Jim, you don't know what you're talking about. The "ball flight laws" are information, they're not "a feel." They're not "mechanics." They're just a distilled version of the physics. You might
apply them via a "feel," but the actual "laws" (old or new, incorrect or correct) aren't themselves a "feel" or "mechanics."
You said - "Imagine you're hitting a ball that starts a little right and hooks. The old ball flight laws would tell you to swing more out to the right so the ball starts further right."
That's perfectly valid.
I asked what the old ball flight laws were and who preaches them...and most importantly, who ever said the above. You couldn't answer.
I've answered several times:
- told you what the old ball flight laws were.
- gave multiple examples of how they might lead someone down the wrong path.
- gave at least two examples of someone espousing them, including Nick Faldo and Butch Harmon.
What you've done is prove my statement that there's mechanical teaching, based on exact angles and physics (imagine Iron Byron slightly off kilter). And there's teaching feels.
That's not remotely accurate. Whether you think the old ball flight laws are true or the new, actually correct ones are… your message to the student is not just those ball flight laws. John Jacobs thought the old ball flight laws were the correct ones. They were even on signs at his golf schools. That doesn't mean he just recited them to his students and thus was a "mechanical" teacher. How is this: "the ball starts along the swing path and curves to where the face is pointing" a "feel" and "the ball starts close to where the face is pointing and curves away from the path" "mechanical"? You know what they actually are? The first is "wrong" or "bad information" and the second is "correct" or "good information."
What you do with that information is actually the
teaching part. The BFL are just knowledge, not what you say to a student to get them to change something.
As I've said, if you believe the "wrong" ball flight laws, you can find yourself going down some wrong paths, chasing incorrect solutions, whether you're a teacher
or a student (or just a golfer trying stuff on your own). Apply the wrong solution based on the wrong knowledge… and you can find your students hitting the ball right into a tree.
That is, when your body is doing one thing and the teacher needs you to do something different, YOU NEED TO FEEL a different movement
This isn't that.
Old ball flight laws:
"Yeah, you just point your club face at the target, and then swing a little left of that to hit a fade." - This relies on a student to NOT follow directions, to do something different than what you've told them - to have success. If the student does as they're told, they'll fail at hitting the ball to the target.
Correct ball flight laws:
"Yeah, you just point your club face a little left of the target so the ball starts left and has room to fade, and then swing left of that to hit a fade." The student, if they do that, will succeed.
The "feels" involved in teaching this to the student are varied. It might feel like they're swinging 30° to the left when in reality it's 6°. It might feel like their arms are glued to their chest/ribs. It might feel like their left hip is getting "over here" (demonstrated in person) before they get to impact, it might feel like a ton of things… but the actual truth doesn't change.
Saying "you want your club face pointed at the target and the ball will finish there" is not a "feel" - it's just bad information, and the application of that bad information can, as I have said, lead people down some very wrong roads.
In other words, if you have a slicer on your tee, and you want them to swing more "out," you can come up with a LOT of feels that may or may not be what they're actually doing (feel ain't real - I've had people "feel" they're swinging 45° out toward first base, just to get them to swing out a few degrees), but your fix had better be grounded in the reality of the physics that govern the way the ball flies.