This week's tour analysis features the 2015 Deutsche Bank champion Rickie Fowler. So congratulations to Rickie, he came back on Sunday and took down Henrik Stenson in the final round.
This week we are gonna be focusing in on how to use your legs in the golf swing to help you get a little bit more power and consistency. I'm also gonna give you guys a really good checkpoint 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 checkpoints that are gonna help you get into a better impact position and also help you self-diagnose 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. Want to see how your lower body mechanics compare to Rickie Fowler's? The AI swing analyzer can score your impact position and leg drive in seconds.
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 Rickie Fowler 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 arc? 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 axis tilt. So you can see the spine is just outside the lead knee here.
Okay, now, he is hitting a fairway wood 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 your trail knee in your golf swing is doing down in the hitting area. If it's jamming hard toward the target, 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 swing path, it can change the angle of attack. It can cause the 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. With the lower half, because the downswing sequence does happen so fast, I want you to think of this as kind of a gradual leveling thing — we do want the trail side to help push a little bit. But once we get the weight over there, we want to 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 setup position, you're gonna see Rickie Fowler sets up very wide with his knees apart, with almost 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 standpoint.
Now, from a down-the-line perspective, I want you guys to focus on ... this is 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 of how much the trail side is gonna ... you know, what we want it to do down in the hitting area and what we don't want it to do. So if you have a good down-the-line video of your golf swing, load it 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 camera is actually moving around a little. 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, which obviously is not moving, so you'll get the point here in just a sec.
So I'm gonna go ahead and get Rickie loaded up to the top, good load into that trail side, pretty good position at the top. This is with his updated 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 a face-on perspective. So he's loaded into the trail side, he's gonna make a good shift over into the 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 trail foot's not really bracing a whole lot of weight. Now this is the mistake that a lot of amateur golfers make and this is the cause of a lot of problems at home. Because we still have that little bit of weight over on that trail side and we want to use it 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 the lead heel into the ground. We wanna feel like we're pushing it into the ground and we want to feel like we're using our lead obliques to pull the lead hip back away from the target — like you're trying to rotate your hip away from the target. If you can focus on the lead side, then the trail side of the body will react. Okay, we don't wanna use a lot of that dominant side to help push and cause those common swing faults.
So let's look down here as Rickie Fowler 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 trail knee jams 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 you in the club head speed department. So, now from a face-on perspective, you're gonna see, as he starts to pull that lead 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 — meaning just really at the release point. The GOAT Drill system is specifically designed to build this exact lower-body sequencing pattern, training your lead side to control and contain the trail side through impact.
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 mechanics. 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 to check out "Sitting into the Lead Side." I also want you guys to check out "The Straight Lead Leg at Impact" video. Also "The Rotary Connect Hip Stability" video — so those of you who 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 width while you're working on releasing the golf club, all that fun stuff. And also another video that talks a little bit more about 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 overdoing 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 let's get out there, use our legs properly, and let's play some great golf. Make it a great day.
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