His knees were reversed.
His right knee was straighter than his left although both were bent slightly, and this put his weight on his right foot.
His hands were not opposite his left knee; instead, they were moved over to a point opposite the middle of his body, more to the right of a center position.
He didn't do a forward press.
He didn't do a reverse press, because he assumed what amounted to the exact position a player would reach at the end of Step 2. All he did was to raise the club on the backswing and then bring it down again and on through the ball-a three-four swing.
No wonder the swing looked simple to my reporter. It had only two movements, an upswing and a downswing, Steps 3 and 4.
As the record shows, Littler made a great bid for the U.S. Open on his very first try, in fact he almost won it, but then his game seemed to fall apart and Littler went into a long slump.
Of course, starting his swing from that dead still position, there was very little chance to work his hands into the backswing, but the real difficulty Littler encountered was that from this position he began turning too much on his shots. As previously noted, this excessive turning action of the body produces a much too low backswing from which hooking and smothering the shots is almost unavoidable.
Prior to a recent Los Angeles Open, I observed Littler on the practice tee and noticed he was employing a forward press and a subsequent reverse press action prior to going into his swing. I thought at the time that if Littler retained the forward press and the reverse press it would rectify the faulty body action, in addition to giving him a chance to work his hands and wrists early into the back-swing. He would then have a positive control over the club as it was swung. continue to how to rate yourself and others' golf game...