The Rotary Swing
by Chuck Quinton
Grade: B
Teacher’s Comments: A good volume, but much of the philosophy can be found in other books.
Chuck Quinton’s The Rotary Swing is a slender volume with big ideas. A teacher from Windemere, Florida, Quinton believes that his Rotary Swing offers a set of simple fundamentals that can make golf easier and more fun for the masses.
In many ways, the Rotary Swing resembles Jim Hardy’s “One Plane Swing”: There’s the well balanced stance, with the shoulders moving fairly level, and no pronounced tilt. And there is the basic idea of rotating the body, with the arms and hands following the rotation, not initiating it.
Quinton’s approach to learning the swing is somewhat different, however. He begins with the idea of a swing in motion. It’s not until more than halfway through the book that he turns to the issues of grip, ball position and stance.
Golf, he says, is not a series of static positions, but a dynamic motion. “Always Be Turning”—ABT—is his oft repeated mantra.
That make sense to me. My best shots always seem to come when I forget about all those ball, body and club positions and just swing through.
As thin as it is, the book is quite wordy, but Quinton thankfully offers some very good drills to help you “feel” your way through his ideas. It also includes a smattering of photographs.
Production values on the book are not the greatest. The cover just screams “self-published, with its weirdly distorted photos of a guy at the top of his swing. (It’s also an interesting photo, since Quinton has de-emphasized set positions in favor of ABT). The internal photos also are not particularly good, tending toward the dark.
I was intrigued by Quinton’s thoughts. I’ve wasted the last several summers switching back and forth between the more traditional two-plane, and the one-plane swings. Both work for me, but only for little while. Neither has permanently elevated my game.
Chuck Quinton’s Rotary Swing manual has me almost convinced that I should make a permanent switch back to the one plane. It’s simple and powerful. I just wonder how my 46-year-old body will stand up to that motion. I’m very fit and flexible now … but for how long?
What I really need to do is to find a teacher who can take a look at what I’ve got physically and tell me which one I should pursue. It’s too bad Quinton is in Florida. I have a feeling he could do the job.
Maybe he has a disciple in Michigan …
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I have all his DVD and the books. I also have all Hardy’s DVD’s and Books. Hardy is hands down better in the theory and what to do. Quinton has some nice drills and stuff that is basically it. I would not put him down at all but to me it is better to get Hardy’s methodology and then Quinton if you need more or a different point of view. Hardy has one philosophy, Quinton has two or three and something is always changing. Since Hardy does not use a message board and online memberships for income his methodology never changes. Quinton has to keep those thousands of members coming back.