Sergio Garcia Master's Win Webinar 2017

Does Sergio Garcia's swing follow the RotarySwing prinicples? The answer may surprise you! Learn what you can apply from Sergio's swing into your own and how you can increase your clubhead speed.

Hey guys, how is everyone? This is a pretty cool Sergio's first ever major win.

This is huge news for him.

In 73 attempts, I believe it was he finally pulled it off.

And so I'm pretty excited to be able to go through a swing and talk to you guys about one of the things I get asked all the time, and that is, who do people? What pros on tour most resemble the rotary swing tour move? And my answer is always the same they all do, to some degree or another, they have to use the RST fundamentals.

Where people tend to kind of get hung up on details is what the swing looks like in terms of the backswing and even in the downswing.

A little bit.

But from that, stuff's happening so quick that to the naked eye, unless you're studying it with slow motion video, you can't really tell.

But the backswing is happening slow enough.

And people kind of take a look at the backswing and say, Oh, well, that's a rotary swing, or that isn't, and really, it's not really the most important part of the swing.

And I'm going to talk about what that means and what it is that you need to look at in Tour Pro? Swings that you can take out of.

That are following RST fundamentals, because the simple reality is the RST fundamentals are based on science, right? They're based on your anatomy, they're based on biomechanics, they're based on the physics of the swing.

And so my answer is all tour pros use the RST fundamentals, or they wouldn't be tour pros.

That's what the difference is.

The fundamentals apply to everyone because, by definition, they are fundamentals.

We don't deal into the gray area and little goofy tricks here and there to try and fix ball flight issues.

We talk about what the real fundamentals are, and with Sergio, believe it or not, he is still following the RST fundamentals.

Now there's a lot of a lot of things that he's making more difficult for himself.

That are difficult moves that can lead to all kinds of issues.

Which I'm going to talk about first here, and the first one I'm going to talk about is his axis tilt at setup.

Now you hear me harp about axis tilt all the time.

And even though Sergio roughly has some here, it's not the amount that we would typically advocate, as you can see here, even with an iron, I have more axis tilt.

Typically with the driver, you tend to see a little bit more axis tilt at address.

You know, he's got a little bit of forward shaft lean with the driver here, and so he looks kind of like.

He's kind of loaded up a little bit more to the left, whereas I look a little bit more loaded up to the right.

These are small amounts of difference, but they start to add up really big in the back.

So this would be something where I would say this isn't necessarily ideal.

And it's going to lead to several other things that I'm going to talk about in just a minute.

But let's get moving here.

First, one one big thing I want to talk about.

Draw a line on the side of both of our heads here.

And let's take a look at what happens as we go back during the backswing.

So one thing you'll notice is that Sergio kind of tilts his head.

But even though he's kind of started to reverse pivot here a little bit, his head's still moving away from the target now.

Most amateurs.

At this point, is it? The huge problem that we see all the time is the reverse pivot.

Where their head is actually moving in front of the line, where it started, and just gets worse and worse as they start down.

Sergio's head, even though it started a little bit forward, almost right on the edge of the back of the ball, which is a bit forward for a driver.

To create a positive or shallow angle of attack, which he does not have, which we'll talk about again in a second.

Sergio's head actually moves away from the ball a little bit, so he's starting to recover and get into a little bit of a better position, but he's not quite there yet.

And then I'm going to draw you another line here, which represents grab the line here.

He's almost starting to kind of lean toward the target and looks like it's more so than it is.

Because he's made a huge shoulder turn so you see a lot of shoulder behind his head, which makes him look like he's leaning really hard toward the target, which again is a really big problem in amateur golf, where we get this reverse pivot versus.

If we take my swing to the top, you'll notice my head has also moves slightly off the ball.

Not quite as much because I already started up in a better position.

But at the top of my swing, it looks like I'm more decidedly leaned away from the target.

Versus Sergio.

You'll notice his right knee starting to kind of bow out, he's pushing into the outside of his right foot, starting to roll over.

Here.

He's got a little bit of a minor, minor hip slide that's caused his upper body to look like it's leaning toward the target.

And this is definitely not a rotary swing fundamental.

Why is this so important? Well, because your spine angle is going to dictate swing plane.

But now we both know that Sergio doesn't swing over the top, coming down like so many amateurs do, and would from this position.

So how on earth does he keep from swinging over the top? With this really steep swing? Spine angle, lean toward the target versus having a little bit more shallower spine, where the spine is leaned away from the target, makes it much, much easier for me to come down from the inside.

And this is how we want to look at the top of the rotary swing, because it just makes things so much simpler to shallow out the swing plane.

I'm going to move certain, I'm going to draw one more line here.

We'll put a line here at the side of Sergio's head, at the top, and this is where things are going to separate the pros from everybody else.

And that is notice how his head actually starts to move back away from the line where he was at the top.

So he's nowhere near where he started at the top of his, or, excuse me, at setup, and now he's even moving further away as he starts down.

Now, most amateurs do the exact opposite.

And that is, they push from the right side of their body, their right arm, their right shoulder, and they start moving further in front of the ball, in front of the line, where they started at address.

All Tour pros will have to get back behind the ball at impact, or they won't have any power.

Because when you go to release the club, that's where your release comes from.

if you release and your body is out in front of it, the release happens.

What we call late.

And so you lose a ton of club head speed, so your head has got to be behind that ball at impact.

And Sergio just happens to do it at a really different time.

This is a really tricky move that you're not going to try and teach a bunch of amateur golfers.

And there's no need to, because it's much more efficient to do it.

The way that I'm showing you here, which is to start with, some axis tilt at address, move back behind a little bit.

Most tour pros will do this.

Where their head starts to move just a hair in front of it at impact as they start down.

But then as you get back an impact, it's right back where it started.

So, rather than having my head move six inches all over the place back and forth, which is pretty tricky to try and teach somebody how to do that and to time all of that and is unnecessary wasted movement.

I simply kind of start in a better position, move back a little bit, move forward a little bit, and then everything's much, much simpler, and that's really.

The goal of Rotary Swing is to make the movements as simple and minimal as humanly possible, and that's exactly what we're doing here now.

Sergio makes a great recovery from basically a reverse pivoted position, it's not a severe reverse pivot like we see all the time in amateur golfers.

But effectively, his spine is leaning roughly a little bit toward the target and definitely too much for a driver.

And so what this tends to lead to is a really steep angle of attack.

And that is Sergio's kind of misery that he has to deal with here.

Even though he's a great ball striker and a great driver of the ball, he's also one of the most inefficient drivers of the ball on the PGA Tour.

And how do we know this? Well? We can look at the stats if you look at his track man stats, he was ranked 180th out of 185 last year in launch angle, off the tee and launch angle.

Especially for amateur golfers who don't have 120 plus mile an hour, club head speed, like Sergio does, is critical for optimizing distance because most every single amateur on the planet needs more distance off the tee.

And you can't get it with a driver hitting down on it sharply with the driver.

Because the ball simply doesn't have enough time in the air to carry very far.

So Sergio can afford to average, I think he averaged the Degree launch angle last year in 2016, now this year.

For 2017, he's moved up the rankings from 180th to 138th and is launching an average of degrees so even he has changed his launch angle three degrees this year which is a huge huge change which gives him a much higher ball flight which is critical and could even be possibly I'm not saying this for sure but part of the reason he was able to win the Masters this year is because at Augusta the landing areas are so small for shots into the greens that you need to hit the ball very high so that it can stop very quickly especially with the longer clubs when you're launching it at seven and a half seven and three quarters degrees with the driver you know it's going to roll a little bit Augusta is not that difficult off the tee but when you're hitting a three iron into a green and you're hitting down on it that sharply the ball is simply going to have a really hard time holding because it's just flying too low so this part of the swing is absolutely critical and again it comes back to axis tilt ideally for an amateur we want to have that axis tilt at setup where you are leaned away from the target slightly and then as you get into impact you're leaned further away you notice now I have more axis tilt than I had at address the first yellow line here is where I was at address now this is where I am at impact because my hips have moved further forward at impact which causes my spine to lean back further and allows me to create a shallow angle of attack which is critical for distance off the tee so Sergio starts with his head way far forward moves back a little bit and by the time he gets back to impact he's way back behind the ball now you can imagine that as you're trying to learn the golf swing and try to become a better ball striker that your head moving in these three different stages is probably not going to be the easiest thing in the world for you to learn and again completely unnecessary to change all these angles notice now where his spine angle is completely different positions these are very dynamic things that he's achieving in his swing that are completely extra movements that you don't need to bother with so axis tilt at setup huge now one thing that Sergio does extremely well is that right he has a ton of lag in his downswing for those who don't understand this lag is a confusing term for a lot of people and it's a bit misleading in some ways but basically if you look at the angle between the form and the shaft how far the club head is lagging behind the hands is a simple way to define it and understand it but the reason that this is important is because about two-thirds of your club head speed comes from the release of this wrist angle so without this wrist angle which most amateurs don't look anything like this they look more like this at this stage that clubs way out over here and they start throwing lag away because this is about two-thirds of your club head speed just from the release of this wrist angle i always tell people in the clinics that your job your thesis statement your job description for your golf swing if you've never thought about it this way is three things you have three primary tasks you have to create maintain and release lag now most people try to create lag just by setting their wrist really early in the backswing Sergio is a great example of an exaggerated move with rst where we talk about we don't want to set our wrist very aggressively during the backswing because it really activates the forearm muscles extensor muscles in the forearm which makes them want to release too early in the downswing so a rotary swing fundamental in the backswing is to set your wrist very late and really set them mostly during the downswing Sergio personifies that to the nth degree and then exaggerates it quite a bit he really doesn't have much wrist set at all here but now as he starts down and starts to pull down with that left arm and his right wrist is relaxed that allows this wrist angle to be created that is now doing the second part of his job description allowing him to maintain lag late into the downswing and that is the key it doesn't do you any good to have a lot of lag at the top of your backswing unless you can maintain it late in the downswing and so if we continue to move forward notice right before impact Sergio still got almost a 90 degree angle between his right forearm and the club shaft and the club head now at this point needs to be releasing because that lag doesn't do us any good unless we get rid of it and so Sergio is creating lag he's maintaining it by setting his wrist during the downswing by having soft wrists and using the pulling motion of the left arm rather than the pushing from the right wrist which causes you to do the exact opposite that causes you to release lag which is the opposite of your job description your job is to create maintain and release lag not to create lag really early and then throw it away right from the top of the swing so we want to create maintain late in the downswing and now we need to get rid of it that doesn't do us any good to hold on to it any longer so Sergio does a great job like every other tour pro following the RST fundamentals of letting those wrists turn over how do we know that well into the release point notice how I can see the knuckles on his hand here the right hand's completely crossed over the left his head has stayed way back behind the ball in fact it's moved back even further we put yet another line on here than it was at impact so his head has moved back almost a foot from where it was and this allows him to stay behind the ball to release the club head fully most amateurs do the exact opposite of almost all of this they set their wrist very early in the backswing they throw it from the top they reverse pivot and then they push from the right side of their body and that causes them to throw the club because you're creating too much force too early in the backs in the downswing you can't maintain that lag so you're losing the purpose of your job which is again to create maintain a release lag now all of this movement is pretty tricky to try and master again we can make it much much simpler if we just focus on doing the rst fundamentals which are covered in the website right so my swing doesn't have all these extra movements in it and I don't have a ton of crazy lag because you don't need that much lag because typically the byproduct of having that much lag in the swing is that it's difficult to get rid of in time and so if my head wasn't way back here I'd have a really hard time getting rid of all of that lag because I don't want my head trying to move all over the place in the backswing and the downswing I don't try and maintain that much lag I can have a moderate amount of lag and still have the same effect the same amount of power but without having to try and have my head move all over the place so Sergio's swing he has a ton of great rst fundamentals in it he releases the club you'll notice go back a couple frames here too many frames that my forearms are fully crossed over here because again my job state my job description states that I need to release that lag which means my form must cross over a little blurry there but you can see the same thing see the knuckles on my hands here on my golf club that my hands are released my head has stayed back my chest has stayed back and again most amateurs do the opposite so now I'm going to walk you through this stuff a little bit more in detail showing you exactly what Sergio is doing and what typical amateurs do and how to fix it hope you guys learned a little bit there I'm going to take a few questions at the end I can see them on my iPad here but I will not be able to look at them for a few minutes but I want to explain in depth a couple more things that happen to almost every single golfer so there's a pretty good chance that they apply to you and it absolutely destroys every part of a good golf swing it doesn't make even matter if you make a great setup a great takeaway great back swing the way you move and where you move from in the downswing will determine what kind of golfer you're going to be it's that simple and even when you look at somebody like Sergio or you take Davis Love the third or even Jim Fury when you start looking at the swing the way that they come down and the way that they allow their body to work to get the club to work correctly is what separates them from everybody else you can have the third but it's the way that you sequence things and more importantly the exact places of your body that you move from that separates the amateurs from the hurdles in most cases in terms of ball striking because almost every single amateur on the planet makes the exact same fall and that's what I want to talk about and that's why I really harped on drawing these lines and positions of Sergio's head because first of all you would never try and duplicate that movement it's obviously a lot more efficient just set up a little bit more behind the ball and have your head move a little bit which is what everybody's head needs to do but you can see an exaggerated motion where he sets up really on top of the ball a pretty upright spine angle and then as he goes back he why is it still moves into the right side a little bit but then as it keeps coming down he keeps moving further and further back there's a couple videos on the site one in particular that explains why this head needs to be back in this position apart from obviously affecting swinging playing in the path because you can see just as I drop my head back how it drops the club down and playing most every amateur on the planet looks like this right so this movement of getting your head to come back which is not something you try and do it's happening by shifting your weight and moving from the correct muscle which I'll talk about in a second is what allows that club to drop down and allows you to swing from the inside instead of coming over the top like so many golfers do so how do we do that and what's really the big key to it well the first thing I'd understand is because most amateurs all swing over the top to some degree or another what causes that how would you swing over the top well it should be pretty simple to understand by now if you've watched the video on the site that as soon as you push from the trailing side of your body your right shoulder right leg right arm etc it's going to cause you to tend to move off the ball just like you're in a takeaway video how you push from your left side tends to move your head off the ball that's why we talk about pulling that right shoulder back you can see as soon as I think about this my head stays in place now in the downswing exact same thing is true that as I start pulling down with my left arm watch what happens to my head I'm not trying to drop my head but as I shift my pelvis to the left and pull down with my left arm notice what happens to my head and spiny well just to go back to the video I was about to mention which I forgot which is throwing the club head at the ball there's a video on that's on rotary swing that talks about how you're creating power and a good way to visualize how you're really trying to swing the golf club because most people think they should swing the golf club with their right arm and right side and try and push through and hit as hard as they can because it feels really powerful it feels really good moving from this side it feels like you're doing a lot of work because you are but this golf club is a little twig and you just need to get this club head to move fast and you don't need to be pushing very hard and put a lot of muscular effort into doing it you need to visualize that you're trying to stay behind the ball and throw the club head at the ball and that's why you see every school pro even somebody like Sergio who sets up effectively on top of the ball that has a really steep angle of attack he still knows that at some point he's got to figure out dynamically how to move back so that he can throw the club and get full extension and release to create the widest radius of the arc and get the club to fully release if you're like this you can see if I'm again like many amateurs moving in front of the ball trying to hit down on it this pseudo way of trying to create staff lane all I'm going to do is delay the release of the club it hasn't fully released until it gets out here once all these angles release then I've reached maximum club head speed so in order to do that you've got to stop pushing from the right side because again as soon as I take this side and I do this my head's going to move in front of the ball I'm not going to be able to fully release the golf club it's going to cost me a ton of speed and accuracy because I'm either going to come across it and pull it dead left or worse yet leave the club face open because again I haven't been able to fully release the club and then the ball gets the nice big banana ball if you want to stop slicing and stop coming over the top take your right hand and tape it to your belt behind your back so you can't use it and start working on shifting your weight and just using your left arm notice how the club instantly drops down and now from here it's pretty easy from the down the line view notice how the club I'm not trying to drop the club I'm playing you don't do that you don't try and manipulate the club into the slot it's the worst thing you could do I'm just shifting keeping my head back and visualize throwing the club head at the ball that is the key to power and that's what you can see in somebody's like Sergio Swing or any other tour pro you're going to see the same thing every image you're going to tend to look like this coming back into impact and every pro is going to look like this staying back and releasing the club so the video is on the website there's tons of videos obviously to deal with the left arm stuff how to pull how to shift if you look at the RSC five-step stuff really look at adding the lead arm it's the third step in the videos once you learn how to add that lead arm to your core body movement and weight shift the rest of the stuff becomes super easy it's really really easy to swing correctly it's a lot harder to swing the way you're probably swimming right now just take a little bit of time to train this left hand because you're not used to using it so that's the big thing you can take away from Sergio Swing and any other tour pro swing if you watch them on TV watch how their head has to stay back and they get full maximum release in the follow-through while their head and shoulders look like they stayed back instead of smothering through the ball and that is how you'll get great club head speed so open up to a few questions now obviously I'm not going to take several hundred people's worth of questions here but I will do my best to answer a few before we cut out of here if you want to post them up in the Q&A section lay it on me okay truly pulling his arms vertically down to the top how does this resolve move to downswing to get to the right and back he is feeling that not necessarily doing it he does do it to a degree because he gets his arms up and then he works to really get them exactly aggressively down you do pull there's a video on the website talking about how to pull with the left arm so they're about their swing mechanics otherwise I wouldn't be playing on tour for much longer a lot of times they do something different than what they think or they feel something and it's a feeling more than what's actually happening but yes you still are going to use your left arm it's not like you yank your left arm down to the top and feel vertically like they drop vertically down but they need to and they will fall down vertically if you look back at my video when I was just shifting my weight my hands watch my left hand it looks like it's moving in a straight line vertically down I'm not moving my hand at all I'm moving my hip as I shift my weight to the left my spine falls back which gets me in a position to stay back to release the club from maximum power which creates the effect of my hands looking like they're moving vertically straight down but I'm not trying to manipulate my hand to do that so hopefully that answers that question I see one over here well just moving the left knee over the left ankle in the downswing move all the way over to the left absolutely not you got to move your head you can't just move your knee you've got to use your left leg which I talk about in the weight shift videos to pull your hips over to the left all right a couple more here uh it sounds like keeping the head back creates the big c in your back swing my head thrashes not sure what you mean by that but no uh the way that you create a big swing or excuse me a big c the reverse c the old school stuff is pushing off your right leg moving your hips outside and neutral and then your head's way too far back if you stay back post up and release the club then pull you up out of all out of that reverse c position that you're thinking of reverse these craters and push them off that right leg should you bump your hip or rotate here you gotta do both you have to shift laterally and turn this is all covered in detail on the weight shift videos and all the videos on the website is down cock really necessary in the downswing there's lag it doesn't have to be dramatic but your wrists need to be supple enough soft enough at the top that you can create some lag coming down you can remember your thesis your job description for your golf swing to create maintain and release lag you create it and maintain it as late as relatively humanly possible there's a point of too much lag too late in the swim you can't get rid of it but most golfers create lag and try to create this angle very early and then they just start throwing it away if you have a little bit of a down cock during the start of the downswing again not severe you don't have to do it like Sergio does his is extremely severe probably the most extreme on the tour if you do that and there's a bunch of other stuff that's going on but if you create a little bit of a down cock it's showing that your wrists are nice and soft and supple which is going to give you some more speed at the bottom to release but also allow you to maintain lag later in the downswing where it actually matters the most uh Sergio appears to squat significantly as the first move down your squat move is again the same stuff the same stuff that Sergio is doing is the same stuff that we're advocating the squat move is a move that allows you to stabilize your pelvis to keep you from just spinning your hips open but also create leverage from the ground so we are doing one and the same there again some things may look a little bit different because Sergio again is setting up with a pretty upright spine and then moving his spine way back and so on so it may look a little different as he's doing it but he's accomplishing the same effect keeps his Sergio keeps his knees bent and self -impact when she's left leg becomes straight ideally as you're striking the ball just before you're striking the ball because that's going to allow you to create the most amount of leverage from the ground and get enough time for that energy to be transferred to the release of the club so yeah i don't like that his knees really bent like that he's losing some efficiency there obviously he makes up for it in other places if you look at the video on the site the three sources of club head speed talk about leverage talk about rotation and talk about width you can put those together in any combination you choose right so as far as rotary swing is concerned we talk about fundamentals and we talk about variables those things are variables so in Sergio's swing he has a tremendous amount of leverage right that angle he creates is a level now he has a ton of levers he's getting from his wrist angle but he's not applying that leverage from his legs he could use more leverage and create more leverage by pushing against the ground straight in that leg but he's got so much leverage over here he doesn't do it could he do it to get more speed absolutely does he need to no but it's up to him it's how you put those things together rotary swing is all about trying to do things the most kind of like down the middle right the least amount of moving parts humanly possible so and i do where we are you'll notice if you look at that video my legs really straight at impact i don't have a ton of leverage in my wrist i don't want to try and get rid of all of that lag so those are variables in rst if you look at the video on how to create the resource of club head speed and the swing it covers that can you discuss the stalling the upper body covering the ball with your chest as a feeling i don't really like to talk about feelings because those are very subjective let's talk about fundamentals but uh my favorite way to describe this would be going back to the video i mentioned earlier about throwing the club head at the ball if you look for that video on the site just search for a throw and it'll come up throwing the club at the ball if you think about that what is that really doing if you're going to throw something like let's just say for instance i was going to take this club and i hit that shot and i'm going to huck it into the lake right if i'm going to throw it what does my upper body do as i release the club do i keep turning my body and then try and release it well it'll be pretty hard for me to time the release of that club out of my hands and also would slow it down right if i just keep spinning around i don't get this nice effect where everything stops and allows energy to transfer out to my arms that's the best way to think about the stalling as you described of your upper body your upper body shouldn't really be moving that aggressively in the downswing to begin with you should be focusing on creating maintaining and releasing lack if you're thinking about turning your upper body to come down it's never going to make any sense you're trying to create maintain and release or throw the club at the ball which means my chest wouldn't really be moving much at all in the first place so hopefully that kind of answers that let's see trying to answer a couple more here i'm having issues feeling if i'm that uh covered in depth in those videos on the uh five step stuff but the left heel once you push that down as you're pushing your hip into the ground or excuse me pushing your foot into the ground you're pushing your hip open and up that's what helps you release the club so once you shift your weight over to the left you're then working on posting up on that left leg you notice as i do this this posting up motion is moving my hip back and up that's the next feeling you should work on let's see i'll grab one from the chat thing here question is how long do you keep the club square to the target line in the backswing does it roll open at the top the club is always rotating from that first second it moves away from the ball it must be rotating open all the way to the top it must be rotating all the way to the close you don't try and keep the club that square to the target going back it's not designed to work that way it's being swollen an incline plane that's a huge huge misnomer that causes tons of golfers to really struggle to learn how to properly release the club it wants to rotate open and it wants to rotate closed that's why we put the hosel in the heel of the club and not the center of the club face all right we'll do one more here let's see do you first start back from the top of the back swing from your core yeah that's covered in the um finish the start the down swing before you finish your back swing video your core movement and that weight shift is what initiates all of that sequencing and transitioning from the back swing to the down swing it's super super important that you work on getting that move to shift to the left and moving from here the big key for that really is again going back to your thesis statement thesis statement create maintain and release lag that's where the vast majority of club head speed is coming from so you need to do something in your swing that's going to prevent you from throwing the club from the top if you don't move from here your core your hips your trunk the club's not going to go to the top and you're not just going to stop and hang out there your brain is like hey i got a fire i want to come down so you're going to do something to move that golf club which if you don't move from here you don't you're running out of options so you're almost always going to just use your hands and alarm to be your right arm because that's your dominant arm and throw the club from the top and then by the time you come down you've got nothing left to hit with so that kind of breaks your job description right you're you're violating your contract here because you're no longer maintaining live you're throwing it away right at the top so yes you've got to move from somewhere else and that's always going to be your core your core your trunk your hips so so hopefully that uh answers a few of those questions i do have a quick offer for those of you guys who haven't signed up i'll put this up on there now you hopefully see that um it's going to be up for the next 30 minutes so hopefully you guys can see that offer in the offer window on the side there so half off the first month check it out obviously we've been around a long time so we've got about 300 000 members who are happy with what's going on with rotary swing for 10 bucks for a month kind of no-brainer it's like two golf balls these days i was unbelievably expensive right so if you can swing two golf balls you can you can uh you can join rotary swing for a month and check out we've got over 300 videos on the site they're going to explain all the swing fundamentals in detail so hopefully you enjoyed this little presentation i'll put up a replay as well on the site so you go check it out again in case you missed some details and i'll see you guys soon