AXIOM in Jessica Korda
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Top ranked LPGA star Jessica Korda is a wonderful example of power and simplicity as she demonstrates the AXIOM in her swing.
All right. So I want to explain the
Axiom and this concept of a vortex generator using a tour pro as an example. And this is Jessica quarter. I'm one of the quarter sisters, obviously one of the top female golfers in the world.
Uh, and as a really incredible dynamic,
Powerful, simple golf swing, but she is a perfect example of somebody doing this Axiom movement that I have great video, that you can see this pretty clearly. You generally need pretty high res video to totally see this and understand
It. So let's take a look at her driver's swing.
And then we'll talk about the Axiom of the arms, uh, in the down the line view and just a second. So first things first as she starts to go back, obviously you can see her legs and hips shifting a little bit more to the right. You can see the guy in the background, his face is disappearing. Um, but the bigger thing is obviously that there's no way that weight is not moving laterally to the right. Of course. Right. So pressure is so you can start to see the movement right about here. So I want you to just to focus on her right foot for the moment, and you will see that the foot starts to shift and change right about there. You can see the spacing under her toe becomes a lot more obvious, right? So where's her weight. Now, obviously the pressure has worked to the back of the foot.
And this is of course about the timing of the hand drop with the Axiom of the arms that I have shown you. So that as the arms work in that same clockwise pattern, that that's about the time. It doesn't have to be specific or exact, but it's a great way to feel it and learn it that about the time that the weight and pressure is fully back on the back of the right heel. So now as that happens, it's going to move to the inside. Of course you will see that foot want to roll in a little bit. So if you focus on her right heel, you'll see it shifting toward the left heel. Another way to think about that is that it is still rotating clockwise. The rotation clockwise happens until the release. And so, as you know, as going through this Axiom movement, as you get to the big toe, that's when you exit the merry-go-round and that's the time that you're starting to release the golf club.
So those two things work hand in hand. It's really easy to see that here. So we know that if her right heel is moving toward the left, even just that slight amount, which just not a lot, maybe a quarter inch or half inch, but it's showing that there's still that rotation. She still moving around the perimeter of that foot. And then very quickly gets onto that ball of the foot and big toe, which you can obviously see that with her right foot, the toe going down to the ground. So now, if we kind of walked through this all again, you can kind of visualize. And again, this happens very quickly and dynamically, and that's an important thing to understand. At first we do it slow and big exaggerated motions, but eventually we want this movement to be very, very tight, very quick and very, uh, you know, fast in the terms of how quickly you, you feel, wait, moving from one section to the next it's going to happen super fast.
You can't think about it. It's going to really happen so fast. But the goal is to keep doing this movement enough, you build the repetition in so that you don't have to think about it. That's really, you're going to understand and be able to do this move right away, but being able to master it where you can do it without thinking, that's just like anything else, it takes repetition. So you can see that move. It's, it's very clear as to where the weights kind of working around the foot. We know there's continuing clockwise rotation. Now she's getting ready to get off the merry-go-round she's up on her big toe. And so now the release is going to begin to happen. And what you're going to notice is that now there's counter-clockwise rotation. Check that out. You can look at both heels and look at the direction they're shifting.
The movement has gone from clockwise rotation. And then as we get ready to release it shifts and you can see right about there. It's beginning to shift to a counterclockwise. So it's clockwise, you're on the Amerigroup on all the merry-go-round on the merry-go-round all the way around until you get ready to release. And then everything switches to counter-clockwise your hands arm. Everything is now rotating in the opposite direction. That is what the release is. It is shifting from clockwise rotation to counterclockwise rotation. The forearms turn over the club face turns over. Remember the club face is opening in the back swing. And then as we start to square it a little bit in the down swing, as it continues, we have a dramatic amount of rotation by comparison, through the hitting area to square that club face up. Now let's focus on this concept of a vortex generator.
So when we look at this very simple, small movement of the right foot and how it works, the weight, the pressure quickly works around the perimeter of the foot. As a feeling that movement is very, very small, right? Because it foot stuck to the ground. And this is where the movement is emanating from. It's like moving from your core, you watch somebody throw a punch and you know that if they're hitting with any power, they're using their core, but the core doesn't really move that much. But without the support and movement of that core, the arm couldn't throw very strong punch by itself. So the same, thing's true in the golf swing. So now as you're visualizing that all your movement is essentially emanating from that right foot. Obviously the rest of your body is moving. But if you visualize that, then you'll notice that everything starts to move in a little bit bigger circle.
So let's go up this, the step one piece to the right knee. Pretty easy to see if you visualize from top down, which obviously we can't do without cutting her body up. So we have to kind of put our mind, imagine we're up above looking down and you know that right. Knee is rotating. Guess what direction is rotating clockwise? And the knee itself is orbiting in space in a tiny clockwise circle. So now you can see it's rotating and come back. And then as it begins to move back now at six o'clock seven o'clock, eight o'clock. And then as you gets ready for the release, the post-up begins and then the counterclockwise rotation begins. Let's go the chain a little bit further. So the knee move, just the foot looks almost imperceptible. The knee looks a little bit more obvious. Now let's look at the, yeah. So I want you to focus on what would essentially be her hip socket, which would be approximately right there. Give or take a little bit, uh, up toward the, you know, about in the middle, kind of
Try to draw, sorry, V1. Doesn't allow you to use very, uh,
Easily small lines here. So that's about, I want, that's the area I want you to focus on as you watch her swing back. So imagine we know there's a little bit of lateral shift, it's going from 12 o'clock. And just so I'm clear on the clock, I may not have explained that the imagine as you're standing at set up right, where that club is facing, facing straight out, away from you, straight in front of you is 12 o'clock. Then as you move to the right it's one, o'clock two o'clock, three o'clock hence the clockwise rotation. That's the orientation of the clock. So her right hip is first moving off 12 o'clock to one o'clock. And again, because we were not looking at this at 3d, there's also movement depth, right? She's moving back behind her. That hip is going deeper. Cause again, it's moving in an orbit.
So as we play that you can see now it's moving quite a bit deeper. It's about five o'clock. Now it's beginning to shift back the other direction, right? Six o'clock, seven o'clock, eight o'clock prepping for the release. And then it begins to shift to counterclockwise. Again, we'll play it again, rotation around clockwise rotation, clockwise rotation. It's now very easy to see that clockwise rotation of that right hip, the same movement that starts at the foot that you feel begins with the foot. Obviously your whole body's involved in that movement. But the initial movement is just focusing on something very simple, moving, shifting pressure on the outside of your foot. As you go up, this tiny little movement starts emanating to a big body movement, but it's truly happening from the ground up. That's like a vortex. It starts very small. And then this thing begins, continues to spiral. And as it moves further away from the source, it gets bigger and bigger. So that's why I kind of think of this as like a vortex generator. My movement at the foot is really small, very simple. It's the only thing I have to think about. The only thing I have to focus on, but as I do that movement and I loosen up my pelvis and my hips and let them
Begin to move freely and athletically and dynamically,
Then all of a sudden these movements start to happen fluidly and naturally, which is what a tour pro looks like. They don't look like they're working hard, right? It looks pretty darn simple and effortless and athletic. And most golfers have one. I lost that because they don't understand this move because nobody understands this move. Nobody's thought about it in this perspective. So that is how I want you to think about an exercise through your Axiom movement. As you're working your weight around, you can see how it builds and builds and builds to this bigger movement that moves the whole body. And when you combine that with the Axiom movement of the arms, we're off to the races. So now let's take a look at her from the back, from the down the line view. Now, one thing you're going to notice that she tends to take the club a little bit inside. I think most people would say, oh, that's a little bit of an inside take-away, it's fine. Of course you can recover from there,
But isn't necessarily the simplest, most efficient least amount of moving parts route for them to get there. No, not necessarily. It's adding a little bit of rotation, but it's fine. But my point is is that this also follows her hand path, which tends to go a little bit inside. And then as she starts down, most PR amateurs who swung their hands back in deep, like this would continue this trend. So that's pretty deep. And she continues to go back like this. And as she gets there, most amateurs would go straight like that. That'd be the path of their hands, right over the top, or even just steep. You know, the better players learned to shallow it out a little bit better, but the worst player is just going straight from the top hand, straight path to the ball kind of thing. And that's what most golfers really struggle with.
And guess what direction from your perspective, that would be moving your arms from your perspective, if you were to swing inside with your hands and then over the top with your hands, that's a counter-clockwise movement. So what she does so well and like every tour pro does her hands, what would from her perspective would feel like they're continuing in a clockwise fashion. Now you're saying, wait a second, our hands are actually tracing the same line or even steeper that they went back on. Right? Cause they were deeper here. And then from this one, you know, 2d perspective, it certainly looks like that, but you've got to understand that she's also rotating. So the movement of the hands is in relationship to the upper body, not what you see on camera from down the line. That's really a very distorted perspective of the actual dynamic movement of the arms. If she fired her hands back on what would truly be this path, a steeper path in relationship to her shoulders, she would swing very, very steep, but because she is letting her arm shallow out and continue in what is felt like a clockwise rotation, the club shallows out the elbow shells out. Remember the hand, the elbow, the shoulder, the club,
They're all rotating in this clockwise
Fashion. Like again, Matthew Wolf is the big exaggeration there. So as you start to do this and you add rotation, it's going to pull your hands forward, closer to the ball. So it will look like your hands are steeper than they really are. Again. That's why I'm saying people who
Have really been hung up on straightening, a swing plan and, and can do it like can manipulate it and create it to do it.
But it's fake. It's fabricated and you're
Moderate. Your body's not moving in the right way. So that's why you can make it look really great on the backswing. But because you don't have the clockwise dynamic motion in the downswing, that's when the truth teller is you can't fake that most guys, their hands guys and gals higher handicappers, their hands start going right back out to the ball right away. The tour pros hands all look like. If I clear out the lines a little easier to see from her purse, from our perspective, it looks like her hands just kind of go straight down. Of course, they're still going at an angle, but that's a common look for most tour pros. And in fact, some hands will actually go take a little bit more efficient path and they will truly see more of this type of motion, tigers, and example of that, who does that on a subtle basis.
But I wanted to use, uh, one of the courthouse here because we looked at her face on and you can kind of see the whole thing as a picture, but it also helps you understand a really simple point when you're looking at your swing just from down the line. And you're looking at your swing plan and not understanding why your hands are steep. It's again because of the motion. So as she comes down, everything's all systems go. Her hands are still hanging way back again. They're not firing steep. As it appears from this 2d perspective, they're staying back as she continues the clockwise rotation of the right arm. And then as we get into the delivery area, we shift from clockwise to counter-clockwise to release the club and that's where all the fun begins. So I hope that helps illustrate some points with a really wonderful golf swing who does so many things so well. And as a world-class player, you can start to see how all of these moves are the same and all the great ball strikers in all the tours.
Melanie
Chuck (Certified RST Instructor)