Arguably, there's nobody that's inspired more golfers to pick up the golf clubs apart from Tiger Woods maybe, than Arnold Palmer. Back in the day, Arnie really opened up the game to the masses. He was the crowd's favorite player, and he had a little quirky golf swing that a few people tried to emulate but with very, very little success.
Arnie was always quite scared of the pull hook, the ability to roll the ball down the left hand side and hit a quite destructive hook shot. So, he worked really hard through the ball and keeping the club face open. Sometimes, with the enormous power that he was creating, holding the club face open put him into a very awkward finish position, sometimes we called it the “helicopter finish.”
Very rarely do you see this happen to anybody else. Just occasionally, when Tiger Woods has got himself in the trees down the right hand side of the fairway, he tries to cut across the ball, keep the face open and hit a big fade. Effectively, the same fault or the same reason that Palmer was doing it results in the same finish. It's this finish where we saw across the back of the golf ball, cutting it up into the air and resulting in a position where the club actually points straight down a target line, or to the right of the target, but it loops around the top of the head and points back this way.
When you see Tiger Woods do that, when he can sort of hit the normal in to out swing path he wants, he has to cut across it, but scared of hooking the ball left, Arnie and Tiger both have the little helicopter finish there. It's a little weird, quirky thing that they do in that swing. It is not something that you can learn from, however. It's not something I would encourage you to try or practice. The only time is when you're trying to hit a very drastic fade or cut shot around the trees would you ever try and hold the club face open so much and if it requires to come up and over and helicopter finish around your head. Try it for that reason but do not emulate that swing because it does not look good and it does not work in terms of trying to hit the ball straight for most people.