Jason Day - Width and Rotation for Leverage
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Congrats to Jason Day for winning the 2015 Farmers Insurance Open and moving into the #4 position in the World Golf Rankings. In this new video, I'll show you how Jason Day builds a powerful backswing, centered around width and rotation. You must have these 2 key ingredients in order to take advantage of leverage in your downswing. I'll also show you a great way to focus your takeaway on rotation and I'll also show you how to get separation between the hips and shoulders in your backswing. If you have been looking for more clubhead speed in your game, then kick your backswing into high gear with rotation and width now.
Hey guys, I'm Rotary Swing Instructor Chris Tyler.
Jason Day picks up his next big victory on the PGA Tour this past weekend and catapults himself into the fourth position of the official World Golf Rankings.
So congratulations to Jason Day.
I'm going to show you how.
He establishes a lot of width and rotation early on in his golf swing, and that helps him put a lot of leverage in his downswing.
And if you've been looking for a solution to put more speed and more power into your game, you definitely want to check this out.
All right guys, so this week we're going to be focusing on the importance of width and rotation in your golf swing.
I'm going to help you guys get over some of the common faults that we see with width and rotation into the takeaway and backswing, Give you guys a couple of good indicators of what you can do to help make these positions much better in your game.
And in turn, You're going to be able to translate a lot of that width and rotation into a lot more club head speed in your downward move.
And Jason Day does some really great things in his golf swing that help him establish a lot of good fundamental pieces that are going to help him build power.
And if you look at him from a face -on perspective, what we're going to focus on right here is the buttons on his shirt and his club head.
If you watch the buttons in the club head here, you can see that he keeps everything rotating as one piece all the way through the takeaway.
So see the buttons on the shirt rotating as one piece.
Now, if you've noticed yourself on camera, or if you've been struggling with shutting down width or not seeing that you're getting a full turn, Then a lot of times, what you've done is you've moved this golf club pretty quickly off the golf ball with just the hands and the arms.
You can make the golf club travel quite a bit with just setting the wrists.
And that's a very common mistake.
And once that starts to happen, that's signaling to the hands and the arms to become the primary power source in the golf swing.
And rotation has kind of been put into the back burner.
And even though you'll see yourself rotate on camera because momentum is generally pulling you into the top part of the golf swing, you may be way out of sync and it's very difficult to get things lined up.
And when the hands and arms become the primary power source, then it's much more difficult to be able to maintain lag.
It's difficult to maintain speed in the right spot.
That's at impact.
So what you're going to be looking for into a good takeaway position, and this is a good way to overcome some of the faults you may have had, is focus on rotation.
Keep both arms very straight and relaxed and try to get the club head to rotate at the same rate as your sternum.
You don't need to move the club fast into the takeaway.
So take a look at the down the line perspective here.
You're going to see his buttons on his shirt here, everything rotates as one piece.
And as a completed takeaway here, when the club shaft gets parallel, you can notice that his hands are directly in the center of his chest.
All right, so this is a textbook looking takeaway.
So just by focusing on rotation alone, he's in turn moved the hands and the arms.
So he's already started to establish width here.
So you can see how they kind of tie hands together.
Now, another good thing that Jason Day does in his golf swing that gives him kind of a shorter appearance to his move is he keeps things in sync.
very, very well.
And what I mean by that is if you watch the buttons on the shirt from a down the line perspective.
And the club, you're going to see the buttons on his shirt are always rotating while the club is moving.
So you see the buttons on those shirt right there all the way up to the top.
And here he is getting ready to work into downswing transition.
This is a great way for you to be able to focus on keeping things put together.
A lot of times what we'll see from amateur golfers, and this is more from a face on perspective, let me remove these lines for us.
When we get to a nice looking takeaway, we've got that fully ingrained.
We'll see that the person will start to add right arm flexion, but the right shoulder will not move.
So now we've gotten a great takeaway established, but now we've kind of shifted the priorities back over to the hands and the arms.
So you can watch Jason here.
You can see that his right shoulder continues to move all the way up into the vertical plane.
So if you've checked yourself out in camera and you've seen that, your right shoulder is really not doing much.
From a completed takeaway as you're starting to complete your backswing, then re-shift your priorities around and get back over to rotation first, and then flexion and elevation second.
You always want to prioritize around a big body turn and small arm movements.
That in turn is going to help you build up some power in those big muscles.
So again, we want to make sure that we keep both arms very straight and relaxed.
Try to get that clip head to rotate at the same rate as your sternum, and then focus on rotation as you start to work the hands and arms up into the vertical plane.
And then you'll have a much more powerful looking backswing.
Now, the final bit that I want to talk about that, I think, is a lot of times overlooked.
About what golf professionals do so well and why they're able to hit the golf ball so far, aside from lag and release and aside from lower body leverage, is separation.
You're going to hear this expression quite a bit, And what I mean by separation is just the total amount of degrees that the shoulders have rotated versus the total amount of degrees that the hips have rotated.
So you can see here that he's got about 90 degrees of rotation from the shoulder line, and only about 30 to 35 degrees of hip rotation.
Now, a great way to get yourself some separation is by being able to shift and load up your trail side, the lower part of your body, and this is absolutely critical for stability, and it's also critical for building power in the golf swing.
Because if you can get your trail side loaded up, that's going to allow you to stabilize your hips.
And a lot of times we'll see hips get over-rotated, which can in turn cause the spine to over-rotate, which can in turn cause the hands and arms to get longer or deeper in your golf swing.
So a great way to focus on this is when you make your shift over to your trail side, is feel about 80% of your weight, 70 to 80% of your weight in your right heel, right ankle.
You want to push your right heel ankle into the ground, okay?
Push that right into the ground and try to maintain the total amount of knee flex that you started with at the address position.
Keep that knee flexed and facing forward.
Try to pick a spot on the ground out here, and that'll help you feel those muscles start to contract.
Those glute muscles are really great to have to help stabilize, and in turn that's going to help not allow the hips to over-rotate.
And what you'll start to feel is you'll start to feel your midsection, your abs and your obliques will start to feel like they're contracting.
And when you get that contraction, those big muscles are really starting to fire, and those are going to be great for us to be able to move some power and turn that into speed.
And also what that's great for is it can help you keep your golf swing shorter, tighter and more consistent.
Because if we don't feel those muscles, the hips have over-rotated, the hands and arms have gotten longer.
Again, you run the risk of having the hands and arms become that primary power source.
And as much as we want to bash the golf ball with the hands and arms, They're just not as powerful as using the entire body and the big muscles that are really critical for it.
Alright, so what I want you guys to focus on is through a good takeaway, I want you to keep both arms very relaxed.
I want your primary focus to be to keep your buttons on your shirt rotating at the same rate as your sternum.
Keep both arms very straight and relaxed.
Focus on rotation.
And then as you are adding right arm flexion, always keep on the forefront rotation.
Keep those buttons moving up into the vertical plane.
And then also try to stabilize your lower body by keeping that right knee flexed and facing forward.
This will allow you to build rotation and width into your golf swing.
It'll also allow you to build some good separation into your golf swing that you can use for a lot of great power in your downward move.
And it can also help you sequence your downswing properly.
So our game plan right now guys is just to make sure that we work through the takeaway videos.
There's a great video called The Roll of the Right Arm in the Takeaway that talks about what the right arm is going to be doing.
We always talk about the right arm being the governor of width.
I also want you to take a look at the load the right glute video.
That's a great video that's going to help you start to feel like, okay, I need to find some awareness of these muscles to help create this separation.
So it's called load the right glute, shorten swing, start transition.
These are going to be over in the recommended videos along with this Jason Day video.
And the next video is going to be called the right knee laser beam.
We actually have both knees.
We have a left knee laser beam drill and we have a right knee laser beam drill.
But for you golfers at home and you're working on loading up your trail side, let's focus on the right knee laser beam drill.
That'll help you get things kind of started off on the right foot.
And feel like you're going to create some good stability in that lower half.
And help get that separation that you need.
And then in turn, you're going to get those big muscles firing.
So that's our game plan, guys.
If you want to build yourself a better looking takeaway and a better backswing, all prioritized around width and rotation, then you want to definitely mirror what Jason Day does because he does it really well.
I wish you guys all the best and let's make it a great day.
Jerry
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