THE QATSPY® Inside-the-Leather Sports Jacket and Lifestyle Page
By: Charles W. Boatright
Babe Ruth, The Sultan of Swing, Baseball and Golf
Babe Ruth, probably one of the most famous baseball players to have ever put on a uniform, grabbed a wooden bat and stepped onto the baseball diamond. His athletic ability was not confined to the baseball diamond alone. Babe Ruth’s impact on golf was equally as impressive, as noted in an article entitled “The Sultan of Swing,” by Kevin Cook.
This was featured in the April 2015 Sports Illustrated Golf Magazine. Babe Ruth’s actual nicknames were The Sultan of Swat and the Big Bambino. Everyone who follows baseball, and especially the Boston Red Sox, knows the astonishing sale of the Bambino made on January 05, 1920 by the owner, Henry Frazee, to the New York Yankees for a mere $100,000. This sale was then and now is considered Bargain Basement Prices.
What was more astonishing was WHY. The sale was not to gain players to bolster the Red Sox’s prospects of winning their division, pennant or even the World Series, but to raise money for a Broadway musical production financed by Henry Frazee. This is another date that will live in sports infamy.
Ruth took his baseball swing and skills from the batter’s box and applied them to the tee box and golf course with great success. With wooden sticks (wooden shafted clubs), Babe Ruth drove the golf ball over 300 yards then. This was with golf balls used in the 1920s, not the high performance golf balls and equipment of today era. If Babe Ruth could have managed the flat stick (putter) more efficiently, Ruth would have been a scratch golfer or better.
Babe Ruth’s was just as Popular in Golf than Bobby Jones was
Babe Ruth’s celebrity status and love of golf garnered him more attention and fans than Bobby Jones, even with Bobby Jones winning Golf’s Grand Slam in 1930. In my opinion, Bobby Jones was one of the greatest golfers to have played the game and serve his country during World War II. I still enjoy reading his books and viewing his training videos on a regular basis.
Given the popularity of baseball, many kids grew up either playing tee-ball or some other level of baseball. So why not take advantage of these swing mechanics that are engrained into kids’ muscle memory, instinctive, or how we actually play golf and take advantage of it? During the long days of summer, almost every kid remembers grabbing a bat and his or her glove and playing endless hours of baseball/softball and developing the basic mechanics and techniques needed to swing the bat and can be applied to their golf swing.
Taking Advantage of Your Baseball Swing to Create a Great Consistent Golf Swing
The name of my Company, THE QATSPY, represents Quantum Athletic Training Sports Performance YouTube Golfer. The YouTube part of my name describe how I developed a series of Golf Training Videos using the mechanics and techniques we learn in baseball. I have includes two of my videos below and my QATR 408- Palmer Technique (the Wrist Action in the Golf Swing) to help golfer’s take their golf swing from the batter’s box to the tee box. This Palmer Technique allows the golfer to move the head of the club up into the palm of their hand, thus the term Palmer.
The QATR-408 Palmer Technique (the Wrist Action in the Golf Swing)
What caused me to look closer at the mechanics and techniques of the baseball swing were two events. One was during my senior year in high school and the other was the 2011 World Series between the Saint Louis Cardinals and the Texas Rangers.
In my Architectural class in high school, I was teamed up with a good friend who was also on our high school golf team. We were tasked in the Architectural class to design and build a scale model of a house as our final project. One Saturday during the final project, we took a break from the project and walked out to an adjacent vacant field to his backyard. With his 5-iron, I took my 5-Iron and hit a 165-yards straight downrange. My friend looked at me and remarked, “How long since it been you hit your golf clubs?” I replied, “6-months.” I credited making the straight golf shot to my baseball swing mechanics and techniques that I learn from my grandfather.
The second event that caused me to look at the baseball swing mechanics and techniques and write these training Routines was David Freese’s game six, ninth inning home run. This home run allowed the Cardinals to go to game seven and win the 2011 World Series. David’s home run was such a nice and easy swing to deep center onto the grassy knoll that I was able to view it in slow motion. This provided me the opportunity to confirm my theory that I had developed about the baseball-type golf swing — that the two swings are more similar in mechanics and techniques than they are different in swing plane and arm and forearm orientation.
From the photograph above, essentially the shaft of the golf club is just the extension of your forearms, the real important part of the club is the clubface, or the bat. The QATR 408- Palmer Technique allows the golfer to just focus on their palms of each hand and their strike zone. This takes everything from the ground and place it into the golfer’s palms.
Above is a coaching technique I use to get new students to think about how the clubhead and the right palm, for a right-handed golfer, are one in the same. Some golf coaches take a Sharpie pin and draw out a clubface onto the right-handed golfer’s right golf glove. This is a great visual training technique.
These two events lead me to write a book entitled “The ESPY Golf Swing Coach.” I used the word COACH, because I associate the word coach with development of minds and bodies that is essential to performance.
Below I have provided a little background to the word ESPY in the title of my book; ESPY means to uncover or to reveal:
• E– Ergonomics that means work correctly. Rocco Mediate did a swing video for Golf Channel, where he stated the importance not only to develop the body’s muscles, but also to develop the correct position and motion of these muscles. I have a background in engineering, ergonomics and kinesiology that I used for the book.
• S– Synch, the significant part of the baseball-type swing is to synch the elbows with the shoulders to function as gears. This provides power in the takeaway (with small gear turning the large gear), and speed in the downswing (with large gear turning the small gear). This is how a standard transmission works.
• P– Preset, is the palmer-flex of the left palm, for the right-handed golfer, that lock wrists and the gears (elbows and shoulders) together, where the arms can act as a bicycle chain or camshaft linking the gears.
• Y– Yaw, is an aviation term describing the horizontal rotation around a vertical axis. In the golf swing, this is the rotation of the shoulders around the spinal axis, by the forearms moving up the swing plane, or SLOT.
There’s another term called app in my website and E-mail address called Apperception which means the ability of taking skills developed in one sport and apply it to another sport.
I also used the term YAW, from the research I did on Colonel George Robert Hall, a POW during the Vietnam War. He was held in the Hanoi Hilton for seven-and-a-half years. Before his capture he had a handicap of four (4). After his release in February of 1973, he played in the Greater New Orleans POW Pro-AM Open where he shot 76, his handicap. The Greater New Orleans POW Open was played in March of 1973. Col. Hall shot a 76 less than two months after his release! Amazing Performance! Please read more about Colonel Hall from my article http://goo.gl/W1jAuC.
Most conventional golfers try to establish their golf swing using a single gear bicycle approach. This does not develop the power needed in the golf swing to coil the core muscles. If you have ever rode a single gear bicycle, you experienced trying to start off without having to stand up to peddle up an incline. Compare that to the performance of a 10-speed bicycle, and you will realize the advantages of the ESPY Golf Swing provides.
If you purchase my Training Routine and study these two YouTube Videos above, you can take advantage of your baseball swing that is subconscious and improve your golf game tremendously.
Also visit my Coaches Film Room to see more Training Routines that you can use to improve your golf game below:
Until next time– Be Synched, Tee-to-Green, with The ESPY Golf Swing!
THE Sponsors of THE QATSPY®
Southern Heritage Air Foundation Museum
THE QATSPY® Yankee Personal-Style Traditional Apparel Quarters:
Carries the US WINGS ® Line of Rough Rider Leather Flight Jackets that are supplied to all five (5) Branches of the US Military that can be personalized
The 2nd Amendment A-2 Rough Rider State Leather Flight Jacket
