The Slot Swing: The Proven Way to Hit Consistent and Powerful Shots Like the Pros

I'm going to tell you what Jim failed to tell you. I'm a swing tinkerer. I'd rather fool around with my swing at a driving range than waste hours on a golf course. I stumbled on something called "slotting the club". I had no idea what it was, but it seemed important. I looked at a lot of videos and learned that if I dropped the club a certain way, my strikes improved. I learned thru trial & error that the swing arc has two radii. Put another way, the backswing has the radius of the length of the left arm. In contrast, the downswing has a radius of the right forearm. However you get the top isn't as important as scything your right elbow toward your liver while holding your Hogan Triangle in place.To make this really work beautifully do the following two things. Take your backswing & adjust your grip so that your right hand is holding up the club like a waiter holds a tray and start your downswing by shifting your weight to your target side. Jim didn't say or write this because he's inarticulate, but every single picture that Phil Franke drew shows this Harvey Pennick truism.Bottom Line: buy the book for the illustrations. Don't waste a lot of time trying to figure out what Jim might or might not be stating. Use Franke's pictures as your guide. As Jim says, they are worth a thousand words.

One thing I have learned is that reading too many hints, tips, theories, etc. can finally turn your swing into such a mess that sometimes it becomes a minor miracle that you can even hit the ball! THIS BOOK CHANGES ALL OF THAT!Jim McLean, as one of golf's most qualified instructors, gives you permission to take the club back with a lot of leniency in how you do it. He analyzes, with accompanying illustrations, the swings of some of history's best ball strikers, and you see that they all do the takeaway a little differently - BUT - to a man, they all find "the slot" on the way down, and by the time they are halfway down in the downswing, they all look virtually the same, with a powerful, inside approach to the ball.What I really liked about the instruction in "The Slot Swing", is that it doesn't require a lot of thought! Setting yourself into the slot will happen naturally with your initial hip slide back at the start of your downswing if you haven't taken the club too far back to the inside, initially. Unlike many other golf books' ideas that I've taken to the range without much success, THE SLOT SWING GIVES YOU IMMEDIATE, BETTER RESULTS!I've been hindered for the last few months by not allowing myself to do the things that I want to naturally do for power in the swing, i.e. taking the club back initially to the outside and letting my rear arm fly away from my side on the backswing. I learned from this book that IT IS OKAY TO DO THESE THINGS! In fact, you will probably slot the club better if you do! One of the most effective things I learned from this book is the concept of taking the club head away in such a way that it is most gravitationally balanced. Fighting the weight of the club head because it is tilted off plane, too far forward OR backward just makes it that much harder to deliver the head to the ball with maximum energy and consistency. Before reading this book, I would say that out of a bucket of about 120 balls I hit at least 10% of them too fat or too thin. After reading "The Slot Swing", I totally mishit maybe three out of the whole bucket! Better yet, you start to realize after you have found "the slot", that bringing full, confident power down through the slot is the most consistent way to deliver a dead-on strike on the ball! If, like me, you have thought in the past, "No, I don't want to really hit it with full power - I need to control this shot and make good contact", this fantastic book will improve your swing to where you not only won't be thinking that, you'll be thinking the opposite - "I need a dead on shot, so deliver full power down through the slot!"Reading this book may be the simplest step you will ever take to truly "finding your groove", which, as it turns out, is "the slot", and "the slot" is the same for all great ball strikers, no matter how you manage to get there. I can't recommend it highly enough. READ THIS BOOK! IT'S A GAME CHANGER!

I remember golf analysts on CBS back in the day such as Peter Kostis addressing the idea/concept of the swing plane which is synonymous with the slot of the golf swing. I agree with the concensus that teaching the swing plane is the hardest part and its different for every club and for different body types which only compounds the difficulty. This book describes one of three types of swing categories your golf swing may fall into in terms of the slotted swing. So I conclude that as helpful as this book is I myself would get the essential mechanics of the swing down before implementing the ideas of this book. But I would jump immediately on the first opportunity you have to purchase it because of the difficulty associated with imparting this knowledge via golf lessons. Go into a golf lesson with your questions ready by having previewed this book and wait for the right time to ask about the slot or swing plane. Some golf pros describe it more in terms of feel because golf is a game of feel and the club wants to go where it naturally wants to go if you implement the fundamental moves or mechanics of the golf swing. But if you let the club drift in your hands like I do without regard for checkpoints in your swing then you will never hit the ball consistently and you wind up compensating and ingraining bad habits both in terms of swing mechanics and rhythm/tempo. This book is invaluable because most instructors who teach you the golf swing from the ground up or sequentially may imply many of the necessary checkpoints to make sure you stay on plane. Phrases such as line, plane, and angle which ensure you bear in mind principles that keep you in the slot. Or maybe you cup your left wrist instead of it being flat. Every golf swing has error associated with it unless you are like Tiger Woods, the paragon of the golf swing. The critical check points are addressed and illustrated with helpful diagrammatic pictures so you can troubleshoot what went wrong by going through them in your head at the driving range. And while I am rambling to some, I have to stress the context in which to use this book so it is of the greatest value to other readers. Because going back to Bob Kostis who has stated that this is a tough concept to wrap your head around, it is of vital important in terms of getting results when swinging the golf club. If you're not in the slot, keeping your left arm straight or your left wrist supine at impact isn't going to provide you with the most essential aspect of ball striking. KISS: keep it simple stupid philosophy won't work either but KITS: keep in the slot, i.e., the swing will.

Very good in all aspects

I bought this book a few years back, when I was just getting back into the game and was buying golf instruction books to hopefully make the transition a bit smoother. At that time I thought this book was overly complex, that if golf required this much technical info, that perhaps I should reconsider playing again - and I gave the book away. But with a couple of years more experience, and having read other references to “the slot”, I took another look. Jim McLean has authored a very common-sense, informative, easy to read reference book that I am very happy to have in my library. The “slot” refers to a couple of feet of swing path that lead to impact, the moment of truth in a swing. His suggestions are not cast in concrete, and offer reasonable flexibities base on a player’s age, fitness, body type, etc. I was impressed enough to order another of his books, The 8-Step Swing, which should be arriving in the next week. As I mention in the title, this book MAY be a bit too technical for a novice, but if you fancy yourself a golf nerd or a student of the game, this book would be a fine addition to your collection.

great book to hit to pure shots ,finding the slot well help you hit the ball the most consistent

excellent book for those interested in knowing why they cannot hit a golf ball consistently and with the same ball flight

Although the concept of finding the slot on the way down is valid, the way to achieve it, as mentioned in this book, is to start the downswing with the hips! This is the same advice that is given in almost all instruction books and videos so really there's nothing new here. Unfortunately, unless you can practice for hours as the pro's do, it is very difficult to time the downswing with the weight transfer and still hit the ball well. I would go as far as to say that unless you hold back intentionally onto your right foot, you alsmost certainly transfer the weight onto the front foot anyway but you don't realise it. Trying to emphasise this move only leads you into trouble. In my case, I can transfer the weight perfectly but can still swing over the top and ruin the shot! In my opinion, the transition from the top of the backswing into the downswing is the most important move in golf and it's the shoulders that can throw this move out of plane and it only takes a tiny move to do this. For me, concentrating on the shoulder move at the very start of the downswing improved my golf. The weight transfer happened automatically. From the top of the backswing, the right shoulder has to move down first. Any move horizontally, however small, will have you swinging over the top and it doesn't matter how good your backswing was or how well you transfered the weight or cleared your hips, the shot will be ruined. It's a shame that Jim McLean didn't use the opportunity for this new book to explain a more modern way to slot the swing rather than the old moving the hips advice as being the answer to everything.