Lydia Ko - 3 steps to better impact
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Lydia Ko is the youngest person in the history of golf to winner a major championship. In this video, I'll highlight 3 features of her swing that makes her a great ball striker round after round.
- Shift your weight and then rotate your body to load up.
- Externally rotate your lead leg to start the downswing.
- Head down, heel down, release.
Hey everyone, it's me again, RST instructor Chris Tyler, And it is my great pleasure to bring you this week's tour analysis on the youngest player in women's golf history to win a major championship, Lydia Ko.
Picking up a win at the Evian Championship this past weekend at 18 years of age, 4 months, and 20 days.
So congratulations to her.
I actually got a good chance to look at some of her stats and was absolutely blown away by how many categories she's in the top 10.
And I know that she's going to be a dominant force of women's golf for a long period of time.
So again, congratulations to her.
So this week, I'm going to be focusing in on three key areas of her golf swing that allow her to be very, very consistent and give her really good compression on the golf ball.
Which, in turn, allows her to hit a lot of greens and regulation and set herself up for a lot of birdies.
So if you've been looking for a better way to get more consistent on the golf course, you want to pay close attention to today's analysis.
Because I'm going to lay out a good, detailed list of checkpoints for you to look for in your own swing.
So that you can start playing some of your best golf day in and day out.
Let's go ahead and get started.
Okay gang, so as I said in the opener, We're going to be focusing in on a three -step process that's going to help you understand how to become a more consistent ball striker, much like Lydia.
And these are really three big keys to her golf swing.
These aren't necessarily all the great things.
There's a lot of great moving parts in her swing.
But I just want to touch base with these three areas because I looked at this golf swing for quite a few minutes and said, okay, these are the areas that I see a lot of amateur golfers at home struggle with.
And in turn, this is going to give you the most bang for your buck when you start to work through this process.
All right.
So what we're going to be looking at from a face-on perspective.
Number one, we want to be able to shift our weight.
We want to be able to load up our trail side.
And we want to be able to rotate around our axis.
So if you're doing some self-analysis on your golf swing, these are some lines I want you to be able to draw.
You can use the self-analysis tool on the website here if you have any sort of other app on your phone or iPad, or whatever it may be.
But use these lines here.
So when you draw this line up right from the center of your trail ankle, you want to draw a line down the spine and then a line down off the back of the tush here.
This is what we call a tush line.
And your first objective is to make sure that you shift your weight into your trail side.
And that's what she does.
You can see her weight start to shift over into that side.
So she's getting her weight over there to help stabilize things and help create a post in her right leg.
That now, in turn, she's going to start to rotate her body on.
Okay.
So from there, she's going to rotate to the top of her swing.
And what you're looking at from a down the line perspective, what you're looking for as far as a checkpoint is concerned, is that you're going to want to notice that your hips have not come forward.
So you don't want to see that your rear end has come up off this line, and you don't want to see any sort of drastic change to the angle of the spine.
Okay.
Those will tie hand in hand here.
If you see the hips starting to come forward, then in turn you're going to start to see your spine go vertical.
Now, The reason why I showed you the face-on perspective first was nine times out of ten when we look at amateur golfers, the reason why the hips come forward in the first place is either A, it's from a posture problem, or B, not really wanting to shift enough weight over to the trail side.
Now, why? Well, a lot of times golfers are taught to stay very centered, and I agree with that.
We want to stay as centered as possible.
But when you start to shift your weight, you feel like you're making this big lateral shift, and in turn, What you've probably been trained to do is get your left arm or your lead shoulder to push across your center, Which, in turn, is going to move your head way off the golf ball, and it's going to feel like even more of a sway.
So, if you shift your weight over into that trail side to feel roughly 70% or so into your right heel, right ankle, and you've pulled your right shoulder blade in towards your spine, that's going to help you stay centered to where you're not going to feel like you're swaying.
But if you allow your lead shoulder and your lead arm to start to push across your center, that's what's going to move your head off the golf ball and make it feel like a drastic sway.
And in turn, you're going to want to feel like, all right, I'm not going to want to shift, And then it's going to make it very difficult for you to rotate around your axis and keep your hips back.
Okay, so now you understand the kind of cause and effect relationship to this first step.
So, first thing, make sure you shift your weight.
Make sure you keep your knee flex.
Okay, that's a good way to also be able to keep your butt back, and then pull your right shoulder blade in towards your spine and load that golf swing up.
Okay, that's step one.
So, let's get over to step number two here, and we'll start to look at the downswing.
Okay, gang, so here we are at step number two, And we're going to be looking at some downswing sequencing and give you guys a couple of checkpoints at home that are going to help you better understand what you're looking for in your own golf swings.
So, the big question here that I want to ask you is, what do we want to start our downswing? Well, you've heard us say it a thousand times, we want to start our downswing with the lower half.
So, as you're starting to near the top of your golf swing, just like Lydia is here, I've got her freeze-framed on both face -on and down the line, You're going to want to learn how to externally rotate your lead leg and get your lead knee over into neutral joint alignment as soon as possible.
So, you're going to see as her hands are starting to reach the top, she is externally rotating her lead leg, and now she's got her lead knee into neutral joint alignment here.
So, let me draw this line straight up from the center of the ankle.
If you are unfamiliar with what neutral joint alignment is, we've got several videos on the website that will go through that with you.
I'll put some videos over in the recommended videos tab to help you understand what all that stuff means.
But, you can see that the center of the lead knee is right over the center of the lead ankle.
So, she has now transferred a good bit of her weight into her lead side.
So, from a face-on perspective, what you're going to be looking for is external rotation of the lead knee to get it into neutral, but don't do much with your shoulders and your arms.
You want your lead arm to end up at about parallel to the ground.
So, you can see she's done really, really well with that particular move.
She's allowed the lower half to make all the moves for the upper half of the body.
Now, looking at things from a down-the-line perspective, What I want you to pay close attention to here is that the hips and the knees are in a wound-up position here.
So, we're probably about 40, maybe 45 degrees wound up with the hips and knees.
When we get our hips and knees back to square, okay, You want to see that you're virtually in that same position where the lead arm is at parallel to the ground, and your lead knee is going to be over neutral like you see here.
So, you want to do your best when you're making your shift, not to just shift your hips, you want to externally rotate the lead leg.
So, it's going to help create rotation.
It's a very dynamic move.
It's a very athletic style move.
Okay, so those are your checkpoints.
When your hips and knees get back to square, you want to make sure that your lead leg is in neutral and your lead arm is parallel to the ground.
Okay, don't allow your arms to get too far down there.
Then, It's going to be you trying to pull your arms down in front of you and you're going to be an all-out race.
And, unfortunately, your arms can be a very, very big culprit for a lot of your problems in your golf swing.
All right, so that's going to be step two.
Those are some good checkpoints for you.
Now, There's actually one final checkpoint here, and I don't want to overwhelm you with information in this video, but there's some things that we see that happen so commonly.
And if you're going to be doing a lot of self -analysis, we might as well give you the information so you know what you're going to be looking for.
And what I want you to pay close attention to here is up off the lead ankle here, okay, that left hip line, okay, this is straight up from the center of the ankle.
I want you to notice the space that there is from the torso to this line.
And when she starts to externally rotate the lead leg and starts to get her weight over that side, notice how her torso moved in that direction with it.
So, it's a dynamic move from the upper half.
She's allowing the lower body to pull the upper half with it.
Now, What we see a lot of times with amateur golfers is that they tend to try to keep their torso back there and just shift their hips.
And that creates a lot of secondary axis tilt.
It makes it very difficult to get a stacked up lead side in the hitting area, Which, in turn, makes it very difficult to compress a golf ball, like those tour pros you see, compress it and have that nice, lovely sound to it.
All right, So, make sure that you're allowing your torso to dynamically move with the lower half into that lead side.
That'll help get more weight over there.
And then you can start the posting up move and then start your releasing.
All right, so let's go ahead and look at step number three.
Again, just to recap here for you real quick, externally rotate the lead leg till it's in neutral.
Make sure your hips and knees get back to square and your lead arm is going to be parallel to the ground.
That's a good couple of checkpoints for you to start your downswing transition.
All right, on to step three.
Okay, everyone, so here we are at the third step or third key to Lydia's ball striking.
And I'm going to give you guys some checkpoints you're going to be looking for in your own swing.
And what we're going to be looking for when we start, after we get our weight transferred into our lead side, the ultimate goal is, number one, we want to have a flat left wrist and we want to have a nice stacked up lead side.
And let me go ahead and just kind of fast forward for us.
And you can see that she's got a great stacked up left side here, really good as far as the left shoulder, left hip, left knee, left ankle, all right on top of each other.
That's pretty much textbook.
Left wrist nice and flat, proper secondary axis tilt.
So that's a very good impact position.
And that's why you can see that she takes a nice divot right after the golf ball here and is able to control the bottom of the swing arc.
So very, very good stuff there.
So let's look at some checkpoints though.
So let's go ahead and get back into that same spot here, okay, so that lead arm was parallel to the ground.
We're going to go ahead and get her to start to clear her hips a little bit more and get it right down to the release point of the swing.
Do it from a down the line perspective as well, get almost in the same frame.
So we're going to mark three things here.
We're going to mark the club head position, okay, both face on and down the line.
And we're going to mark this heel, this right heel.
And I want you to pay very close attention to this.
And what we want to think here at the release point of the golf swing is we want to think head down, heel down, release.
So let's go ahead and just mark the position of the head as well.
Okay, so you can see that her head is in behind the golf ball.
All right, her heel has actually come up the ground a little bit.
You'll see that from some golfers.
But you'll also notice that even if the heel doesn't come up the ground, they haven't had their hips come forward.
We can generally roll to the inside part of this right foot.
And you can use it as a break so you're not spinning your body through the hitting area.
You're not bringing your hips forward.
But she does a good job of controlling both of those areas.
So she doesn't really have to worry about it as much.
But I want you to pay close attention to the heel, though, from a downline perspective, how it doesn't move as she's releasing the club long into 3 o'clock.
Look how far this club is traveling.
So you can see right at the release point, the heel's not coming up any further.
She's using it for a break so the body's not continuing to rotate through the hitting area.
And she is releasing this golf club out in front of her.
And then I also want you to pay attention from a face-on perspective.
Watch how quiet her head stays while she's releasing the club through the hitting area.
Long past 3, almost up to about shoulder height, before her head starts to swivel and look down the fairway.
So when you start to get down to the release part of the golf swing, you want to think head down, heel down, release.
That's a great way to make sure that you can keep the club releasing out in front of you.
It'll help you get a lot of maximum speed where it counts the most.
And that's at the bottom of the swing arc.
And it'll help you overcome a lot of those common swing faults that we see.
They're hip spinning, early extension of the spine, rotating your whole body through the hitting area, which are very common.
It can also create a lot of secondary axis tilt.
So you can see that using your trail foot as a break in the golf swing is very critical for a number of reasons.
But it's a matter of how you get into your lead side first before you can start to worry about using that as a break.
So you can see that there was a process involved here.
So what I want you to do is just go through these steps.
Make sure that you've got good load and rotation really into a good spot.
Make sure that you have a good transition into your lead side.
And then ultimately, Make sure that you keep your head and your heel very quiet while you're starting to release the golf club.
And you'll be well on your way to hitting some very quality like golf shots.
Okay, so a couple videos I want you guys to check out.
Roll the right foot in the downswing.
That's a good video for you players that you'll hear me.
I recommend that video quite a bit.
I also want to look at keep the right arm straight to turn.
That's another good video for those of you that have been struggling getting good load and good rotation in your golf swing.
Notice that you've been maybe collapsing your width.
The tush line and then sitting into the left side, those videos are also fantastic.
These are going to be over to the right hand side of the video player under the Recommended Videos tab.
Just click that recommended videos tab.
All these videos will populate and then working on a nine to three swing, Trying to keep your head as quiet as possible while you're releasing the club out in front and keeping your heel down is going to ultimately secure you into a world of better ball striking.
So work through those processes, get things in line and get out there and let's play some great golf.
All right, guys, I hope you had a great weekend.
Let's make it a great day.
Mark
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
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