Rickie Fowler Swing Analysis
Learn the 3 Tour Pro Consistency Secrets You've NEVER Heard!
Watch part 2 now to see how you're moving your body in the opposite direction of the pros!
Published: April 19, 2017
This weeks tour analysis on the 2015 Deutsche Bank champion Ricky Fowler. So congratulations to Ricky, he came back on Sunday and took down Henrik Stetson in the final round.
This week we are gonna be focusing in on how to use your legs the golf swing to help you get a little bit more power and a little better consistency. I'm also gonna give you guys a really good check point with your trail leg in the golf swing , that's gonna help you overcome a lot of the common swing faults that you may be struggling with from day to day.
So let's go ahead and get started.
Okay everyone, so as I said in the opener we are gonna be focusing on the legs this week. And I'm gonna show you guys a couple of good check points that are gonna help you get into a better impact position and also help you self diagnosis some of the common swing faults that we see. So if you've been battling with either hip spinning or if you've been battling with getting too much secondary axis tilt or if you've been battling with losing your tush line. This video is going to be really critical for you and give you a good understanding of what you need to work on and what you need to focus on.
So, looking at the golf swing from a face on perspective. If we look at the golf swing backwards, okay, so we are gonna talk about impact first. If we look at impact ... So let's get Ricky right into an impact position here. What are we trying to achieve in order to hit the golf ball really solid and have control of the bottom of the swing arm? Well, simply put, we're just looking to try to have our lead side very stacked up here. SO you have the lead ankle, the lead knee, the lead hip socket and the lead shoulder all stacked right on top of each other. We're also looking to make sure that we have a flat lead wrist. And proper secondary access tilt. So you can see the spine is just outside the lead knee here.
Okay, now, he is hitting a fairway where here he had ball position back a little bit because he is in Scotland for this video so he's probably trying to flight the ball down a little bit. But, if you've noticed that you're having a very difficult time with getting your lead side stacked up. Where you feel like your spine is leaning further back, or if you see that your lead leg is out past neutral and you notice that you're either hitting some thin shots or some fat shots. Well I want you to pay close attention to what you're right knee or your trail knee in your golf swing is doing down in the hitting area. If it's jamming hard left, than that's you pushing your pelvis forward, or pushing your hips through the hitting area. That can cause your spine to lean away, which in turn can start to change the path of the golf club, it can change the angle of attack. It can cause a golf club to start making more of an ascending blow rather than a descending blow. And I know there's a lot of times that we talk about push versus pull in the golf swing. And with the lower half, because downswing sequence does happen so fast and I want you to think of this as kind of a gradual level thing, where we do want the right side to help push a little bit. But once we get the weight over there, we want control it from the lead side of the body. I'm gonna get further into that here in just a moment.
So, the idea is that from a dress position, you're gonna see Ricky sets up very wide with his knees apart, he's a little almost like a bow legged appearance. But we don't want to have the gap between our legs really get closed up because that can cause too much secondary tilt which in turn can make it very difficult to control the bottom of the swing arc. It can cause, if you see that your gap is closed up quite a bit down in the hitting area, it can cause your hips to come forward, which is early extension of the spine. So, that's a good way to kind of encompass what you're gonna be looking at from a self diagnosis stand point.
Now, from a down the line perspective, I want you guys to focus on ... This a line that you don't really typically see within golf instruction. This is a line I use quite a bit with a lot of my students, but it gives you a good idea how much the right side is gonna ... You know, what we want it to do down in the hitting area and what don't want it to do. So if you have a good down the line video of your golf swing load into the self analysis tool and use this line, put it down right in front of the knees. Now, I've gone above the knees this time because this camera angle over here on the left hand side, the video does move around a little, the camera guy is actually moving around. But I'm using this mark on the side of the green here, so this is over on the edge of the left hand side of the green. That obviously is not moving, so you'll get the point here in just a sec.
So I'm gonna go ahead and get Ricky loaded up to the top, good load into that side, pretty good position of the top. This is with his new golf swing here, a little bit more elevation up there. And then transition, which you are gonna see, is he gets his weight moving over to his lead side. So he is shifting his weight. I'll show you that from face on perspective. So he's loaded into the right, he's gonna make a good shift over into lead side. Okay so I'm gonna get him right in about the same frame here. So the lead arm is parallel to the ground here. Now, it looks like he is evenly balanced, but you can notice that the right foot's not really bracing a whole lot of weight. Now this is the mistake that a lot of armature golfers make and this is the cause of a lot of problems at home. Is that we still, because we have that little bit of weight over on that right side we want to use to push off of it. And that's what's going to bring the hips forward, that's what's gonna cause the hips to spin or the body to really kind of rotate open through the hitting area. What we wanna focus on, is we want to focus on driving this lead heal into the ground. We wanna feel like we're pushing it into the ground and we want to feel like we're using our left obliques to pull the left hip back away from the target. Like you're trying to rotate your hip away from the target. And if you can focus on the left side, than the right side of the body will react. Okay, we don't wanna use a lot of that coordinated side of our body to help push and cause those swing faults.
So lets look down here as Rickie gets down to the hitting area, and you can see that he's actually moved further away from this line. It's not a common kind of thing that we see with a lot of PGA Tour players, but what you'll notice is that if your right leg to your right knee jammed through this line, you're gonna notice that your hands are very close to your thighs and in turn that is actually shrinking your radius up and that's gonna hurt ya in the speed department. So, now from a face on perspective, you're gonna see, as he starts to pull that left hip away from the target and get into that really good sound impact position. If I were to move this line here, you can see that he's maintained a good bit of that width between his knees down to the hitting area. So, that's a great way to use the lower body, it's a great way to understand what may be causing a lot of your swing faults. Chances are it can be your trail leg trying to do too much, very late in the golf swing. And what I mean by late is just really at the release point.
All right, so if you've been struggling in this area, try it out. Load up some swings in the self analysis tool and start to better understand where you're at with your golf swing. And I can also recommend some videos that are gonna help you out with this. Again, this is over in the recommended video side of the player, so you've gotta click that tab. I want you guys check out "Sitting into the Left Side." I also want you guys to check out "The Straight Left Leg at Impact" video. Also "The Rotary Connect Hip Stability" video so those of you guys that have rotary connects at home you can go ahead and put the rotary connect between your knees and you can use it to help maintain the width while you're working on releasing the golf club, all that fun stuff. And also another video that talks a little bit more how to use your hips in the golf swing, is called exactly that. It's called "How to Use Your Hips in the Golf Swing," it's a great video that Chuck did. We're gonna show you that it's okay to have a little bit of trail side push there as long as we're not over cookin it to where we're causing a lot of these common swing faults you may be battling with at home.
Alright everyone, I appreciate you tuning in this week. Now lets get out there, use our legs properly and lets play some great golf. Make it a great day.
