Bent at the waist with the club steadied just behind the ball, Tiger Woods began one of the most athletic moves in all of sports. His legs seemingly ground in cement, his arms began rotating counterclockwise around a taut torso that turned his shoulders parallel with the ball.

It was bridled power, the recoil before the strike.

What followed was more than 120 mph of force. The legs remained motionless, then the abdominals shot forward, followed by the arms and then finally the club. In the instant it took Woods to swing his driver, he looked like he was in a squat position from address to impact, and then shot up on the follow through.

But Woods never actually squatted, or "jumped" out of it.

The power transfer was simpler, almost imperceptible, and it started just after he addressed the ball.

• n n Average players see what Woods does on television, or look at a photographic breakdown of his swing in a magazine, and may go to a golf instructor and say "I want to look like Tiger."

An instructor then may make superficial changes to that player's swing and eventually that person could look like Woods, but in all probability would not perform anything like him.

While imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, it often leads to a distorted reality. Even though it looks like the player is making a big shoulder turn, then squatting, then straightening up, he or she is not doing the underlying movements Woods does.

"If you understand what causes that movement and teach that part of it, you're going to be more successful," said Chris Welch, a biomedical engineer who founded welch-e technologies. "The person may or may not look like Tiger Woods, but he's doing what Tiger Woods does. That's the most crucial part of it: understanding the underlying movement. It's getting away from trying to get people to look like each other and to create the movement."

People such as Welch who study biomechanics knew what Woods was really doing, which was a slight pitch of the hips forward as the torso turned away. It's a quick action, one that has been an important part of efficient swings since they were first studied. But only recently has that science been brought to the average golfer, a population that as a whole has not seen its game improve in decades.

There are several forms of wireless, real-time, 3-D biomechanics golf training aids on the market, like the portable K-VEST and iClub.

One system that works without any foreign objects on the body, however, is zenoLINK from welch-e technologies.

It is used at only two places in the state and both are within minutes of Naperville - at Prairie Landing Golf Club in West Chicago and Cantigny Golf in Wheaton.

"You can keep peeling all the layers off and just really get into why a player is hitting the ball better," Cantigny teaching professional Lou Solarte said. "And then you can keep making comparisons."

Each person moves in their own inimitable way and despite all the swing theories out there, each individual gets into that position uniquely. ZenoLINK quantifies that movement, called the kinetic link (see graphs A and B).

"Now you can look at everybody's individual biomechanics and you can make sure that everyone performs to the best of their ability," Welch said. "Now, some people are just not going to have quite the potential, but for the first time they'll start to perform."

Naperville Central alumnus Curtis Malm, a Nationwide Tour rookie this year, was tested by Solarte shortly before heading to the PGA Tour's Qualifying School in November on the recommendation of friend and Cantigny Youth Links head pro Billy Nestel.

Malm's graph showed he was not generating any power with his lower body; all his club-head speed was coming from his arms.

Solarte focused on Malm's foundation in the short time before Q-school, and the change was quick and apparent - even on video. Malm said Solarte never imparted any swing philosophy, but as he left for Q-school his swing was more efficient.

"The whole idea of this zenoLINK thing is to train your body so it's a reaction rather than a thought process," Malm said. "A reaction is a lot easier to do than a planned event. Hopefully when you get to that point, you're on the right track."

ZenoLINK is a diagnostic service available only to golf professionals, who in turn use the information to sculpt a training regimen for their students.

"ZenoLINK is just a measurement tool," Welch said. "If you talk about pros, they're not used to measurement tools because they've never measured anything. So they look at zenoLINK as a teaching method, which is completely wrong. ZenoLINK is literally just a measurement tool - it doesn't tell you how to do anything."

Where golf pros get disconnected is when they take the information and try to relate it to their swing philosophies.

Nestel began incorporating zenoLINK into his teaching after realizing it was meant to complement what he's been doing as an instructor.

"The more tools you have, the better," he said. "And since the game of golf is always changing, you've got to be able to change with it. You've got teachers who teach the same method and they've been doing it for 10 to 15 years and you're doing the same thing - I don't think they're making themselves better and I don't think they're making their students better."

What zenoLINK affords golf professionals is the ability to learn enough about biomechanics so they can provide students better golf instruction.

"This isn't a fad," Welch said. "This isn't like the newest (infomercial). It's not that. Golfers will play better and for the first time the sport as a whole body will move forward, like most other sports have and golf has sort of not. It definitely will. There's no doubt about that."

To Solarte, the most important byproduct of the zenoLINK information is the elimination of guesswork from golf instruction.

"Opinions are opinions," Solarte said. "You could be right, or you may not be right. There's no way for golf pros to be accountable. If you're a doctor and you read an X-ray and you read it wrong, you get taken to court. Then they're going to bring an expert in and say 'This is what this means.' But you don't say, 'I think it's broken.' It's broken."

To Solarte, biomechanics afford a certainty in teaching, and for that reason golf professionals need to begin learning about it to stay current.

In Oak Brook, the AthletiCo Golf Performance Center combines the use of Bentley Kinetics' K-VEST, teaching professional Sam McKenney and physical trainer and strength and conditioning specialist Cory Puyear. There, a golfer can get the necessary physical attention and instruction in one place.

"Guys are just scared to death," Solarte said of his fellow pros. "I think it's one thing for another PGA pro to be getting noticed for doing well, but it's a complete other (thing) for the chiropractor to be giving golf lessons. Half the guys are like 'Can he break 80? Who has he taught?' Just stupid stuff and they just don't get it. That's the hard part. The good majority of the guys would rather just ignore it and hope it goes away."

Solarte, Nestel and Prairie Landing's Brian King each agree that the learning curve is high for golf pros who usually have no formal training in biomechanics. They not only will have to dedicate themselves to find out what it can do for them as teachers, but also find a way to relate that to their students. Thus far, the three pros have had about 188 players of all ages go through the zenoLINK process.

"If the translator/teacher can simplify it in a way that makes sense, the student can really get some mileage out of it and start to see results," King said. "There's a lot of ways to swing a club, but if your body pattern doesn't do some things, it's hard to play the game."

The motion that constitutes a golf swing is a powerful athletic movement, and repeating it creates a traumatic force upon the body. Understanding how the body creates that motion - and how to improve that move - is vital to a player's performance.

From a golfer's perspective, this technology means physical work to change their inherent movement pattern. While some drills are simple - some can be done in less than eight minutes - they will specifically target areas of the body never used before.

Jim Coaker, a 46-year-old Warrenville resident with a handicap index of 4.6, has gone through the zenoLINK process with Solarte in recent months. He worked out with weights and a treadmill, but found he was still losing power off the tee.

After Solarte had him do a few solitary drills and exercises with an exercise rope, Coaker found himself sweating after what seemed like minimal work.

The information provided by zenoLINK can also help a teacher find underlying movement flaws even when a student's swing looks solid on video and has produced positive results on the course.

"This is by far the least of the 'quick fixes' in the world because it really gets to the root of what's going on because it gets right down to everybody's body," King said. "And everybody's body moves in a certain way and I think there's an ultimate pattern and so the closer you can get to that ultimate pattern, the better you'll be."

ZenoLINK and other forms of biomechanics can allow golfers to become what they aspire to be, though opinions vary on whom it will help more.

"If you look at a Tiger Woods or an Ernie Els or one of the top players, with different parts of their body they're up in the 80th percentile as far as efficiency," said Michael Bentley, a PGA professional who founded Bentley Kinetics. "Your average Joe, your 25 handicapper, is down in the five percent range. So they can make huge leaps as far as efficiency, which will change their swing path and everything they want to look for and change their ball flight and their performance very quickly."

On the other hand, Dr. Glenn Fleisig, research director for the American Sports Medicine Institute in Birmingham, Ala., believes a player such as Malm will benefit more than the weekend warrior.

"You don't need biomechanics to make the gross adjustments or notice the gross flaws," Fleisig said. "But for the fine-tuning flaws, golfers with good mechanics, whether they're pro or quality amateurs, it's more helpful for that because you need to see the little subtleties."

What there is no debate about is that the information gathered by biomechanics analysis works, and there is an undercurrent bringing more people into the tide.

Golf is the one sport where there has not been widespread improvement among its participants. Most players still cannot break 100 despite the bevy of new products every season that proclaim to straighten and lengthen shots.

Science and a little sweat, of all things, might be what it takes to truly revolutionize the game.

"It shows you there is no key," Welch said. "Progress in the golf swing, whether it's on an individual basis or in the industry as a whole, is actually based on something. Which means it's not just 'Guess what, if I tell you this you're going to play like Tiger Woods.' It's actually work, it's actually training and understanding and it takes time and there's no golden egg or magic whatever."

Contact Jim Owczarski at mailto:jowczarski@scn1.com?Subject=Story.Response or at 630-416-5107.