Jordan Spieth vs. Rory Mcilroy
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Jordan Spieth and Rory Mcilroy show you how to get more consistent and also a great way to control the bottom of the swing arc.
- Focus on load and rotation for a good backswing.
- Keep your hips back.
- Stack up your lead side for control of the bottom of the swing arc.
We're going to be doing something a little fun this week. We are going to be squaring off the FedEx champion, Jordan Spieth, versus the Race to Dubai champion, Rory McIlroy. We're going to be showing you a couple of consistent moves in their golf swing that allow them to be really good ball strikers. I know that if we can find some really good putting videos of both these players, even though Roy's had a little bit of putting low as of late, we would be just showing their putting because their putting is what separates them from the rest of the field, no joke.
All right, we're going to be focusing on the golf swing this week. I'm going to show you guys a couple of moves you can use in your own golf swing that are going to help you become a better ball striker and also help you get a little bit more speed as well.
Okay guys, as I said in the opener, we are gonna be focusing in on Rory versus Jordan this week. We're going to be talking a little bit about the consistent moves that they make in their golf swing and how you can use this in your own swing and in turn, become a more consistent player week after week when you're out there on the golf course. This is a good time for those of you that are stuck indoors in this winter months, to start working on a couple of really critical areas of the golf swing that will, in turn, help you next season play some of your best golf.
I will start off by saying if we had videos of both of the players putting, both face on and down the line that were clear enough for us to do an analysis on, we would certainly be focusing on their putting strokes because when Rory is putting well, which he does most of the time, except for he's been in a little bit of a low point with his putting these for the last few weeks was able to get it back this past weekend. But if you watch Jordan put as well, they both absolutely roll the rock beautifully. Jordan makes a ton of puts and gains, was gaining nearly a shot on the field nearly every time he was teeing up just based on his putting. So if he has a good ball striking round, he's almost unbeatable.
That's why I wanted to focus in on their golf swings this week because we don't have any good putting videos. I'm going to show you guys how to get control of the bottom of the arch and a couple of good ways to keep your golf swing consistent.
So the first thing we're going to focus on here is spine angle. There's a lot of times that we sound like a broken record when we do these videos but I just want to press home some of the important parts of the golf swing here so you know when turns going to help you get better and better every time you tee it up. So let's go ahead and mark the position of the spine here on both players. Let's go ahead and mark the line down off the back of the tush. So you're going to see this line is going to drop straight down. This is a good way to do some self analysis at home as well so if you notice your hips are starting to come forward or you notice your rear end doesn't stay against this line then we need to figure out what the reason is why that's happening. We can help you out with that for sure.
So, taking a look here through the takeaway positions. I'm going to get Rory here in a takeaway. See that the hips shift a little bit, there's a tiny bit of rotation to the hips. Jordan tends to rotate his hips just a little bit more, where Rory keeps his hips just a little more wide. He's just really shifting his weight into his right side here.
Jordan's hands tend to get just a little tiny bit away from his body. Club face gets a little bit shut but you can see they're still continuing to rotate around their axis. Their hips are back. You're going to see two different kinds of golf swings, especially when we get over to a face on view. More importantly, we're going to be focusing on the areas that's going to allow them to be consistent. I know that's a big word that I'm going to use a lot in this review. A lot of us want to be consistent.
So up to the top of this swing here, you're going to see Jordan goes to a pretty high elevation point. His hands actually go out of the screen in this particular video that we have. You can see Rory goes to the top of his swing, he's doesn't have as much elevation here as Jordan does. You can see Jordan's hands are well above his right shoulder, where Rory's are in a little bit more of a balanced position. We like to use the right elbow at the base of the chest here. In turn, it's not a bad position from Jordan. Elevation is just a variable in the golf swing. Again, the most important part is this line right here. You can see both of the players are maintained that and that's the reason why we use this tush line because that's a good checkpoint for you.
So, the reason why we put that line there is that what causes us to have a spining in the first place? So if we were standing in a vertical position, what causes us to have this angle to our spine down here at the bottom? Well, we push our hips back, our spine is going to act as a counter balance so the spine is going to start to lean over. The one most detrimental part of the golf swing that we see so many armature golfers really struggle with is the hips coming forward either at the take away, the back swing or the down swing. Then turn is changing the angle of your spine that you started with so it's going to make it very difficult for you to get back down to the hitting area with any sort of consistency. So it's like your spine is acting like a merry-go-round.
Let's go ahead and work from the top of the swing down. I just want to show you how both players keep the hips back. Get Rory in his golf swing transition you're going to see him squat through the line there. Gets over on his lead side then posts up and starts to release his golf club. You can see he keeps his hips back, also look at how he's maintained his spine angle for a very long period of time here. Right heel down on the ground, very good position of the golf swing here. All right, so Jordan's going to work his way down as well. His classic, kind of sink down into his knees move. Gets up onto his right toe just a little bit. Gets pushed out just past neutral on the left side but you can see his hips have stayed mostly back here. Does get a little bit more hip drive that Rory does. But you can see he is maintaining his spine angle into that same position. So you see the angle of the spine, here? Hips have come forward a little bit more than Rory's but you can see that the main cause of that is the right foot really driving up off the ground.
There are certain things that Jordan does differently in his golf swing at the bottom of the swing arch, especially where there is a release that would cause him to have to do something of this nature. So let's go ahead and take a look at it from a face on perspective. I'm going to show you how to get the left side stacked up properly so that now you have good control of the bottom of the swing arch, not just good control of a consistent environment around your spine.
Okay, so now let's take a look at it from a face on perspective real quick and give you guys a couple of good ideas that are going to help you control the bottom of the swing arch which is extremely important for you to have good compression on the golf ball shot after shot. What you're looking to do, you're looking to have your lead side, your left side really stacked up as far as your left shoulder, your left hip, your left knee, your left ankle, really all on top of each other. In turn, it's going to allow you to control the bottom of your swing arch. We've got other videos on the website that talk about why the bottom of the swing arch is where it is. We'll get into that a little bit here towards the end. But I do want to focus on how we're going to get you into this position.
So, rule #1, as we've talked about this first part about in the first part of this video is making sure that you maintain the angle of your spine and you can do that by working on trying to keep your hips back. So work on shifting, loading up your trail side, and turning your body. Then what we want to do in the downward half is we want to use the lower half as a big driving force of your golf swing. So we want to use our hips to really start motoring things here. You're going to see Rory sit into his lead side. He does that very, very well. He gets his lead side into a neutral position here so you can start to see that his lead knee and his lead ankle are all starting to be right on top of each other. You can actually see the belt loop right here as well, which we use as a reference point for the hips socket. You can see that starting to stack right up over the top of the ankle here which is a great, great move into the lead side.
Then, you're going to see Jordan make a very similar style move. You can see Jordan getting into his lead side here. See how the lead arm is virtually parallel to the ground, belt loop, knee and ankle. He's actually just a fraction out past neutral at this point. You can see how his lead knee just a little bit. That's because Jordan uses a little more of a right side drive in his golf swing which is not a bad thing by any means. Think of that more of a graduate level program for you. Again, the most important part is that you don't want to allow the right side to push you so far forward that your hips come forward and then you have to create some sort of crazy curvature to your back or shoulders to be able to get the bat of the ball and you certainly don't want it to cause you to have hip spinning problems. Those two areas can really affect your golf swing and affect your consistency.
Also, can potentially cause you a little bit of pain in your lead side. Whether it be the hip of the knee. That's a lot of drive and you can start to put a lot of pressure on the outside part of your hip girdle and in turn, that can start to put a lot of stress on your labrum which is not a surgery that any of us want to go through. Or not a tear that any of us want to go through, that's for sure.
Jordan does a good job about getting everything balanced off of the bottom. We'll get to that in just a second. So you can see he does use a lot of right side drive here. Does get a little rolled out in the outside part of his ankle here but he does get on a the brakes with his lower half and is in turn, in a very good impact position as far as having his lead shoulder directly on top of his lead ankle. So you can see lead shoulder right on top of the ankle even though his left knee is a little bowed out past neutral joint alignment.
So now you're going to see over here with Rory, he's going to start to drive up off that left side. Driving that heel into the ground and here we are into the hitting area. You've got that left ankle, left knee, left hip socket and left shoulder all right on top of each other with a very flat lead side foot here. So you see that as well. So I showed you from a down the line perspective the glaring difference there was just how Rory keep the right heel down on the ground, in turn, is going to allow him to protect his lead side a little bit more. He also uses that as a break for his body in the golf swing so he can release the club.
Those are the differences between both player's swings. Again, we're not bashing what Jordan does in the bottom half. He has a good amount of control of the golf club. The most important part is what this guy right here is doing. You can see that right there. Both of them have their lead wrists in a perfect position as far as being able to compress the golf ball and being able to control that club face. That's where golf is really at. Also, they have good control of the swing arch. Bottom of the swing arch is in the same spot by having that lead shoulder stacked over the lead ankle. Good game plan for you guys this winter is to make sure that you've got good load and good rotation. Making sure that you're working on trying to maintain your spine and go through your take away and back swing. I know a lot of us want to focus on where the club goes. It's way more important to make sure that you have good load, good rotation, and good separation between the shoulder line and hip line long before it is you start to work on a hand and arm movement in your golf swing. So stay focused on that.
In your downswing move, work on driving your lower half and getting your lead shoulder stacked up over that lead ankle and you'll have great control over the bottom of your swing arch. A couple videos that you guys can focus on this week and we actually have another video that's coming out, a premium video, later in this week. We're going to talk a little bit about how to master your rotation. You can check out "5 Minutes to Master Rotation." You can also check out "Load the Right Glute video." So all of these videos are going to be to right hand side of the video player in the recommended videos tab. We're gonna talk a little bit about the tush line again and we're gonna talk about the roll of the right foot. Those are common videos that we use in these analysis because those are good videos that can help you overcome a lot of your faults in your golf swing.
So take a look at the recommended videos tab. Let's put that stuff to use and let's get out there and play some great golf. Make it a great day!
claudio
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
william
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
William
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)