Bubba Watson: Masters Champ Thrives Under Pressure
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Champions rise above the pressure when it counts. In this video, I’ll show you how you can prepare for high-pressure rounds like Bubba Watson and Jack Nicklaus. You’ll find out how to evaluate yourself after high-pressure rounds, learn from your mistakes, and how to minimize your mistakes. This is how you’ll develop “ice in your veins.” Check out this video now to rise above your competition and win!
- You need to evaluate how your body responded to the intense pressure after a round.
- Mistakes will happen and they can help you better yourself in your next event.
- Once you learn the above two bullets, you should be able to move through your high pressure rounds and not compound your mistakes.
Hey hey everyone, this is Rotary Swing Instructor Chris Tyler and this week Mr.
Green Jacket Bubba Watson is back.
We're going to be talking about Bubba Watson under pressure and three really critical areas that Jack Nicklaus has openly spoke about.
That you must have in order to be a champion.
So let's go ahead and get started.
Alright, so if you're a golf nut like I am, I'm sure you were pinned to the TV this weekend watching Bubba Watson get his second green jacket.
So a special congratulations to Bubba Watson.
And I also want to give a special congratulations to Jordan Spieth for being so resilient and playing an absolutely fantastic golf tournament.
And I know Jordan's going to be around for a long time and he's certainly going to bring a lot of excitement to the game.
So congratulations to him on his first Masters appearance and being only 20 years old, that's a phenomenal feat there.
So this week's review, I know we just recently did a swing analysis on Bubba.
And I want to talk to you about one of the myths that I heard in some commentary.
After the golf tournament to help identify what he does and why he does on the golf course at certain times.
And when we're in situations such as the Masters or any golf tournament for all that matters, There's an immense amount of pressure and there's an immense amount of tension that goes through the body.
And being able to move in a way that you feel comfortable is absolutely most important.
And you can start to see a little bit of tension squeaking into the bodies of both Watson and Spieth, a little bit more than we're used to seeing I guess is the best way to put it.
And one of the announcers I heard say that Bubba's got a different arsenal of shots compared to the rest of the players out there.
And that's the reason why he's doing so well and he could potentially be the number one player in the world.
I do agree with that.
He's got a fantastic arsenal of shots, but we don't want to take anything away from the other players that are out on tour.
Those players can all work the golf ball in any direction.
They can hit high shots, they can hit soft shots, they just choose not to.
And there's a big reason why.
Is that Bubba Watson feels comfortable with playing these shots in these particular moments.
And I want to reflect back on three really critical statements that Jack Nicholas has said a couple years ago about learning how to win.
And the first, and one I believe to be the most important one, is you have to learn how the body's going to respond under intense pressure.
So once you learn how your body's going to respond, then you're going to go ahead and make sure that you can evaluate yourself after the round.
You can see where your misses took place.
And then you can prepare yourself for the next round.
Because each time you get into a pressure situation, it's going to be a little bit different.
And you want to be able to use each experience as a learning process.
The second thing, he said, is you have to be able to make certain mistakes so you can learn how to overcome and avoid them later.
You have to be able to make those mistakes because you need them to happen.
Well, we don't need them, but you want them to happen so you can learn from them.
You have to be able to see them coming and learn how to recover from them faster.
So you don't have a wildly outlandish finish or a blow a golf tournament, okay? So you want to be able to, in high pressure situations, number one, be able to know how the body is going to respond under intense pressure.
And then you want to be able to learn from the mistakes that you made throughout that round.
And then the third thing he said is you have to learn how to shrink your mistakes.
You are always going to make mistakes.
You need to make them smaller, okay? Those three areas are what Bubba Watson does.
What he does on the golf course is because he feels comfortable with making the shots happen that he does.
That's the way he grew up playing the game.
He's got a fantastic feel for it.
And he controls it through a series of release and some path changes throughout the round.
So today we're going to look at some of the release that he does, because the release is one of those areas.
When you watched the tension start to develop later in the round, where I remember a couple of areas on the golf course I could see it.
Jordan Spieth on number 15, You could see from the middle of the fairway that he had a situation where he could start to get some momentum had he put that on the green.
And the tension allowed him or didn't allow him to release the golf club properly.
And he hit a little bit of a block there and missed it to the right side of the green.
And the same thing with Bubba over on 13 when he hit that big drive over the trees.
And he had a gap wedge into that par five.
And he was aimed, you know, 10, 15 feet left of the hole, which is the proper spot there.
And, you know, not being able to release the club properly off of the lie that he had.
In turn, he ended up hitting it on the left side of the green there.
So, you know, tension is going to be, you know, it can be our worst enemy, But we need to be able to look at the tension levels and understand how our body is going to respond to that.
So let's go ahead and take a look at Bubba through the hitting area with some of his wedge play.
Okay, so as I stated at the first part of the video, Bubba doesn't hit too many shots alike from one shot to the next.
He likes to, you know, change the path of the golf club and then also play around with the release quite a bit.
So you can see here on the screen, he's actually standing a little bit of an open stance.
But what I want you to pay really close attention to is his lead arm, which is going to be his right arm because he is a left-handed player.
We're going to go ahead and work it back into his takeaway.
And I want you to notice the position of the glove logo here.
You can see his glove logo is facing back here towards the camera.
Or back at us if we were watching him from a face-on view.
And as you can see here as he works the top part of his golf swing, when the club gets back down into the hitting area here, You can see that that Glove logo is virtually in the same spot as it was in the completed part of the takeaway.
Then you're going to see a good gradual rotation from this left wrist.
Okay, so, or I'm sorry, his lead wrist.
So you can see him starting to rotate here.
It's starting to rotate down.
He's starting to turn the knuckles down.
That's a good video on the website called the knuckles down drill.
And then as he's getting through the hitting area, you're going to see what we call ulnar deviation, which is also referred to as uncocking of the wrist.
And that's a good stabilizer for the wrist as well.
For those of you that have always been real flippy with the wrist, ulnar deviation is something that is uncocking of the wrist.
And it's needed to be a stabilizer in the club face.
And in turn, as he's starting to rotate through, and he's got the glove logo now facing back towards the audience here.
He's nice and flat in his right wrist and his left wrist.
And they're both, they both have ulnar deviation and they're fully uncocked.
And he's got good extension.
And there's a good video on the website.
And I know we mentioned this a lot, but it's either, it's five minutes to a perfect release.
And then there's also the Golf swing.
Release Drill is another great video that's going to teach you more and more about how to control the club face.
So you can learn how to hit the golf ball in several different directions.
But the reason, like I said, kind of backtracking.
The reason why Bubba likes to play the golf ball in multiple directions is because that's what he feels comfortable with in that particular moment.
And I think if you could take a pivotal point in your game and really start to shape it up, It would be learning how to control the release so you can learn how to control the club face through the hitting area.
And understand that those are shots that you need to have in high pressure situations.
Alright guys, so that's going to be our review for today.
Remember, when you get out there, make sure that you understand.
And when you're playing in events, you're understanding how your body is going to respond in very intense pressure.
No matter what you're playing in.
If it's a club championship or if it's in a US Open qualifier.
And then remember, you're also going to want to learn that you can make certain mistakes.
You want to make those certain mistakes so you can learn from them afterwards.
And then once you get that down, you want to learn how to shrink your mistakes.
So that's it for now.
Guys, get out there.
Let's play some good consistent golf.
I look forward to working more with you in the future and I hope you have a great day.
Brandon
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Brandon
Chris (Certified RST Instructor)
Peter
Chris (Certified RST Instructor)