"Total BS!" - Phil Mickelson ARGUES with mechanical engineer on swing speeds

Phil Mickelson originally replied to a Peter Kostis tweet on speed training, but instead, he entered a debate with Gary McCormick.

Matt Chivers

06 Oct 2021

Phil Mickelson ARGUES with mechanical engineer over swing speeds on Twitter

Six-time major champion Phil Mickelson argued with freelance writer and mechanical engineer Gary McCormick on Twitter over swing speed and speed training.

Although this sounds like a trivial topic, McCormick was not impressed by Mickelson's tweets in response to PGA Tour coach Peter Kostis' original post about swing speed training.

"While I'm a proponent of over/under speed training, someone has to explain the science behind non-dominant swinging improving dominant swing speed. Making my car go 0-60 in 4 sec. in reverse, doesn't make it go faster in drive. Discuss..." tweeted Kostis, the well-known golf analyst and instructor.

Lefty read this tweet and gave his own views on the topic. He believes that "accelerating the opposite way strengthens the decelerating muscles in your normal swing."

Come to Phil with all of your biomechanics questions, because he majored in Psych at ASU… pic.twitter.com/eVXE3cPk4a
— Gary K. McCormick ⚙️ (@WillotheGlen) October 5, 2021

Mickelson left two tweets in response to Kostis, but McCormick was quick to call out Mickelson for supposedly making factual and grammatical errors in his tweets.

McCormick, who has his own golf blog, sarcastically replied to Mickelson saying: "Come to Phil with all of your biomechanics questions, because he majored in Psych at ASU."

The details of swing speed and trajectory in a golfer's swing is too much for us mere mortal amateurs to comprehend for the majority of the time, but it was certainly fun to read this intriguing debate.

McCormick accused Mickelson of "missing the point" and writing statements that were "total nonsense" and "total BS." He even labelled the parts of Mickelson's tweet and posted it back to him.

In the mid 80’s Dr Coop Derenne and Tom House published the first studies on this. There have been many more since.
I tend to only spew facts
— Phil Mickelson (@PhilMickelson) October 5, 2021

Although Mickelson said that there had been academic studies to support his argument, McCormick told him to "leave engineering to engineers."

The debate became quite fiery and the 45-time PGA Tour winner was not backing down on his argument. Both men were convinced that they stood the tallest.

Kostis originally showed concern for the nature of speed training that golfers now participate in. This certainly appears to be a debate that we haven't heard the last of.