Sean O'Hair
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If you're looking for PGA Tour players who emulate the Rotary Swing Tour golf swing, few do it better than Tiger Woods and Sean O'Hair, both of whom are featured in this video. When you slow their two golf swings down, it is amazing to see the similarities of the two golfers even though at speed they make look quite different. Both golfers do many great things in their golf swing, but you will also see a few things in here that can be improved upon that will make them better players.
- Sean O'Hair swing analysis face on:
- Pulling from the right, Sean gets a lot of shoulder turn and minimal hip rotation in Move 1
- He shifts his weight and engages the lats to pull the arms back in front of his body
- Sean gets up onto the balls of his feet - not great for control, but can provide power
- At impact his hands are in front of his chest, spine angle maintained
- Swing #2 from down the line:
- Shaft gets steep in the backswing & right arm drifts away from the body, causing the hands to get stuck
- His hips are very open and shoulders pointing slightly right, creating an in-to-out path & late release
All right, it's been a while since I've done an analysis of a player's swing, and so since Sean O'Hare just won, he used to be the Wachovia, the Quail Hollow Championship, decided to do some analysis on him and Tiger as well, and I have some footage from when he almost won against Tiger at Bay Hill just a month or so ago, So this will be very appropriate timing because Sean and he's actually made a tremendous amount of improvements in his swing, and he's actually got room for more, and I think this kid's a rising star, you're going to see a lot more of him in the future.
He's doing a lot of things that we've talked about in the Rotary Swing Tour that you're going to be able to see in both him and Tiger, things that they do right, things that they do wrong, that will be of interest, so first of all, just got him set up here with the driver face on.
This is not a great camera angle, but you can see a lot of the body movements, which is what we're primarily focused on here as he takes the club back and away, so I'm going to go ahead and start scrolling through here.
So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to stop it when the club's about parallel to the ground, which those of you who have attended the clinics know that we call this move one, basically just the takeaway.
So during the takeaway, the primary movers, as we've talked about, Is that right shoulder blade moving down and in towards the spine, so that we're moving around our spine, and you can see that he illustrated here that he's actually made quite a big shoulder turn, even though the club's just parallel to the ground.
This is classic of somebody who's moving from the back or moving from the right side and pulling rather than pushing from the left, and when you see this, that left shoulder will tend to kind of work down instead of up and across, and that's what most amateurs do, is that instead of that left shoulder working down, the right shoulder moving up, although technically it's not moving up, but it looks like it because of the angle the spine is addressed, that is showing that they're moving from the right side.
So you can see that illustrated here perfectly in Shawn's swing, and the second thing I want to note as a part of move one is that his hips have barely moved, if any, just a tiny amount of rotation, so he's starting to build some coil here right off the ball.
No funny manipulations with his hands or arms, and you can see he's clearly getting loaded into his right side here.
So now, as we keep going back, we'll see that as he gets about to where the club is vertical and the arm, the left arm is about 9 o'clock or parallel to the ground, you can see a tremendous amount of shoulder turn here.
And again, just a very clear, evident move that he's pulling.
He's almost made a full 90 -degree shoulder turn here, and again, I realize his camera angle is not ideal, but almost a 90-degree shoulder turn here, and the club's not even, you know, maybe halfway back, so, and very little hip movement here, nearly no hip movement.
So again, it's very clear that he's not just taking his whole body and letting it rip around, he's moving that right shoulder blade back and in, and Shawn is actually a great example of this being a smaller guy.
You can see him when he's making practice swings.
You can actually see when they catch him from the right ankle, that right shoulder blade moving down and in towards his spine.
So he's a great example of somebody to look for who does this move really perfectly.
So as we keep going to the top of his swing, again, tremendous amount of coil here, very, very little hip turn.
And we're going to start to see that right shoulder blade.
Again, the video's not perfect here, but you can see he's made, He's clearly just pulled that right shoulder blade straight behind his head, or pulled his shoulder behind his head, made minimal hip turn here.
Now when we get looking at the down the line stuff, we'll talk about this arm position here at the top.
It's certainly something that will help him if he changes that a bit, but first thing he's going to start to move down is that setting into that left heel, just like the weight transfer video that was just posted.
You can see that again, you'll see it perfectly in Shawn's swing, setting into that left heel.
Now, those arms are pretty relaxed to start.
And then he's, once he starts to pull with that left oblique, he's going to be able to really fire those arms as he gets there.
And you can see one of the big muscles, primary moves in the downswing is this left lat to pull the arms back out in front of the body.
And you can actually see Shawn's left lat activating here.
He's pushing down onto his left heel.
Now one thing he does a little bit off here, he's getting a little bit onto the balls of his feet, actually pretty extreme.
So you can see that actually, he's actually moved onto the toe of his left foot.
And of course this is no good for his knees here, but hopefully he'll change that as he gets, continues to work on these changes.
But here he's up and pretty much up in the air, Which you see in a lot of smaller guys who are more powerful swingers for their size.
Because they're using everything and kind of jumping up off the ground and getting everything to release as their body's moving one way, they can throw the club in the other as fast as they can.
Not necessarily the greatest thing for control, but Shawn's done a great job here of taming everything and controlling it really well.
He's got everything else is such good fundamentals that he can, he can control it pretty well.
So you'll also see here, and we talked about, I talked about move one earlier.
This is the finish of move three, his hands are right in front of his chest.
He's still maintained his spine angle.
So those of you that have attended the clinic, this is the position that, that we strive to get you in where your belt buckle's basically facing the target.
Your chest is still kind of roughly 45 degrees, just depending on how much you rotate.
But we don't want to see it way whipped around, pointing left of the target here.
And the hands are in front of the chest.
And this is a textbook here, apart from the fact that he's up on his toes here.
Everything else is excellent where he's got a tremendous release here.
The club's been thrown out with tremendous amount of speed.
Very steep shoulders here because he's maintained his spine angle while pulling out to the left and then turning his hips back behind him.
This is going to keep his shoulders very relaxed.
You can tell he hasn't pushed from the right side because if he did, that right shoulder would be very, very flat at this point.
But it's very steep, very underneath his head.
So all in all, A great golf swing with a little bit of room for improvement that you're going to continue to see as we look at from down the line here.
So move on to down the line.
Now, this is a great example of where Sean's kind of flaws in his golf swing are going to start to cause him problems.
This is number three, I believe, at Bay Hill.
And it's a little dog leg left here.
And I believe he hit it out into the bunker here.
And you're going to be able to see kind of what kind of holds him back a little bit here in his move.
That's something that he needs to change.
Again, this is not the best camera angle.
I know that club looks way inside, but his feet are a little bit face and right of where the camera is looking here.
So I'm not going to dive too deep into that just yet.
But it does start to get steep.
As we go halfway back, the shaft's getting pretty steep.
And we've got a better angle.
I'm going to look at in just a minute where you can see this and getting a little bit of cupping in that wrist.
But the big thing here is notice how far his right arm has drifted away from his body.
And this is something where when you get your arms moving away from your body this much, You need to have a great deal of timing on the way down to bring them back out in front of the chest and sink everything back up.
And of course, Sean's a phenomenal talent.
So he's got this ability, but nobody has the ability to do it all the time.
So one of the biggest changes he can make, apart to flattening out that plane that we're going to look at in a minute when we pull Tiger up here, is staying more connected.
That right upper right bicep and upper right part of your PEC or chest should never really disconnect.
There's no need for it.
And that would tighten up his swing tremendously and keep him from getting a little late and stuck on the way down.
That you're going to be able to see here because it actually creates this miss that he hit here.
He actually hit this kind of blocked it out to the right.
Because his arms were pretty steep and disconnected, One of the things that's kind of notable about Sean's swing is that it looks like his hands drop a long ways.
And they do because of the fact that he's trying to get reconnected and start getting those arms back in front of his body.
But because he rotates so fast, he simply doesn't have time to get his arms back out in front of his chest.
In an ideal world, his hands would actually be here where my mouse is, not here.
But because he had that little extra lift in his golf swing at the top and then had to drop.
And to get everything back down.
And because he's already started rotating, his hands are a little bit late and a little bit stuck back behind his body.
So what you're going to find is that he gets very open at impact.
Now, His hips are extremely open at this point and this has got his shoulders pointing off a little bit to the right rather than being a little bit more square.
So when this happens, You've simply got a path that's going to be a little bit into out, and you've got to either release it a little bit, hitting a control draw.
When things get really off and you go a little quick, you flip it with your hands, you hook it left, or you just block it.
So in an ideal world, he could fix this path a little bit by being a little bit more connected at the top, staying a little bit more connected going back, and then his arms will be a little bit more in front of his chest on the way down.
He won't get so open, he won't be out of sync with his hips, and he'll hit straighter golf shots.
So in a good illustration of this, we'll look at the down the line view.
They did a great sequence of Sean and Tiger at Bay Hill so that you can kind of see two very, very similar moves, but with some very distinct issues in each golf swing here.
So the first thing you're going to start to know is that Sean gets much steeper.
And I talked about this one, he's starting to cup that wrist.
So now he's gotten his wrist cock and his cupping here that's going to steep in the shaft.
So if you take a look at that, Tiger's club, he swings on kind of a parallel plane, so it's going to be a little bit outside the ball, and then Sean's is going to be well inside of it.
So now you've got two very distinct planes here, and notice here that Sean's right arm, his right elbow is starting to point back behind him, and that's showing that it's starting to move away from his body, Whereas Tiger's is actually pointing more down and actually more in front of his chest still at this point.
You can see the elbow hasn't drifted out outside of his shirt yet.
So this is a huge difference very early in the golf swing.
That's going to get Sean more disconnected as he goes back, and that's what you're going to start to see where these misses start to come from.
So now Tiger stays on plane a little bit better.
Notice that right upper bicep and right chest are much more connected.
Tiger's in an on plane position here.
Sean's a little bit steeper.
He's still pointing down the target line.
It's not a horrible position by any stretch of the imagination, but those high hands now have to drop, and you can see if I just draw a line, I think they're probably similar in height, straight across.
Sean might be a little bit taller, but you can see his hands are quite a bit higher than Tiger's.
Tiger's have less room to fall, or less work to do to get back down in front of his body as he comes down.
So you'll be able to see that he's going to be in a little bit different position at impact.
So now they both make a great aggressive move down.
Sean's rotated here more than Tiger, and this is something that Tiger's changed in his golf swing.
His hips used to be ripped wide open at this point as well, and now he's, as he's focused on more on swing plane and shaft plane with working with Hank Haney, he's developed a little bit more of an armsy type golf swing, and now he's rotates his hips a lot slower in order to kind of get things synced up for him.
This is what he feels helps him keep more synced up.
So where Sean's just ripping his hips around, and you can see at this point, his chest is already starting to look at that ball.
Tiger's is facing a little bit more right.
In other words, his shoulders are just a little more shut.
And so this is going to allow him to come down a little bit more on top of the ball, rather than quite so underneath.
So now as we keep going down, get right into impact.
Now what you'll notice, clear out all these lines, Sean's shoulders again are pointing more to the right and try and back this up a couple frames.
If I can here so you can see this a little better.
There we go.
So just after impact, Tiger's arm, left arm is still visible here, where Sean's has virtually disappeared.
And you can see his hips have clearly rotated a lot more than Tiger's.
Again, this has to do with just starting out going back.
By the time he gets to that halfway back position, that right elbow is starting to drift away from him.
Then he gets a little steep, and he gets a little lifty at the top, and now his arms are late.
They just can't catch up with how fast his hips move on the downswing.
And so now what he's going to have happen is he's going to release that right arm late.
Tiger's already really extended out his right arm here and really released it.
And he's got the club working back to the left more soon, where Sean's arms are kind of swinging out away from his body a little bit more.
And now what's going to happen is he's again, he's got that he's got to fight that into out path here.
So you can see if I can back up just a little bit here that at this point, Tiger's hands are just about getting ready to disappear.
And Sean's hands are still releasing out more or less into out and way out in front of him.
So this is a little bit more of a kind of a timed, handsy, flippy release, where his arms are working out more down the target line, instead of around on an arc.
And so again, a lot of that has to do with just how two things one is disconnected with his right arm going back.
And two, he rotates his hips really, really aggressively, which is okay, but he doesn't need to be that open at impact.
Because at some point, Nobody's flexible enough to keep their shoulders more or less squared, impact and have their hips that far open.
Typically, a 45 degree separation is about max for even tour players.
So if he kept his arms a little bit more connected going back, he wouldn't have time to get his hips that far open.
And then if you just kind of learn to calm that down just a tiny bit and speed up that right arm, just a touch, he would be in a much better position that Tiger has here at impact.
Now, Tiger tends to get to the extreme, where his shoulders end up a little shut at impact when he gets off, throws his arms a little bit too much.
And then at that point, he's coming too far from the inside as well, for a different reason.
And then he ends up with blocks and hooks as well, both of them kind of creating the same path.
But again, It all comes down to just getting things right.
Going back will make things a lot easier to get right on the way down.
But expect big things from Sean O 'Hare in the future because he's got a great golf swing, and he's going to do a lot.
phil
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)