24 replies to this topic

[Hammerboy]

got a copy of the book for $5 at a yard sale, and gave it a try the last few days.

A very easy and repeatable way to play.  Frankly amazed, so obviously simple.


Did a google search, and see that this method has been around a while and never quite gained traction and some have claimed it has ruined their game.  For the life of me, hard to understand.  A complete imbecile IMHO could learn this method in a very short time and play acceptible golf.  There was a good video of some pro teaching this type swing on youtube.  He did a superlative job, this is just toooooooo easy!


Has anyone else given this a try or can offer some insight into the history of this method and its failure to be more widespread and accepted.  A total mystery to me!

Appreciate the insight...thanks to all

[Scottk]

Hammerboy, on 12 March 2012 - 11:09 PM, said:

got a copy of the book for $5 at a yard sale, and gave it a try the last few days.

A very easy and repeatable way to play.  Frankly amazed, so obviously simple.


Did a google search, and see that this method has been around a while and never quite gained traction and some have claimed it has ruined their game.  For the life of me, hard to understand.  A complete imbecile IMHO could learn this method in a very short time and play acceptible golf.  There was a good video of some pro teaching this type swing on youtube.  He did a superlative job, this is just toooooooo easy!


Has anyone else given this a try or can offer some insight into the history of this method and its failure to be more widespread and accepted.  A total mystery to me!

Appreciate the insight...thanks to all

Is this the video you are referring to?  If not, is this consistent with the book?

[Woodridge]

I was a kid and was given this book when it first came out in the 70's by my older cousin. This was the first swing I was taught. If I remember it correctly, part of the premise was a upright swing, a weaker grip and curling the left hand under going back. For me, it just caused me to get the clubface shut and forced me to duck it under the plane on the way back down. I'm sure that I am missing a lot as I don't have the book any longer and this was around 35 years ago. But, I still fight having a weak grip and shut club face...Not to mentioned lifting the club.

If I had the book I may remember more details as to what my teacher's thinking was at the time.  

[Socrates]

S to S was popular for a very brief period of time in the 70's.  It died just as quickly.  Likely ruined more golfers than it helped.  I don't think you would find anyone, anywhere, teaching it (well, maybe some real old guys).  Can't say it wouldn't work for you as one can never tell.  There's likely a reason it was $5 at a yard sale and not available for 3 easy payments of $29.99 on DVD.

[DLiver]

S to S killed my game for years. It taught you to take it back closed and you ended up having the face shut at the top, which caused you to make big compensations at impact or hit hooks, or both. Golf Digest was a big proponent of this when it first came out, and they eventually apologized for promoting this greatly flawed concept.

[teleblue]

This swing style is similar to what Steve Stricker is trying to do. If you go check out Steve's stats, you will see that he is in the top ten in fairways hit, and greens in regulations. I'm 53 and have arthritis, so with limited physical abilties, this swing has allowed me to stay in the game. Since I already swing on a steeper plane and prefer a weaker grip, this style came naturally. If anyone says that this style ruined their game, in my opinion they are not a very good golfer. I can easily switch from this swing to a conventional swing during the course of a round. Also I can kiss my slice goodbye! I can actually draw the ball now with my driver and my iron play has never been straighter. Just because this style didn't work for someone else doesn't mean you shouldent give it a try.

[MizunoJoe]

Hammerboy, on 12 March 2012 - 11:09 PM, said:

got a copy of the book for $5 at a yard sale, and gave it a try the last few days.

A very easy and repeatable way to play.  Frankly amazed, so obviously simple.


Did a google search, and see that this method has been around a while and never quite gained traction and some have claimed it has ruined their game.  For the life of me, hard to understand.  A complete imbecile IMHO could learn this method in a very short time and play acceptible golf.  There was a good video of some pro teaching this type swing on youtube.  He did a superlative job, this is just toooooooo easy!


Has anyone else given this a try or can offer some insight into the history of this method and its failure to be more widespread and accepted.  A total mystery to me!

Appreciate the insight...thanks to all

This was debunked some time after it came out and was eventually recanted by the author, Dick Aultman, who publicly apologized for writing it.

[kg1128]

i use square to square golf method.... in short putts.

unless your swing looks like happy gilmore, clubhead travels in two general arcs (up and inside in backswing, down and outside in downswing) since it moves around a somewhat fixed pivot point. so without any kind of active wrist manipulation or severely bent elbows at impact, you can't move the clubface square to square.

Edited by kg1128, 19 February 2013 - 03:07 PM.

[HAWKEYE77]

teleblue, on 19 February 2013 - 01:21 PM, said:

This swing style is similar to what Steve Stricker is trying to do. If you go check out Steve's stats, you will see that he is in the top ten in fairways hit, and greens in regulations. I'm 53 and have arthritis, so with limited physical abilties, this swing has allowed me to stay in the game. Since I already swing on a steeper plane and prefer a weaker grip, this style came naturally. If anyone says that this style ruined their game, in my opinion they are not a very good golfer. I can easily switch from this swing to a conventional swing during the course of a round. Also I can kiss my slice goodbye! I can actually draw the ball now with my driver and my iron play has never been straighter. Just because this style didn't work for someone else doesn't mean you shouldent give it a try.

Where do you see this in Stricker?

[Jim Waldron]

Well it ruined my game so I guess that means I am not a very good golfer, LOL! I went from shooting high 60's/low 70's to not being able to break 80, so I quit for 11 years. Jim Flick and Dick Aultman were the two authors, did golf schools on this method, and promoted it heavily in Golf Digest. Both apologized many years later for promoting this method, since so many golfers actually got much worse when using it. It would be wonderful if more famous teachers would be this ethical and honest about their promotion of a method that has serious flaws and errors as Square to Square did.

I attended the second MORAD Symposium in 1994, eleven teaching pros and Mac, and at lunch the first day, was shocked to find out that several of us had tried Square to Square with the same game destroying results. So I guess those other pros also must not have been very good golfers.

It is a left arm pulling motion swing model, so if you think an armsy swing is the way to go, then good luck. It also advocated rolling the forearms so the face shuts on the takeaway, which is a form of clubface manipulation, never a good thing unless you want to hit pull hooks and block slices, two way miss.

That experience has made me very suspicious of aggressively marketed method systems of teaching, especially when done so by famous teachers with the backing of a major golf magazine. It becomes much more about "selling the sizzle, not the steak".  As a golfer who actually wants to get better, and as someone who teaches for a living, I am much more concerned with the steak, and could care less about the "sizzle".

[MonteScheinblum]

[fatboyj711]

Scottk, on 13 March 2012 - 07:45 AM, said:

Hammerboy, on 12 March 2012 - 11:09 PM, said:

got a copy of the book for $5 at a yard sale, and gave it a try the last few days.

A very easy and repeatable way to play.  Frankly amazed, so obviously simple.


Did a google search, and see that this method has been around a while and never quite gained traction and some have claimed it has ruined their game.  For the life of me, hard to understand.  A complete imbecile IMHO could learn this method in a very short time and play acceptible golf.  There was a good video of some pro teaching this type swing on youtube.  He did a superlative job, this is just toooooooo easy!


Has anyone else given this a try or can offer some insight into the history of this method and its failure to be more widespread and accepted.  A total mystery to me!

Appreciate the insight...thanks to all

Is this the video you are referring to?  If not, is this consistent with the book?

Is the square to square method pushed by Golf Digest years and years ago the same as this video? Just curious.

[Mike Divot]

It's not just a game destroyer, it also promotes -- maybe it even started this way of thinking -- that there is a "recipe" for good ball striking.

Just do this, and this, insert flap A into spindle B, and voila! Perfect ball striking.

A one size fits all magic sequence that "solves" golf, no effort required. The OP has fallen for it as did many of us ... oh, so sad ...

It's like a pickup artist and his various lines. Forget the individual, run these lines past her and she's yours. No effort required.

[irish jim]

I took up golf as a fifteen year old in 1969 and have been obsessed with the game and the swing ever since. I remember reading about square to square in Golf World magazine,  but luckily I found it too complicated to pursue as a method .  However , I did try out various other techniques which were written by very well known players and instructers in the same magazine.  I know now that a lot of that  instruction was damaging. The problem was and still is today the danger of the written word with still pictures as a form of instruction. There is way too much scope for misinterpretation. Having said that there was also downright bad instruction. I spent years trying to increase my clubhead speed by strengthening my hands and wrists as I was led to believe that the tour pros of the day  had natural clubhead speed as a result of taking up the game as kids and hitting thousands of ball on the practice range. Their main focus was therefore on body motion to keep this hand speed under control, whereas the average club player had the opposite problem ie too much body and not enough hand action.
I know now, thanks to Jim Waldron of Balance Point Golf Schools that the golf swing is a three dimensional movement and power is obtained by a correct pivot motion with passive arms. This is just one example of how one can be misled by instructional articles in magazines. I have not attended Jim,s excellent schools much as I would love to. Just a bit too far for me to travel. However I have done the next best thing and have taken remote lessons with JIm over the last three years and can honestly say that I have  learned more about the golf  swing in that time than in a lifetime of playing the game. My ball striking is better now than it ever was.
I would highly recommend all serious students of the game to give him a call.

[DaveLeeNC]

I have the book that you are referring to. I tried it for a while. I came to the conclusion that it MIGHT well be a better way for me to hit the ball. It is simple and straight forward. But it is also pretty extreme - particularly for a player like me who was already fighting a hook. I didn't have enough confidence to 'really make the change'. You really are 'out there on your own' if you go there.

dave

ps. I recall recently seeing some ad-links for a "Square to Square" swing method. Never clicked on it.

[jar59]

I remember when Square to Square was the hot ticket in the magazines.  Dick Aultman was the writer and was influential in the development of the program as I recall.    Jim Flick and Bill Strausbagh were the PGA guys that were involved heavily.  I was in the MN Section at that time and a lot of guys wanted lessons for Square to Square.  The Section brought in Bill Strausbagh as the guest speaker for our Spring Meeting and he did a presentation on the technique.  Some of the old timers didn't like his presentation very much at first but they treated him well.  He was a good presenter.  I am sure he was hurt by the failure of the technique but I believe he fully regained his reputation as a fine teacher as Flick did.

The technique involved "curling under" the last three fingers of your left hand and bowing your left wrist in the takeaway.  The player would make a full upper body turn on the backswing while resisting the turn with the knees.  This position supposedly set ypu up for a very simple and automatic downswing as the hands were already in the impact position.  The knees would move towards the target to start the downswing and that would lead the upper body and club through impact and into a reverse C finish.  Back problems were a common complaint along with a lot of performance issues.

At least, that is how I remember it.

[Reepacheep]

I'm from Cincinnati, now in my sixties, and was a teenager when Jim Flick was the head pro at Losantiville Country Club in Cincinnati and introduced the Square to Square system.  I agree with many of the comments already offered by other posters in response to this topic.

I read the book and also took a couple lessons from Jim and from one of his former assistants.  The book did much more harm than good for me.  Surprisingly, in the actual lessons Jim did not seem to teach what was in the book.  I did not benefit from Jim's actual teaching, either.  But maybe, that was just me.  Some of his students did, however, develop some pretty solid ball striking, a couple of his assistants were among the better playing club pros in the Cincinnati area at the time, and one of his amateur students won numerous Cincinnati amateur titles.  Although I thought I knew something about the golf swing then I now realize I knew very little.  I suspect that some of Jim's students who had some success at that time may have incorporated only a very small portion of the square to square method into some already sound golf swings.  Jim Flick himself, at that time, was one of the least competitive players in the local PGA events.  It appeared that he attempted to swing with the square to square method.  But the results were not very convincing.  Perhaps he was simply too busy teaching to work on his own game.  Nevertheless, if you think that a proponent of a system ought to have some mastery of it, you would be disappointed by Jim Flick's own golf game at that time.  My recollection is that among tour players, Bert Yancy adopted the square to square method and had some initial but short lived success.  In conclusion, I would approach the Square to Square book with a great deal of caution.  On the other hand, taking lessons from Jim Flick long after he disavowed himself from square to square may have been worthwhile. ( I realize that Mr. Flick has recently passed away, was regarded as a very knowledgeable instructor and highly respected).

[Jim Waldron]

Reepacheep, on 20 February 2013 - 12:15 AM, said:

I'm from Cincinnati, now in my sixties, and was a teenager when Jim Flick was the head pro at Losantiville Country Club in Cincinnati and introduced the Square to Square system.  I agree with many of the comments already offered by other posters in response to this topic.

I read the book and also took a couple lessons from Jim and from one of his former assistants.  The book did much more harm than good for me.  Surprisingly, in the actual lessons Jim did not seem to teach what was in the book.  I did not benefit from Jim's actual teaching, either.  But maybe, that was just me.  Some of his students did, however, develop some pretty solid ball striking, a couple of his assistants were among the better playing club pros in the Cincinnati area at the time, and one of his amateur students won numerous Cincinnati amateur titles.  Although I thought I knew something about the golf swing then I now realize I knew very little.  I suspect that some of Jim's students who had some success at that time may have incorporated only a very small portion of the square to square method into some already sound golf swings.  Jim Flick himself, at that time, was one of the least competitive players in the local PGA events.  It appeared that he attempted to swing with the square to square method.  But the results were not very convincing.  Perhaps he was simply too busy teaching to work on his own game.  Nevertheless, if you think that a proponent of a system ought to have some mastery of it, you would be disappointed by Jim Flick's own golf game at that time.  My recollection is that among tour players, Bert Yancy adopted the square to square method and had some initial but short lived success.  In conclusion, I would approach the Square to Square book with a great deal of caution.  On the other hand, taking lessons from Jim Flick long after he disavowed himself from square to square may have been worthwhile. ( I realize that Mr. Flick has recently passed away, was regarded as a very knowledgeable instructor and highly respected).

Jim Flick did indeed publicly apologize to the golf community for the disaster that was Square to Square, to his credit. And it was the original pseudo-scientific "method" system of put "Slot A into Tab B" overly simplistic paint by numbers golf instruction that has since come to dominate the industry. Very upright arm plane, active left arm swinging through Impact, curl the fingers under to close the face,etc. I am sure it's founders and promoters deeply believed in it, and in their minds it "sounded good" on paper. If they had simply tested it first for at least 6 months of atual teaching on a wide range of students, they would have clearly seen the bad results it produced, for most students, most of the time - and you and I would have never heard of Square to Square.

Jim kept the swing the arms part, and abandoned the rest of it, but in my opinion, the swing the arms part was the most destructive of the bunch.

[Professor D]

A lot of misinformation here as to what Sqaure to Sqaure really was/is. First, it was a straight copy of Nicklaus' swing, so obviously it worked. It involved a nearly vertical grip, get the left wrist flat early in the takeaway and keep it flat until impact. The idea was that if the left wrist was always flat, then the clubface was always sqaure. The flaw was that, with that grip, acheiving a flat left wrist at the top, while keeping the club in-plane with the target, requires a good bit of independent clockwise wrist rotation (pronation).........a position from which most will return the clubface to impact well open. Slice city. I teach a very similar pattern to slicers...same flat left wrist, only with the hands turned well to the right of the clubface at address. This pattern involves virtually no left wrist rotation independent of the upper arm, thus requiring no rotation in the forward swing to return the clubface sqaure to the swing direction. This is what S2S SHOULD have been.

[teleblue]

HAWKEYE77, on 19 February 2013 - 04:02 PM, said:

teleblue, on 19 February 2013 - 01:21 PM, said:

This swing style is similar to what Steve Stricker is trying to do. If you go check out Steve's stats, you will see that he is in the top ten in fairways hit, and greens in regulations. I'm 53 and have arthritis, so with limited physical abilties, this swing has allowed me to stay in the game. Since I already swing on a steeper plane and prefer a weaker grip, this style came naturally. If anyone says that this style ruined their game, in my opinion they are not a very good golfer. I can easily switch from this swing to a conventional swing during the course of a round. Also I can kiss my slice goodbye! I can actually draw the ball now with my driver and my iron play has never been straighter. Just because this style didn't work for someone else doesn't mean you shouldent give it a try.

Where do you see this in Stricker?

Stricker swings the club back with almost no wrist hinge and keeps his right arm almost as straight as his left. He sets up in the impact position, and just rotates his shoulders.

[teleblue]

Jim Waldron, on 19 February 2013 - 04:13 PM, said:

Well it ruined my game so I guess that means I am not a very good golfer, LOL! I went from shooting high 60's/low 70's to not being able to break 80, so I quit for 11 years. Jim Flick and Dick Aultman were the two authors, did golf schools on this method, and promoted it heavily in Golf Digest. Both apologized many years later for promoting this method, since so many golfers actually got much worse when using it. It would be wonderful if more famous teachers would be this ethical and honest about their promotion of a method that has serious flaws and errors as Square to Square did.

I attended the second MORAD Symposium in 1994, eleven teaching pros and Mac, and at lunch the first day, was shocked to find out that several of us had tried Square to Square with the same game destroying results. So I guess those other pros also must not have been very good golfers.

It is a left arm pulling motion swing model, so if you think an armsy swing is the way to go, then good luck. It also advocated rolling the forearms so the face shuts on the takeaway, which is a form of clubface manipulation, never a good thing unless you want to hit pull hooks and block slices, two way miss.

That experience has made me very suspicious of aggressively marketed method systems of teaching, especially when done so by famous teachers with the backing of a major golf magazine. It becomes much more about "selling the sizzle, not the steak".  As a golfer who actually wants to get better, and as someone who teaches for a living, I am much more concerned with the steak, and could care less about the "sizzle".

I cannot see how trying a different method "ruined" your golf game. If you were really shooting those scores, why would you change in the first place? It's obvious that something for you wasn't working, or you wouldn't have tried something new. Saying a different method "ruined" your game is just an excuse. Why didn't you just go back to doing what you were doing before? Your comments just don't ring true!

[iteachgolf]

teleblue, on 06 March 2013 - 10:06 PM, said:

HAWKEYE77, on 19 February 2013 - 04:02 PM, said:

teleblue, on 19 February 2013 - 01:21 PM, said:

This swing style is similar to what Steve Stricker is trying to do. If you go check out Steve's stats, you will see that he is in the top ten in fairways hit, and greens in regulations. I'm 53 and have arthritis, so with limited physical abilties, this swing has allowed me to stay in the game. Since I already swing on a steeper plane and prefer a weaker grip, this style came naturally. If anyone says that this style ruined their game, in my opinion they are not a very good golfer. I can easily switch from this swing to a conventional swing during the course of a round. Also I can kiss my slice goodbye! I can actually draw the ball now with my driver and my iron play has never been straighter. Just because this style didn't work for someone else doesn't mean you shouldent give it a try.

Where do you see this in Stricker?

Stricker swings the club back with almost no wrist hinge and keeps his right arm almost as straight as his left. He sets up in the impact position, and just rotates his shoulders.

That is not what square to square is. Sticker isn't close to doing it.

[Rodabodem]

teleblue, on 19 February 2013 - 01:21 PM, said:

This swing style is similar to what Steve Stricker is trying to do. If you go check out Steve's stats, you will see that he is in the top ten in fairways hit, and greens in regulations. I'm 53 and have arthritis, so with limited physical abilties, this swing has allowed me to stay in the game. Since I already swing on a steeper plane and prefer a weaker grip, this style came naturally. If anyone says that this style ruined their game, in my opinion they are not a very good golfer. I can easily switch from this swing to a conventional swing during the course of a round. Also I can kiss my slice goodbye! I can actually draw the ball now with my driver and my iron play has never been straighter. Just because this style didn't work for someone else doesn't mean you shouldent give it a try.

Haha. Sounds like someone is a fanboy.

1.) Stricker is no where close to this extremely flawed method. The easiest way of seeing that is his grip isn't weak enough and the face isn't shut at the top.
2.) I've never seen a good player with a shut face at the top, save guys like Dustin Johnson and David Duval.
3.) You can't switch between this pile of trash and a conventional swing. My guess would be you aren't doing either swing as they are prescribed.

[Jim Waldron]

teleblue, on 07 March 2013 - 07:50 AM, said:

Jim Waldron, on 19 February 2013 - 04:13 PM, said:

Well it ruined my game so I guess that means I am not a very good golfer, LOL! I went from shooting high 60's/low 70's to not being able to break 80, so I quit for 11 years. Jim Flick and Dick Aultman were the two authors, did golf schools on this method, and promoted it heavily in Golf Digest. Both apologized many years later for promoting this method, since so many golfers actually got much worse when using it. It would be wonderful if more famous teachers would be this ethical and honest about their promotion of a method that has serious flaws and errors as Square to Square did.

I attended the second MORAD Symposium in 1994, eleven teaching pros and Mac, and at lunch the first day, was shocked to find out that several of us had tried Square to Square with the same game destroying results. So I guess those other pros also must not have been very good golfers.

It is a left arm pulling motion swing model, so if you think an armsy swing is the way to go, then good luck. It also advocated rolling the forearms so the face shuts on the takeaway, which is a form of clubface manipulation, never a good thing unless you want to hit pull hooks and block slices, two way miss.

That experience has made me very suspicious of aggressively marketed method systems of teaching, especially when done so by famous teachers with the backing of a major golf magazine. It becomes much more about "selling the sizzle, not the steak".  As a golfer who actually wants to get better, and as someone who teaches for a living, I am much more concerned with the steak, and could care less about the "sizzle".

I cannot see how trying a different method "ruined" your golf game. If you were really shooting those scores, why would you change in the first place? It's obvious that something for you wasn't working, or you wouldn't have tried something new. Saying a different method "ruined" your game is just an excuse. Why didn't you just go back to doing what you were doing before? Your comments just don't ring true!

Do you actually play golf? Gee - I wonder why so many tour pros, who shoot lights out on a regular basis, would consider changing their golf swing? I just can't imagine why? Maybe ask Tiger... Have you ever experienced a sudden loss of ability to make solid contact with the golf ball, and thus lost your confidence? Ever heard of that happenning to a good player?

What doesn't "ring true" is your defense of the one method that has been nearly universally condemned  by both average golfers who tried it, teachers and tour pros, including the two guys who invented it!

[CAT GOLFER]

I think i actually started a STS thread a long time ago(link), my last swing coach (now deceased) used it as a foundational tool to help me with a few things in my swing. Over the years I had weakened my grip greatly, and as a result had poor clubface to wrist position at the top position.  He never taught me STS persay, but rather used some aspects to help me with grip, transition, and release.  As extreme as what he was telling me to do sounded, it translated into decent and at least a visually improved swing.  As crazy as what he was telling me sounded, my body would not allow myself to actually do it, when I saw myself on video my swing looked much improved and the results were much better (now i only fight one miss).  I want to say his teaching method was based on STS, but he definitely didn't endorse it, it appeared to me that he had spent a teaching lifetime refining STS.  AlI can say is my swing improved, and those I called on as references were happy with their results as well.

Edited by CAT GOLFER, 07 March 2013 - 01:17 PM.