[MizunoJoe]

lagster,

The question, "do you think the Releases and pulleys are totally different things?" is an interesting one. First, what is the "pulley" section of the Swing? I consider it to be where the straight line path of the hands ends and the circular path begins. That begs the question of what if there is no straight line, for example a circular hand path? I suppose that's the largest possible pulley. The release can begin anywhere. A large pulley Swinger can be a sweep or snap releaser, or random variations of the two. However, in my mind the small pulley exists to complement the snap release with maximum Left Wrist Cock retention.

But how do we get a large or small pulley? The large pulley is created by keeping the Right Hand as far away from the Right Shoulder as possible by using Extensor Action. The small pulley is effected by directing the straight line effort toward the ball with a relaxed trail arm. The large pulley Swinger lays the shaft on the line, while the small pulley Swinger lays only the butt of the shaft on the line - that is, viewed from the front, when the large pulley gets his hands to the right thigh, the shaft is horizontal, for the small pulley, it is above horizontal. In my opinion, EA makes the horizontal position of the shaft at that hand position, the best the large pulley Swinger can do.

Left Wrist speed for the small pulley is lower by necessity, because the butt of the club moves a smaller distance during release, whereas the large pulley requires more LW speed during release to keep the butt of the club ahead of the clubhead at Impact. In fact, this is one way to characterize large and small pulley Swingers - by how fast their Left Wrists move through Impact. The bigger the pulley, the faster the LW must move.