Jake Knapp’s backswing delivers effortless power

If there’s such a thing as a modern throwback swing, Jake Knapp’s is it. The PGA Tour rookie’s long, syrupy backswing is of a bygone era but with the ball speed-boosting elements of today’s high-powered swings. The new-old combination helped the 29-year-old Californian capture his first PGA Tour win – the Mexico Open at Vidanta – in just his ninth career start and has him ranked in the top 20 on tour in clubhead speed (122.9 miles per hour), ball speed (182.5mph) and driving distance (305.1 yards/279.0 metres).

Yet there was a time when Knapp didn’t particularly like his swing. Only with the encouragement of his long-time swing coach, Golf Digest Best in State teacher John Ortega, did Knapp learn to love his own old-school move.

“When he was younger, people would be like, ‘How can you let him do that?’” says Ortega, the director of instruction at Costa Mesa Country Club in California. “I was like, ‘What do you mean?  That’s what he does.’ I never had the notion that a parallel backswing was all that. Guys like John Daly and Fred Couples that were long hitters back in the day, they all went past parallel. To me, it just made sense: if you can get your body to rotate that far back –so long as the structure is still there – it’s going to create more speed.”

Ortega remains an integral part of Knapp’s team, alongside Golf Digest No.9-ranked teacher Dana Dahlquist. A closer look at Knapp’s backswing reveals a very late wrist set [above, third image] and an extended right-arm position at the top [above, fourth image]. His right arm is quite a bit off his body, but because his backswing is so long, he’s able to gradually increase his speed on the downswing and maximise the clubhead’s velocity through the ball.

“A lot of amateurs will say, ‘I need to shorten my backswing to become more accurate,’” Dahlquist says, “and I’ll always tell them, ‘Well, not necessarily.’”

  The important thing is matching your tempo to your swing length, Dahlquist says. Players with short backswings and fast tempos, like Jon Rahm and Tony Finau, have what Dahlquist refers to as “ballistic speed”. Longer swingers, like Knapp, have “building speed”. 

“For amateurs, a longer swing can help in two ways,” Dahlquist says. “First, it gives them more time to square up the clubface with their hands. It also gives the club more time to ramp up. Amateurs need time to let the speed gather.” 

Photo:  dom furore

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Breaking down the swing that made Jason Day a winner again.

In 2015, Jason Day was one of the world’s top players, but he unfortunately endured a few injuries that saw him go through a winless streak. He subsequently made swing changes that has brought his game back to that top level again. In this tutorial, we’ll talk about those changes and how it essentially relieved the pressure in his lower back, yet still allowed him to hit great golf shots and becoming a winner again on the PGA Tour.

It’s all in the hips

When you look closely at the changes in Jason’s golf swing from 2015 to today, you will notice he had a very restricted hip turn previously [Feature Image]. So on his backswing, he didn’t turn his hips very much, whereas now he is allowing his right hip to turn back and load more into his right leg. This new hip action allows his arms and club to swing more around his body on the backswing as opposed to his wider, more upright plane in 2015.

Angle of attack

Jason’s old upright backswing produced a steeper/narrower angle of attack. Because he pulled down aggressively with the left side at the start of the downswing, his upper body would tilt back away from the target and the shaft would get closer to his right shoulder. This leaning back produced a lot of side bend in his spine, and this put a lot of pressure on his lower back [photo 2]. The action would cause him to have to use his hands to fix his release through impact. Although this was a unique swing, Jason’s talent made it work.

Shallower into the ball

With the new swing changes, he now has a deeper right hip turn [photo 3], lower left-arm plane and can deliver his arms more efficiently from around his body. This new action doesn’t have as much torque between his lower and upper body. Jason now lowers the club by lengthening his right arm versus pulling the club down with his left side [photos 4 and 5] and he is more level in his delivery position into the ball with less side bend [photo 6]. From here, his right side can stay higher, rotate out in front of him and move with the club through impact.  This relieves all the pressure on his lower back and allows him to release his body, arms, hands and the clubface through impact without manipulating the clubface.

So it’s all about a little more hip turn, swinging a bit more around on the backswing, lengthening the right arm with a higher right side so that the right side can release through impact to improve clubface control. 

 getty images: PGA Tour 

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How Butch helped me find my swing again, and the lessons you can learn

Photographs by Sam Kweskin

The standard advice when things aren’t going your way is to keep looking forward, but for me, I had to look back. Back to my old coach, Butch Harmon, and back to the things that worked when I was playing my best. Once I figured that out, everything started to click.

When Butch stopped travelling on tour in 2019, I asked another teacher, John Tillery, to help me. John showed me things in a new way. But every player has their journey and mine led me back to Butch – just not how you might expect.

For the better part of three years, I was fighting my swing, and I would wear out the range at the Medalist, my home club in Florida. I always seemed to run into one member there, Butch’s brother Craig, who’d recently retired as the longtime pro at Oak Hill in New York. One day in September 2022, I saw Craig on the range and got an idea, so I called Butch.

What if we started working together again, but this time, Craig could be his eyes? Butch and I could send swing videos back and forth, and Craig could keep me on track when I practised. Butch loved it, and that’s how we reunited. Butch saw right away that I had slipped into some old habits, so the fixes he mapped out were things we’d worked on years ago. 

The results came fast. I went from missing five of eight majors in 2021-2022 to finishing top-10 twice in the first month with Butch. Then, I got a win last year and made the Ryder Cup team. I’ll show you what we did, but my big message is this: what worked once will probably work again. 

Setting up more connected

One thing about the golf swing – it’s a chain reaction. It’s not so much isolated positions, but what you did to cause those positions to happen. My takeaway was getting off-track (hands going inside, clubhead staying outside), but we could correct some of that in my setup.

We focused on setting my shoulders square, parallel to my target line, not to the right, which was my tendency. I also like to feel the upper part of my right arm pressed against my rib cage [above]. Butch calls this “screwing in the right elbow”. That connection helps the arms and body start back together and keeps my hands from getting inside too fast. 

Getting off to a better start

Most of the changes we made were to my backswing, and it started right off the ball. As I said, I had a tendency to pull my hands in and leave the clubhead out. You can see in this photo [below] that the clubhead is just inside my hands, which is where I want it. In my old swing, the clubhead would have been well outside my hands. That’s always been a problem for me and requires re-routing the backswing to set the club in a good position at the top. Nothing beats starting the club on line and letting the swing flow from there.

Knowing that, we worked on getting my hands and the club tracking to the inside in sync. A good image for me is that the clubhead moves first, getting a little headstart before the handle moves – after all, the clubhead has further to go. It’s also important that my upper body is beginning to turn at the same time so that I feel some pinch pressure in my right armpit, which keeps my arm swing and body turn connected. A lot of times I rehearse my takeaway before I swing, making sure my hands and the clubhead are lined up.

Butch says copy this: “Rickie was getting out of position right away, which put him on a recovery mission. A good checkpoint for any golfer is when the shaft gets parallel to the ground. Make it line up with your stance line, which means the club is starting on the correct plane. Some golfers practise with a club across their toes and match up the shaft they’re swinging to the one on the ground. I prefer to lay the club across the heels, because some golfers flare one or both feet. Getting started right can’t be overstated.”

Swinging more upright going back

Now we’re getting to the crux of the changes, so Butch often steps in and puts me in the right position. In my old swing, my left arm was very flat at halfway back. I had to literally flip the club over to continue the backswing. To avoid having to do that, I needed to get into a more vertical position with my left arm, as Butch is helping me feel here [above]. A good image I developed is my left arm sliding up my chest as opposed to stretching across it. To me, it feels more up and down.  

Of course, it’s a matter of degrees, so be careful not to simply lift the club to the top – a common fault I see in amateur swings. I needed to exaggerate the vertical feel; you might need to do the opposite.

I’m still moving the club to the inside, which comes from keeping my upper body turning. There’s
multiple moves happening at the same time. In short, my body turns back while my arms swing up.

Reaching the top on plane

Butch is hands-on again here because this is where I need to set the club at the top so that I can just swing down and let it go. I don’t want to have to manipulate the club on the downswing. As Butch says, the function of the backswing is to set up the downswing to where you can easily get back to the ball. If I nail this set position, I don’t have to steer the club coming down. It feels like a direct path.

Even though we got my left arm more vertical halfway back, I was still a little laid off at the top, meaning the club was too far behind me and pointing left of my target. To set the club more on plane, I need a little more hip turn. When Butch nudges my right hip back, the club slots in the perfect position – pointing directly at the target [above]. When no one is around to eyeball what I’m doing and make sure I don’t revert to my flatter backswing, I use an old swing thought Butch got from Greg Norman back in the day: Greg used to think,  R.P.B. or Right pocket back. When I turn my right hip deeper, my backswing is spot-on.

Butch says copy this: “Unless you have exceptional mobility, the popular idea to restrict your hips on the backswing to create resistance as you turn your shoulders is bogus. Most players, Rickie included, need to turn their hips fully to complete the backswing. For less-flexible players, I even recommend a closed stance (drop the right foot back) to give the trail hip a head start. So go ahead and turn your hips as much as possible. You’ll make a bigger move behind the ball and have more to hit with on the downswing.”

Keeping the transition smooth

With my backswing in a better place, we needed to confirm the changes by seeing improvements in my downswing (remember the chain-reaction concept). The first step was making sure my arms and body were staying connected at the top. When my body stops turning, I don’t want my arms to run on at all. They should stop swinging at the same time. When I focus on this, my backswing can feel shorter, so I have to guard against getting quick at the change of direction, trying to subconsciously make up for a shorter swing.  

Butch likes me to make some stop-and-go swings when we practise. Swing to the top and stop, then swing down and through. I even hit balls this way. It really helps me feel that connected backswing position, then I can transfer my weight to my front side and let the club drop before turning on the speed [below]. When my transition from backswing to downswing is smooth, I always hit better shots.

Butch says copy this: “If you don’t have the range of motion to make a full backswing, you probably rush the club down from the top. That tends to be all arms and upper body. Instead, focus on starting the downswing from the ground up, with the club whipping through last. No matter how short your backswing, that sequence works best. As Rickie says, stop-and-go swings are great training, and I like full swings in slow motion to really feel that good, ground-up sequence coming down.” 

Staying down longer

As I said, I just want to be an athlete and fire through the ball, but we do keep an eye on one thing through impact – my posture. Sometimes I stand up and out of my forward bend too soon. That raises the handle of the club and usually leads to a right miss. My simple thought – another Butch favourite – is to cover the ball through impact. In other words, keep my chest pointing down as I extend my arms out towards the target [above].

One more thing about Butch: my time with him always has been so fulfilling. He’s helped my technique, of course, but half of what he does for me is self-belief. There’s nothing like having someone on your side who helps you see that the work is worth it and you can get where you want to go. I really believe my best golf is ahead of me. 

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Sepp Straka’s takeaway is a big key to his accuracy.

At 191 centimetres and 107 kilograms, Sepp Straka could easily be mistaken for a rugby forward and not an emerging PGA Tour star. The 30-year-old Austrian is definitely one of the more imposing figures in pro golf. Yet despite his tall, muscular physique, Straka’s driving game relies more on accuracy than power. Straka ranks 21st on tour in driving accuracy (65 percent of fairways hit) and in the middle of the pack in driving distance (272.8 metres, 298.3 yards). He’d much rather hit the short grass than stretch the field.

“I’m a pretty good driver of the ball for the most part,” says Straka, the first Austrian-born player to win on the PGA Tour – at the 2022 Honda Classic. “I by no means hit it far compared to a lot of guys out here, but I feel like for how far I hit it, I’m pretty accurate.”

Straka’s swing coach of 18 months, former Golf Digest Best Young Teacher John Tillery, says the distance will come once Straka’s swing becomes more efficient. He also notes that Straka is taking “better care of his body these days” and is getting even stronger.

“As far as the bones of the swing, he doesn’t have to get longer,” says Tillery, director of instruction at The Golf Club at Cuscowilla in Georgia. “That’s more a hopeful outcome of doing the right things than it is a target of ours.”

One of the things Tillery and Straka are constantly working on is his takeaway. Straka, whose final-round 62 in early July capped the largest comeback victory after 18 holes in John Deere Classic history, has a tendency to swing his hands faster than his body during the early part of the backswing, causing the arms to separate and get pulled behind his body. When his arms outrun his legs and mid-torso, they get loose and long at the top, and he has a difficult time syncing things back up on the downswing. 

As a result, Straka constantly checks his hand position on the takeaway, making sure they stay in line with the middle of his chest [above, second image] – a sign that his arms, legs and chest are all in sync off the ball. Straka’s shaft and lead leg are virtually parallel to one another in the next frame, another indication of a good takeaway. All this sets up what Tillery refers to as Straka’s “magic move”, his transition [above, fifth image]. As long as everything is in sync and his arms don’t get too far behind him, he can drive his legs hard against his torso without getting stuck or flying open, a common mistake among amateurs. 

“His feet are working in the correct direction, meaning his trail foot is pushing behind him, and his lead foot is pushing forward,” Tillery says. “It’s the only way to rotate hard and stay centred without spinning open.” 

 Photo by Dom Furore

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One simple move – straightening your trail arm at the right time – can upgrade your entire game, driver to wedges.

I’m a swing junkie. I look for things great players do and try to figure out why they do them. A couple of years ago, I noticed that the longest hitters swing into impact with some bend in the trail arm. The arm is straightening, but it’s not straight. I also found that power players in other hitting sports – tennis, baseball, boxing – don’t fully straighten the trail arm at impact. I began training this move into my swing, and the results were shocking. A year ago, my ball speed with the driver was 147 miles an hour, max. Now, I can get it up to 157! That’s 20 to 30 more yards.

This straightening of the trail arm has a major effect on other parts of the game, particularly iron play and pitching. With irons, it promotes solid contact because it helps you stay in posture through the shot. On pitches, it controls the loft at impact for predictable trajectory and roll.

In short, this one key move can give you the things you probably want the most – more driving
distance, quality contact on iron shots and better control with the wedges.

DRIVER

Extend through the impact zone

The major benefit of the trail arm staying bent into impact with the driver is more speed. When the arm is still straightening through the strike, the energy of the swing keeps going down the shaft and into the ball. Once you straighten the arm, energy starts to dissipate and the clubhead slows down. A good feel is that you’re pushing your trail hand away from your trail shoulder through impact [above]. The real bombers almost double that shoulder-to-hand distance from about three or four feet before impact to just after the strike.

To practise this power move, make swings in which you segment the motion, stopping between steps. First, swing your driver to the top. Second, turn your body to its normal impact position. Third, swing the club through by straightening your trail arm.

Work on this three-step motion slowly at first and then start to put the steps together into normal swings. Finally, go back to hitting shots. You’ll quickly get a feel for extending your trail arm out to the target after impact – and see a serious boost in speed.

If you don’t do it

When the arm straightens too soon, the butt end of the grip starts to move backwards, away from the target. As a result, the clubhead bottoms out way behind the ball, often causing drop-kicks or thin contact low on the clubface. Also, the body stops turning forward, so the hips and shoulders are facing the ball at impact [above] instead of rotating towards the target. When the body stalls like this, another major power source is cut off. If you feel like you’re swinging fast but not hitting it anywhere, it’s a good bet you’re straightening the trail arm too soon.

Drill: The towel turn

Grab your golf-bag towel, and hold one end in your trail hand at the top-of-backswing position. Wrap the towel behind your trail biceps and pull it against your sternum with your lead hand [above left]. Now, mimic your forward swing, turning your trail shoulder down to its impact position [above right]. The elbow still should be bent 90 degrees, so this is an exaggeration. In a real swing, the arm would be straightening, but still bent! Work on this drill, but intersperse normal driver swings trying to replicate the feel of the trail arm staying bent into  the impact zone.

IRONS

Clear our before the strike

When you’re hitting off turf, you really have to control where your swing bottoms out. Maintaining your
posture through impact is a major contributor, and keeping some bend in the trail arm preserves posture. How? Look at it this way: the swing has a certain radius, and the bend in the trail arm largely controls it in the downswing. When the radius lengthens too soon from the arm straightening, the body pulls up to prevent the club from hitting the ground behind the ball. Keeping that arm bent allows you to stay in your posture.

Because an iron strike should be downward, you need to turn your trail shoulder down into impact [above]. But that can make you feel like you’re going to hit the ground too soon. To prevent this, your lead hip has to “clear”, or rotate open. Rotation moves the swing’s low point forward so you can turn down and not crash the club into the ground. For this to work, the trail arm must stay bent. Practise rotating your lower body through aggressively, turning your shoulder down and straightening your trail arm into the follow-through.

If you don’t do it

We’ve established that straightening the trail arm early causes a loss of posture, but what exactly happens? The hips push towards the ball, and the spine loses its forward tilt [above]. You see, your brain is very good at heading off trouble. When your trail arm straightens too soon, your brain senses that the club, in effect, is getting longer, so it tells your body to stand up to compensate. Obviously, that’s no recipe for consistent contact. You might time it right now and then, but you’re likely to hit a lot of fat and thin iron shots. Sound familiar?

Drill: The Throw

Here’s another great way to train the correct straightening of the trail arm on the downswing. Place a ball six feet in front of you on your target line, hold another ball in your trail hand, and take your setup without a club. Now, swing your trail arm back like you’re making a normal backswing, then start down and throw the ball [above] at the other one on the ground. If you hit it, or come close, it means you kept your trail elbow bent as your arm moved back in front of you. If your arm were to straighten too soon, you’d slam the ball down right in front of you.  

WEDGES

Maintain some hinge into the ball

The pitch swing is smaller and slower than a full-swing iron, but the same concept applies. With pitch shots, the big issue is loft – the loft on the clubface when you strike the ball and the resulting trajectory of the shot. Creating predictable loft is the key: too little loft, and the ball comes out hot; too much, and you don’t reach your target. Again, let the trail elbow bend going back and then straighten through impact [above].

In pitching, the trail wrist also plays a pivotal role because golfers tend to flip the wrist to try to lift the ball into the air. Like the trail elbow, that wrist should still have a little hinge at impact. 

One wrinkle in pitching: you have to control what the ball does in the air and on the ground, and the trail arm helps with both. It lets you deliver predictable clubface loft and make a solid strike, which imparts consistent spin on the ball so it rolls out as you expect. Hit some pitches where you straighten your trail arm before impact, then hit some where you let it straighten after the strike. You’ll become a believer real fast!

If you don’t do it

The lifting action that plagues poor pitchers has a distinct look if you freeze the swing right before the club reaches the ball [right]. The hands are back – the trail hand under the trail shoulder and its palm turning upwards. From this position, the clubhead bottoms out behind the ball, typically producing chunks or skulls. If you manage to get lucky and catch one solid, you still hit a weak shot because you’ve added loft to the clubface that you didn’t expect. Compare this to the correct image on the previous page [above]. The hands are centred on the body, the trail arm is pointing in front of the ball, and the chest is turning towards the target. That’s how you hit solid pitch shots with predictable loft.

Drill: The impact tap

The other drills got your body turning to impact (The Towel Turn) and your trail arm straightening correctly (The Throw). Now let’s get a club in your hands. Swing a 6-iron but stop halfway down, keeping the bend in your trail elbow and wrist [above left]. Then, turn your body forward until your hands are in front of the ball and stop [above middle]. Finally, tap the club into the ball, hitting it 10 yards or so [above right]. This teaches you to not lift or add loft to the face; just turn forward and straighten your arm to hit the ball. Ingrain those moves (pitching first, then full swing) to learn what great impact feels like. 

Photographs by J.D. Cuban

The post The Swing Maker appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

[PHOTO: Andy Lyons]

“I make my money with these.”

A lot has been made of Lucas Glover’s putting during his recent stretch of blazing hot form, and for good reason. His switch to a long putter has been a revelation, vanquishing his yips and heating up his performance on the greens.

Yet it wasn’t a putter Glover was holding in his hands when he said those words to Jason Baile, the director of instruction at Jupiter Hills Club in Florida and Golf Digest Best in State Teacher. It was an iron.

When Baile asked Glover what part of his game he wanted to improve on, that was where Glover’s mind went. Squeezing every last drop of juice from his ball-striking. And it’s why, while the putter has grabbed the headlines, Glover’s ball-striking has been the workhorse carrying the load.

During his past two victories, Glover has ranked 15th and 12th in Strokes Gained: Putting, respectively. But he’s ranked first in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green each of those weeks. The magic of his new flatstick is that it’s allowed him to take advantage of his long game at 43 years of age.

The draw ‘virus’ – and what we can learn from it

Glover has always been a solid ball-striker, but when he linked up with Baile a few years ago, he was encountering a problem.

Players who hit draws generally miss in two ways. They either hit pushes, which fly straight out to the right, or they hit hooks, which dive over to the left. Somewhere in between is the sweet spot.

“Lucas hates missing it right,” Baile says. “The ball kind of floats up into the air… he hates that shot. He’d rather see the ball overhook than see that straight push.”

The problem was that Glover had been missing to the right increasingly often, so like the rest of us, he started making subconscious adjustments to prevent that miss. He strengthened his grip to stop the right miss, but that created a new problem. Anytime he swung too hard, it’d send the ball hooking left.

“He’d said, ‘I want to thump it again. I’m not thumping it,'” Baile explains. “Anytime he’d try, he’d start hooking it.”

When they looked under the hood of Glover’s golf swing, they found the root cause: Glover would stay too much on his trail foot, for too long. His right foot would stay planted to the ground, and when that happened, he wouldn’t transfer his weight over to his front foot. It caused Glover to swing too far from in-to-out.

“His right foot was glued down,” Baile said. “When he’d miss it, he’d hit this [in-to-out] fat, hook shot. That was the virus that was kind of downloaded into his swing.”

It still pops up occasionally (like on the 71st hole yesterday).

To fix it, Glover and Baile often practise hitting iron shots placing a water bottle inside his trail foot. His goal is to try to knock the water bottle over with his leg as he swings through. That gets his weight more forward, and prevents the club from moving too severely in-to-out. That drill, in addition to some hard work done with the rest of the Jupiter Hills Club coaching team, quickly turned those hooks into draws.

It’s something the rest of us can learn from.

“Most drawers learn or are told to swing the club as much as they can from in-to-out,” he says. “That’s what can lead to those shallow, fat hooks. That’s the virus that can get downloaded into every draw golf swing if you’re not careful.”

Behind angle of a drill Lucas Glover and his coach, Jason Baile do often.

Water bottle inside of Glover’s trail foot. Glover tries to feel like he knocks it over through the ball. Helps him transfer his weight. pic.twitter.com/L9ij70wj2c

— LKD (@LukeKerrDineen) August 14, 2023

The post How Lucas Glover found (and fixed) his golf swing’s hook ‘virus’ appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

[PHOTO: Tracy Wilcox]

Professional golfers live and die by what happens on the golf course, but they spend most of their time on the driving range. That’s where they figure things out, or groove-in the good things, or whatever exists in between.

The range is their office. And with some potentialy lucrative pay cheques on offer as part of the FedEx Cup Playoffs, they’ve been busy at the FedEx St Jude Championship this week. Here’s a few things I learned observing them at work.

1. They hit lots of wedge shots

Tour players hit a lot of wedges. Lots of them. Think about a person hitting whatever you consider many wedge shots, then think about that same person hitting a few more. That’s probably about how many wedge shots a tour player hits during an average range session.

“If I’m hitting balls for an hour, I probably spend about 25 minutes hitting wedge shots – about half the time,” says J.T. Poston, who ranks first in proximity between 75 and 100 yards.

There are a few reasons why pros are in love with hitting lots of wedge shots. Mainly, because no one is trying to swing hard with a wedge in their hands, which helps them groove a nice, smooth tempo. Wedges are also relatively easy to hit, so players will often use wedges for swing drills they’re working through without fear of hitting confidence-wrecking shots that feel gross. They’re dialling in nice, crispy, ball-first contact while also implementing the feels they like. And all the rest aside, wedge shots are your scoring clubs. The ones you really need to knock close, more often then not.

All of which is to say: hit way more wedge shots than you think! That’s what the pros do.

2. They switch their targets

Just because pros hit lots of wedge shots, it doesn’t mean they’re hitting lots of the same wedge shots. Quite the contrary. With a wedge in their hands, players are constantly moving their targets by picking one on the left side of the range, then one on the right side of the range, then one shorter and another longer.

“I hit a lot of different shots when I’m practising,” Poston says. “It’s helped me develop a good feel for it, and gives me confidence anytime I play.”

Jon Rahm does, too: “I practise hitting lots of different shots very often. Right-to-left; left-to-right; high; low; I want to see various ball flights before I go play, because that’s what I use to attack the pin.”

It’s most apparent with their wedges (probably because they hit so many of them), but players do it with irons, too. Rarely are they sending ball after ball to one target. They’ll hit a handful of shots to one target, then shift to another. Rinse and repeat.

It’s also worth noting that they are picking specific targets on the range. They’re not just sending golf balls blindly out into the distance, as so many of the rest of us do.

3. Any drills they do, they do early in their range session

Players work on their golf swings quite a lot, and they use different drills to do it. The Most Notable Golf Swing Drill I Saw Award in Memphis goes to Sam Ryder [below], who clasped his right hand over his left wrist, dropped his right foot back, and hit full swing shots. (It was a way of helping him turn the club more around his body on the downswing.)

When players do work on their swings, it’s usually at the start of their range sessions. They’ll spend 15 minutes or so on a drill, or working a specific feel, then move onto hitting shots without it. The swing thought is still there, but it’s not front and centre. The goal is to keep the two in balance – working on the golf swing but never playing golf swing – and it doesn’t just happen over the course of a singular range session. The same rhythm unfolds over the week.

“At the start of the week, lots of guys are more focused on their golf swing,” says Bhrett McCabe, who works with Sam Burns, Davis Riley and Billy Horschel, among others. “As they get closer to the tournament, they start asking more questions about strategy, routine and mindset.”

The same should hold true for the rest of us. Establish your swing feels early, then shift your priorities to playing golf.

4. They slowly build speed with their driver

For most of us, when the driver gets pulled out of the bag it’s because we’re ready to give it a lash. That’s not quite the case with pros. They build speed slowly with the ‘big dog’. Their first few swings with their driver are relatively smooth. Then, like a plane accelerating up a runway, they’ll begin ramping up to full speed.

Stephan Jaeger is one player who spends the last few balls of his range sessions swinging increasingly hard. Far harder that he would ever swing on the course. He checks his ball speed on a Foresight Quad launch monitor and says that even though he won’t swing that fast on the course itself, the process irons out some kinks in his technique.

“I found it helps my swing,” Jaeger says, who started this speed-training routine last year. “My swing is longer and I’m less laid off at the top than I used to be. My misses used to be foul balls, now they’re in play.”

5. They observe (but don’t obsess) over their numbers

The rise of indoor simulators, smart driving ranges and at-home launch monitors means most of us have relatively easy access to some form of numbers. Almost every pro has a launch monitor on them on the range – usually a Foresight Quad – but most of them don’t stress too much about them. At least, they try not to. It’s good advice for the rest of us, too.

“There can be an information-overload aspect,” Poston says. “For me, it’s nice to have them there, I keep an eye on them, but I’m not going to worry about them too much.”

6. They practise some fairway-finders

On Tuesday, moments before his practice round, Byeong Hun An was hitting some truly breathtaking stingers. Off the ground, he was rifling a driving iron down the range what couldn’t have been more than 10 metres off the ground.

“It’s a 1-iron loft,” Golf Digest Top 50 Teacher Sean Foley, who coaches An, said of the club his student was hitting at the time. “We’ve had so much trouble dialling-in 3 woods we went to this… the driver is the only headcover we have in the bag.”

While An’s 1-iron is more unusual, that he bookmarked a little time during his range session to hit some fairway finders wasn’t. Every pro has a different just-get-it-in-the-farway shot. Thomas Detry makes driver swings swinging at 75 percent speed. Others choose to tee the ball lower, or hit a more severe version of their stock ball flight. It doesn’t matter what it is, it just matters that you can depend on it.

For An, it’s his stinger.

How Tiger acquired his ‘Stinger’

“I can’t take credit for a lot of what he does, but I can take credit for that,” Foley says. “We’ve worked a lot on learning how controlling trajectory, and knowing how to take spin off on command. This is the shot he hits anytime he needs to find a fairway.”

The post 8 things pro golfers do every time they’re on the practice range appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

No matter what type of ball flight you hit, or what shot shape you have, the sequence of your golf swing should always be the same. You’ll shift towards the target, rotate your body open, then rise into the finish. That specific order of shift, turn and rise, is an absolute law of the modern game. It’s the one thing that every single pro does, even though they each swing so differently. That order creates a chain reaction which delivers maximum power into the golf ball. – Joe Plecker, Director of Instruction, Landings Club, Savannah, Georgia, Golf Digest Best in State Teacher

The Golf Swing Downswing Sequence

• Shift your hips towards the target
• Rotate your body open through impact
• Rise with your legs into your follow through

Golf Swing Sequence Step 1: Shift

On the backswing pivot, we’re adding pressure over that trail leg, as you can see. Loading your trail leg allows you to push and shift forward on the downswing. You can see a little separation there between my left side and my head in the shift movement. The head stays back, and the hip and pressure shift forward. When you do that, you’ve created an elite forward shift in the golf swing. Many higher handicaps can’t disassociate those two halves and they try to shift, but their upper body is shifting forward with it.

Golf Swing Sequence Step 2: Rotate

The important thing here is that there’s a pushing back out of my lead foot. Rather that just thinking about turning your hips, think about pushing from your toe of your lead foot to your heel. That’s what pushes the left side back. Pushing from the toe into the heel causes a dramatic torque, which helps open your body and increases the speed of your golf swing.

Golf Swing Sequence 3: Rise

Any time your body is done turning and reaches its end range of motion, you’re going to stand up. Releasing out of your posture is the essential last step. Allowing your body to stand is good for your lower back, good for your hip flexors and good for your power. The adage of keeping your head down just doesn’t work. Once your body has completed the turn, allow your chest to rise. I usually ask students how tall they are. If they, say, 5-foot-11, I want them to feel six feet by the end of their swing.

The post The most important move in the golf swing, explained in 3 steps appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

Steady as he goes – Sungjae Im’s backswing is a big key to his consistency

There are a number of players with unorthodox backswings – Jim Furyk, Matthew Wolff, John Daly, just to name a few – but certainly no one has a slower backswing than Sungjae Im. The first half of Im’s backswing is so deliberate, it almost looks like it’s in slow motion. 

Unhappy with his ball-striking while on the Japan Tour in 2016, Im decided one day in practice to slow down his takeaway. What started as a drill has now evolved into the South Korean’s signature move. 

“I started to see more consistency in my tempo and ball flight when I took it away slower,” says 25-year-old Im, the PGA Tour’s Rookie of the Year in 2018-2019. “So I just continued to do it.”

One of the more accurate drivers on the PGA Tour – he ranked 25th in driving accuracy (65 percent) and 22nd in total driving through July’s John Deere Classic – Im has the length to reach most par 5s in two, as well. The two-time PGA Tour winner has been carving up the par 5s this season with a scoring average of 4.48 strokes, fourth best on tour. Im credits much of his power to his workout regimen and the extension he’s able to create on the takeaway and just after impact, when the shaft is parallel to the ground, two positions that nearly mirror themselves.

“I feel like this is the way to generate the most power – extend my arms as far as possible,” Im says. “Although my takeaway might look slow and awkward, I do generate a lot of power and accuracy by extending my arms.”

Another key to Im’s power and consistency is a change he has made to his lead-wrist position at the top of the backswing. In his first few years on tour, Im had a tendency to cup his left wrist at the top, which opened the clubface. Now he’s trying to consciously keep that wrist flatter while lowering the shaft on the backswing, two moves that make it easier to swing the club down from the inside and hit the draw he favours off the tee. 

Im is also constantly working on finding the proper balance between his hand and body movements, especially on the backswing. The more in sync they are, the farther he’s able to turn his chest and shoulders, generating more speed and power on the downswing.

“I’m trying to keep them all aligned together,” Im says. “I have a tendency to swing my hands first, so they get out of alignment with my body. If I can find the right balance where I’m using both my hands and body together, and turning my chest with my hands, my swing is very strong.” 

Interviewed with help from Sungjae Im’s translator and manager, Danny Oh

 Photo by Dom Furore

The post Swing Analysis: Sungjae Im appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

Learn Tony Finau’s shorter, faster move to better accuracy.

[Photographs by Dom Furore]

Tony Finau has played some of his best golf on the biggest stages, leaving many to wonder just how the uber-talented 33-year-old had just two PGA Tour wins over his first seven-plus seasons on tour. They’re left wondering no more. Finau now has five PGA Tour wins, including three since July last year. 

“I think the misconception that he’s not a closer has been put to rest,” says Boyd Summerhays, Finau’s long-time swing coach.

Summerhays credits much of Finau’s recent hot streak to his improved driving accuracy, which plays right into his greatest strength, his iron play. In his most recent win at the Cadence Bank Houston Open last November, Finau achieved a career first, hitting all 13 fairways in the third round. 

“Now that he drives it so much better, he’s getting to hit more iron shots from the fairway,” says Summerhays, one of Golf Digest’s 50 Best Teachers in America. “That kind of speaks to why he’s doing so well. He’s been driving it amazing and making the clutch putts
on the weekend that you need to win.”

Since his Korn Ferry Tour days, Finau has made some subtle adjustments to hit more fairways. At address, he positions his head farther behind the ball than most other pros. This allows him to shallow his angle of attack and hit more up on the ball without deviating much from his iron swing. 

“It simplifies things for him,” Summerhays says. “He doesn’t have to move off the ball to the right. He can pretty much stay centred behind the ball.”

As a 16-year-old, Finau possessed elite power and had no trouble generating ball speeds exceeding 200 miles per hour, Summerhays says. But with that power came a price in the form of missed fairways, so Finau gradually began shortening his backswing.

“He’s the only person I’ve coached whose swing got shorter,” Summerhays says. “I don’t teach that – the game is about power and distance – but it helps him control it. Because he has a 6-foot-8 wingspan, he can be short and still generate lots of leverage and power.”

The 6-foot-4 Finau’s backswing tempo is among the fastest on tour, which is something most amateurs misconstrue as a bad thing.

“You’ll hear a lot of amateurs say, ‘Oh, I got quick,’” Summerhays says. “The truth is that many take it back too slow. As a result, they try to generate too much speed in the transition, which can feel a little jerky. Tony goes so fast on the backswing that it makes his transition less violent, and it feels smooth to him. He doesn’t feel like he has to force the power in the transition.” 

The post Swing Analysis: Ratchet Up Your Tempo appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.