The Power Push – Lee Trevino Smartness Explained
Lee Trevino kind of hacked the golf swing. For most of us, hacking something breaks it. For Trevino, it led to six majors and an incredible career.
The story goes that he tried to copy Ben Hogan’s shot shape—and that’s what created his motion.
When you work the club from the backside and then push the energy forward, you create a relatively simple, athletic task. As centrifugal force plays its role the timing of the club rotation becomes easy to deal with.
Let’s break it down.
Starting with Power
Trevino had so much shallowness in his downswing that he could play an open stance and power the golf ball towards the target as much as he wanted.
How did he actually accomplish this power protocol?
Well, it’s a mix between intentional verticality and a release style that most would frown upon.
He worked the backside of the blade down, and through his very easy target push, it would close down in a beautiful way.
This foundational technique can be done as hard or as soft as you want—and even more importantly, it can be stimulated by your feet and your club intentions.
Support with the Hula Move
With a power dynamic as simple as Lee Trevino’s, you have loads of headspace to do other things.
Pairing it with a lateral slide to establish a base on the lead foot does a couple of things:
- Firstly, it gives you a better low point.
- Secondly, it gives you a power counterpart that you can act from—meaning the power protocol becomes passively more potent.
- Thirdly, it gives you the option below.
The Trail Foot Push
Whenever you push forward, you are actually steepening the golf swing. And since Trevino was super shallow—even in peak performance—this tells a story about how shallow the default power package is, right?
Anyway, when you slide, apply power properly, and get into that sweet backside release protocol, you can push with your trail foot towards the target simultaneously as you direct the energy in the club towards the target.
I cannot emphasize this enough. Going towards the target (read: having this luxury) is one of the best “I feel like a player” feelings ever. You can go after whatever you want.
The problem is that when most others (who don’t use the Trevino power package) go towards the target, they create glancing out-to-in shots.
So yes—Mr. Trevino did indeed hack the golf swing.
Final thoughts on the Trevino Pattern
With inspiration from roughly 80% Trevino—and the rest from Peter Thomson, George Knudsen, a bit of early Moe Norman, and players like Raymond Floyd and possibly Gary Player—I’ve created what I call the Backside Chop & Push Pattern.
It doesn’t look that sexy, but it is incredibly efficient and easy to do (if it fits you).
In a couple of years, when I pick up more competitive golf again, I would be surprised if I don’t choose this pattern.
Check out the Forgotten Master Moves homepage here.
In the FMM Academy I teach differnt patterns and it’s all about fit – has it’s overview page here.