, for universals. What I didn’t mention is that in the last 15-20 years, a shift has taken place. Nobody in the scientific community is looking for universals anymore, they’re looking for an understanding of variability.

Examine those pictures again. Is there really so much difference between Rickie Fowler and Brian Mogg (if you ignore the yellow lines)? Both have straightened the trail knee flex to some degree. Mogg has just straightened his knee a fair bit less than Fowler has. So clearly, we’re all using mustard of some kind to garnish our hot dogs. The real gold is to understand the variability in the action of the trail knee. Rather than debating whether or not the trail knee should lose flex, we should be seeking to understand the characteristics of that variable. To paraphrase Conor O’Shea, PGA of Canada professional at the Academy at Piper’s Heath, and contributing teaching professional for SCOREGolf magazine:

The RATE at which flex comes out of the trail knee, and this rate’s effect on a golfers hip turn, pivot, and ability to use the ground is the more important debate. Everyone agrees that your trail leg has to straighten some amount. How and when is up for debate.

He’s right. Jim Mclean, David Leadbetter, Brian Mogg and Andy Plummer (or Matt Diederichs!) will all agree that the trail leg is going to lose some flex during the backswing. They’ll also also agree that it shouldn’t ever reach a completely locked position. So, the real question becomes, as Conor said, how much to straighten the leg and when. Ask yourself: Why would a golfer choose to release more flex in the right knee? What effect would this have on hip turn, pelvis movement, pivot, ability to use the ground to create forces, weight shift, overall stability, and balance? (Sorry, that’s about 2000 words worth of conjecture that I really don’t want to write.) The simple fact is that again, there is no universal. Changing this variable in one golfer could (and probably would) have drastically different results when contrasted with changing this variable in another. Just as surely as yellow mustard isn’t for everyone, neither is dijon. And that’s ok.

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Watch the TED talk with Malcolm Gladwell that I cited earlier, it’s an interesting one. Learn how a psychophysicist forever changed the face of pasta sauce. Also a big thank you is due to Conor O’Shea for suggesting I write this, and pointing me towards the Gladwell piece. I highly recommend you read his cover story in last year’s SCOREGolf Magazine entitled, “Never Hit it Straight Again.” It’s an excellent primer on ball flight.