Phil Mickelson vs. Lexi Thompson - Lower Body Power
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Congrats to both Lexi Thompson and Phil Mickelson for their awesome final rounds at the KPMG and the FedEx St. Jude Classic. In this video, I'll show you how Lexi and Phil use their legs for **BIG** power and stability in the swing. I'll also show you a really simple way to get more lag in the downswing by focusing on width in your takeaway and backswing.
- Stay wide with both arms in the takeaway.
- At the completion of the takeaway make sure the club is parallel to the ground
- Use the lower body to pull the arms down into the release point of the swing.
Hey, hey everyone.
This is RST instructor Chris Tyler and we are back with this week's tour analysis once again.
I'm going to be flipping over to both third place finishers from the LPGA Tour Lexi Thompson and from the PGA Tour Phil Mickelson.
I'm going to show you guys how.
Both players stay very wide early on in their golf swing and then they initiate their downswing with a really strong, powerful lower body move.
This is going to ultimately help you put a lot more speed in your game.
So you want to pay close attention to this if you want to hit your driver much further than you have before.
Okay guys, so as I said in the opener, We're going to be focusing in on Phil Mickelson and Lexi Thompson, who both finished up with great rounds on this Sunday.
You know, this is no offense to Fabian Gomez or to MB Park, There's just not really a whole lot of videos out there for us to be able to analyze their golf swings properly.
So congratulations to both those players on their wins on both respective tours.
I want to show you guys a great way to understand how you can put more lag into your golf swing just by doing very little early on in the golf swing.
With the hands and the arms.
And what we want to look for here from both players is we're going to look to stay as wide as humanly possible here.
So you can see that both players turn extremely well into their takeaway positions.
So here's where we would signify completed takeaway where the club shaft is parallel to the ground.
Both players have turned their chest and their shoulders 45 degrees.
Okay, you can see here both arms are nice and straight.
Lexi does a fantastic job, pretty much a textbook looking takeaway as well here.
So you can see both shoulders have got, both players have got their shoulders turned 45 degrees.
Now, one of the things that you'll notice here is they've got just enough wrist set here to support the club.
You may have heard a lot of instructors in the past say set the club very early on.
Now what that can do is it actually can load up your wrists.
And when you get your wrists fully loaded up, just like any other muscle group, They're going to want to try to fire very early.
And that could cause you to throw the club and make it very difficult for you to maintain any sort of lag.
So you want to have just enough to where your club shaft is parallel to the ground.
You also want to stay as wide as possible, early as possible.
A couple of videos on the website that are going to help you out with this.
We have the role of the right arm and the takeaway.
These videos are going to be over to the right hand side of the video player underneath the Recommended Videos tab.
Just go ahead and click that.
Again, any video that I mentioned throughout the analysis will be in that tab.
So the role of right arm is a great video for you guys to take a look at, just to make sure you understand how we're going to work into a wide takeaway position.
Also, you know, The wide, narrow, wide swing shape.
That's done really well for us to kind of really explain what a lot of the Tour players are doing as far as an overall swing shape is concerned.
Another great video to give you a clear understanding of what's going on.
But again, so you want to just have enough wrist set.
You want to stay as wide as possible.
So let's get both players up to the top of the swing now.
Okay.
You can see Lexi loads up a right side, makes a humongous shoulder turn here.
Phil goes ahead and works up into the vertical plane here.
You can see that Phil's hands get a little bit closer to his trail shoulder here.
Both players actually have a little bit more of a lead knee that kind of kicks inward.
You'll see Phil here.
It looks like he's a little bit more unstable, but he actually gets it very stabilized on the way down.
Now this is the big move right here is that when we get to the top of our swing and we're ready to start to work in transition, how do we get back over to our lead side?
What do we start with in the downward move?
And you're going to see both players do this extremely well.
You're going to see this leg right here externally, rotate and start to pull things over to the lead side.
So you're going to see that leg right there is externally rotating, much like you would think of throwing a baseball or a softball.
If you were to pick your leg up, your lead leg, plant your leg, you would pivot on your hips so there would be some external rotation.
And you can see that that's a very big powerful move there with the lower half.
So all this appearance from the hands and the arms and the shoulders moving has actually been dictated by the lower half.
So go ahead and let's watch Lexi work here.
So you're going to see that external rotation of the lead leg starting to pull her over to the lead side there.
And now you can see, both players have been able to maintain a ton of lag.
Because they just didn't do anything with the hands and the arms.
So you can see this really big angle between the forearm and the club shaft here.
All right.
Lots of lag there, both Phil and Lexi.
And then ultimately, what they're going to be doing is they're going to be continuing to drive with the lower half.
And that movement from the lower half is going to allow them to pull the hands and the arms down into the release point.
Okay.
So Lexi is going to start to post up here and that movement right there.
Now she's getting ready to release this golf club and she'll be at max speed as she starts to fire through the hitting area.
So you can see she's got a lot of ground leverage here as she kind of comes up off the ground and she's at full extension and she moves the golf ball, really, really well.
So same thing kind of move here with Phil.
You'll see him start to post up.
He actually takes down a little bit more lag than Lexi does.
And then he fires and at full extension.
So it's just a great way for you guys to be able to get a lot more.
Lag is to stay as extremely wide as humanly possible very early on in the golf swing.
That'll allow you to narrow the arc.
Also, What you want to look for is that you don't have a ton of risk set to get the club moving very early.
Just get enough to support the club at the completed part of the takeaway, to where the club shaft's parallel to the ground.
And then as you start to work up to the top of the swing, Think about your lead leg starting to externally rotate and start to pull you over to that lead side.
And you'll be bombing the golf ball further than you have before with proper downswing sequencing.
All right, guys.
So good couple videos.
Keep the right arm straight to turn.
The role of the right arm in the takeaway.
Move one, the takeaway, another great video for us.
How the lower body works and then the wide narrow wide swing shape.
Those are all very good videos that'll help you kind of understand and further expound about what I'm talking about.
So let's get out there.
Let's play some great golf and make it a great day.
Lisa
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
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