Rinker’s Golf Tips August 17th Guest Gary McCord. Gary McCord played baseball and basketball as a kid, and was fairly good at baseball until his arm blew up. At 15 he needed to find a sport where he didn’t have to put his arm above his shoulder so, he picked golf. In the 70’s and 80’s not many players had teachers. Now you have a head coach, voodoo coach, kinesiologyst, etc. Gary was taught by Mac O’Grady and that is what he knows now. They grew up together in Southern Cal and had known each other for a long time. Mac went over to play the Asian Tour and when he came back his swing was not the same. It was really good and powerful. Gary played with him at the 1983 Tour School and then made an appointment to go down and see him in Palm Springs. Gary was looking for a concrete template to understand the golf swing. They spent 10 hours on the range in 105 degree heat and Mac went through what he called MORAD, which at one time stood for Mac O’Grady Research and Development, but the acronym words would change as time went on. It was fairly simple and Gary understood it right away. It basically focused on 10 joints, then he had nine positions of the golf swing. Mac would visit the author of the Golf Machine, Homer Kelly, and “there is a lot of Mac in all the teaching today,” Gary said. As we shift the paradigm of teaching, awhile ago it was Leadbetter, Butch, and Haney, Toski way before that, a tree of knowledge that goes along, a guy’s player wins, so let’s go grab that information, that’s kind of the way information was passed along. Gary said you could put the 10 best teachers in a room with Mac and information wise, nobody has a chance against Mac. Butch Harmon told Gary in Phoenix this year, “He knows more than anyone.” I have known Mac for over 30 years and I have learned a lot from him especially during a three day seminar in 2007.
I asked Gary about the kinematic sequence that creates the speed in the golf swing and he described a manuscript that Peter Kostis curiously obtained in 1986, which diagrams a three-lever system. It basically uses 6th grade physics, Newtonian physics, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If the golf swing creates four horse power, then how is that created? Long drive guys push up from the ground, Bubba is off the ground, and Lexi Thompson is on her toes at impact. So, it’s a foot to ground force and the golf swing takes linear force and creates circular motion. Ground forces from the right leg and then the left leg, and the faster you can push up, the faster you can spin. Before this we had a two lever system with the left arm and shaft as the two levers; the longer the lever, the more potential energy in the club head. In nature, there is no really circular force that just exists. Have to have forces working on each other, high and low pressure acting on something that can create a circular force. Gary believes this manuscript is the “Holy Grail” of where power comes from in the golf swing. The model is exactly how Tiger was swinging the club in 2000. They are working with the author and will hopefully be coming out with the manuscript soon. I’ve seen it and it is unbelievable. Gary McCord can be reached through CBS Golf.