I think we CAN think of the golf swing as an arc, if we think of it as a very small arc. We also need to change the idea of the center of rotation to an axis line parallel to and in front of our chest, that extends through the hands into the ground between our legs. If you think of the axis of the swing as an imaginary line running through your hands the idea and execution of the swing becomes much easier.
This is a completely different way of thinking about the golf swing. This is the way we SHOULD think about the golf swing! Thinking of a giant arc around some axis inside our body, that no one can really imagine, confuses people into making ridiculous motions that simply don’t work.
What if the arc was like a clock? We’re standing at 11 o’clock, the club enters the clock at 10:00 and strikes the ball at ~7:00. Six o’clock would be under the ground. The arm of the clock, the club, can’t move until the hands get to the center!
I thought of this while working on the “linear thoughts swing.” I watched the club’s arc although I wasn’t trying to do it and noticed it was much smaller and lower than I’d ever imagined it before. Then I noticed my the club was rotating around my hands, not my body. My hands were rotating around my body, and the club around my hands but the club was not rotating around my body. It’s more like a gear effect where the hands are geared to the hips and the club is geared to the hands.