Bubba Watson vs. Paul Casey
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Congrats to Bubba Watson for battling off Paul Casey at this past weekends Travelers Championship in a pressure-packed playoff. We all know how fun it can be to bomb your driver on the golf course. However, isn't it more fun to hit the ball really far and really straight all at the same time. In this video, I'll show you how to get a proper blend of both speed and control in the swing, all while maintaining safety for your body. You don't have to give up speed to gain control in the swing.
- Find a balance of speed and control
- Use the lower body for power, stability and consistency
Hey, hey everyone.
This is RST instructor Chris Tyler and we are back again with this week's tour analysis.
We are going to be focusing in on Bubba Watson and Paul Casey, who ended up getting into a playoff this past weekend at the Travelers Championship, where Bubba ultimately prevailed.
We're going to be focusing in on some driver swings from both Paul and Bubba.
I'm going to show you guys the differences between some speed and control, and then also talk to you a little bit about why rotary swing.
We We want to stay down the middle with things so we can protect and preserve the body.
So you can play this game for a lot of years to come.
So let's go ahead and get started.
All right, guys.
So as I said in the opener, we are going to be focusing in on a couple of driver swings here from Paul Casey and Bubba Watson.
I'm going to talk to you a little bit about speed and control and how we can have a good balance of both.
And still be able to protect and preserve the body, which is really becoming a very big issue within modern day golf.
We see a lot of players sustaining golf related injuries.
And one of the things that we want to be able to do is we want to be able to identify the areas that can cause a lot of harm to the body.
And that's really kind of the MO.
With what we do at Rotary Swing is we want to have a good balance of everything.
We want to have a lot of speed.
We want to have a lot of control.
But at the same time, We want to be able to protect and preserve the body so we can play this game for lots of years to come.
So I'm going to show you guys a couple of the differences here.
We're going to talk to you about some of the related videos that are going to help you out, get you into a really good spot with your golf swing.
So ultimately you can play some great golf here.
All right, so both players here, I got them into a setup position.
Both players set up very well.
Okay, spine angle here.
Bubba's going to look a little bit more upright.
He's 6 '3", where Paul is actually only 5'10", but both players weigh 180 pounds.
Paul is actually hitting the golf ball 295 yards on average on the PGA Tour right now.
So he's actually got a golf swing that's a little bit more under control and a little less timing involved than Bubba's is, where Bubba's averaging 309.
So there's, you know, there's 14 to 15 yards of difference between two players here, but one's hitting more fairways, which is in turn, Paul is actually hitting more greens.
Paul's 6th on the PGA Tour in greens and regulation.
So you can just see that the effects of hitting more fairways, it makes it much easier to hit those greens and regulation.
So let's get Paul into a takeaway position here.
Okay, you're going to see Clubhead stays out in front of the hands here.
Very similar look with Bubba his club head stay out in front of his hands into a takeaway position.
Okay, see the club shaft parallel to the ground.
See both players trying to maintain spine angle here, staying very wide with both arms into their turn, really focusing on rotation first.
Now, here's the.
One of the common things that we see in their golf swing as well is not only are they maintaining spine angle, but they've also restricted the total amount of hip rotation, Which is, you're going to see a drastic change in this between both players as we start to work into the top part of the golf swing.
So you're going to notice here that Bubba's rotated his hips probably 15, maybe 20 degrees or so where Paul's, you know, maybe got 10 to 15 degrees of rotation from his hips.
So here's the big difference.
Now, I want you to watch very closely as Paul starts to work up into the top part of his golf swing here.
You're going to see as we get up to the top, he's maintained the knee flex here in the right side, and he's limited the total amount of rotation in the hips, Which, in turn, has gotten his golf swing a little bit shorter and tighter than what you would see Bubba Watson's.
Now if you watch here, this is where that big difference comes in.
All right, you're going to watch Bubba's hips rotate quite a bit right here.
So you see the hips continue to rotate.
Now he's got himself about 50 to 60 degrees of rotation from the hips.
And we can see this big window here between the knees.
That's, that's the big difference.
If you have that trail leg move to a straighter position in turn, that's going to allow your hips to rotate more, which in turn can allow your spine to rotate, which in turn can allow the hands and arms to get longer.
Now, is that a great thing for control?
No, it's makes it just, it makes it a little bit harder to, to keep things timed up.
If you go for a lot of width in your golf swing, think of it this way, like Davis Love and Bubba, they have a ton of width.
They're going to have to be more patient in the downward move for the hands and arms to get back down into position.
So that's why at rotary swing, we really kind of want to stay down the middle of things.
We understand that there's a great way to be efficient and we want to make sure that we get a lot of speed, but we also maintain a lot of control at the same time.
So what I'm talking about there is that we are looking for the right elbow to be really in line with the base of the chest, which Paul has done a great job with here as far as an elevation point, where you can see Bubba has gone to a much higher point here.
Not that that's a bad thing, but obviously that's one of those things that's going to help him increase his speed.
But as far as control is concerned, we're back to that area.
Okay.
Should we take a little bit out and offer a little bit more balance to the swing?
Now with this particular position that Paul's in, we can work our hands and arms.
We can have that balance of rotation on the way down.
We can still get a lot of leverage and we can still ultimately hit the golf ball quite a long ways, as Paul has been able to prove.
And in turn, you're going to watch these downward moves.
Go ahead and do Paul's first.
Very similar impact positions here.
Okay.
Here we are at impact.
We'll see both players with their trail foot up off the ground here, which allows their bodies to open up or the lower half to open up a little bit more.
You see that both of them have their chest fairly square to the golf ball here.
Bubba is just a fraction more open.
You can see that his hips are open just a fraction more as well.
But you're going to see a big difference here as far as the release is concerned.
You're going to see that Paul's hands work left really quickly because he's using the right side of the body to kind of push through the hitting area, where Bubba is actually going to keep a little bit more extension.
So you notice how the club stays out in front of him much longer.
You see how his hands are starting to extend out front of his body here, where Paul's are working around his body.
That's another good reason.
That's another good way to maybe slow the club head down a little bit.
That's actually shortening the radius, where Bubba's got a very long radius and has been able to put a ton of speed in it.
So the point of the review is that we want to take everything in strides.
We want to have a good balance of control, speed, and in turn, that's going to give you more chances to hit more greens and regulation, more fairways, and you're still hitting the golf ball plenty far enough.
So if you've been struggling with these areas and you want to get yourself into a good looking backswing position, or if you want to shorten your move up to take a lot of those timing low, the right glute, shorten swing, start transition.
These videos are going to be over here on the Recommended Videos tab to the right of the video player.
Just click that tab.
All these videos that I mentioned here will be over there.
So that's a good way to start to get your golf swing really kind of prioritized around load and rotation, really start to work in transition properly.
Five minutes to a perfect backswing is going to talk to you a little bit about that balance point where you get the right elbow up into a good position here at the top of the swing, pretty much keeping the right elbow in line with the body.
And that's another good way to start to ingrain a good backswing position that you can start to work in your downswing with.
Next one, next big one, we don't really mention a whole lot is load the right leg for stability in the golf swing.
That's another good one to help you stabilize things to not allow the spine to over rotate, which in turn is going to help you protect and preserve the body, help you use the body as a big powerful tool.
So you have a lot of speed and it'll also keep you under control.
Final one, if you're looking to get a little bit more extension in your golf swing, a good way to do that is just working on a nine to three drill.
Just work from a hip high to hip high region.
That's a great video to kind of show you the movements.
It'll help you incorporate, Get a good, proper release through the hitting area and more extension to help you increase the radius.
You'll hit it much further and you'll still be well under control.
All right guys, so that's the review today.
Congratulations again to Bubba.
Great playing from Paul.
Good to see him back in action out there and I wish you guys a great day and much success.
Christian
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)