Maninblack4612
Tour Winner
..to generate the power they do.
I was at Slaley Hall last week watching the Asian tour. It was great because there weren't many spectators, or ropes & you could get really close to the players. There's nothing like watching good players live, you see much more than studying video or watching on TV. As you can imagine most of the players were hitting the ball prodigious distances with little apparent effort. Some were obviously swinging very hard but the majority looked to be playing well within themselves. One individual was about 5' 10" tall & looked about 10 stone but he still hit it around 300 yards off the tee.
Studying the players it looked to me that the power was being generated in two ways:
1. Every player I watched had the lower body turned anti clockwise before anything else, clearing the hips extremely early. This obviously moves the hands & arms very fast in a whiplash type action. Rory, in particular does this.
2. A lot of the swings were short & appeared not to have a lot of shoulder turn or wrist cock. However, when you look closely at the swing sequence virtually every player was still setting his wrists as the downswing started i.e. reducing the angle between the shaft & left arm. This creation of lag, & its release into the ball, combined with the speed at which the upper body is travelling, produces the effortless looking power which the pros have.
I'm sure that the above has been advocated by many, if not all coaches, but to see it close up in action is really educational. Following my visits I went to the range and tried to put into practice the two above points. I have a tendency not to clear the hips in an effort not to pull the shot left (it seldom work!) I know pretty well exactly how far I carry a six iron at the range, I'm there often enough, &, when I executed the shot properly, I was pitching an 8 iron almost as far as the 6. If I failed to clear the hips I was getting the most spectacular semi-circular hooks you've ever seen & if I forgot the lag the pushes were quite spectacular. On the course on Tuesday I knocked two drives past someone who I normally struggle to keep up to. It still feels so foreign that I struggle a bit with it but I'm sure it's worth persevering with.
It's a long time since I watched any live golf but you can really learn by being close to the players.
I was at Slaley Hall last week watching the Asian tour. It was great because there weren't many spectators, or ropes & you could get really close to the players. There's nothing like watching good players live, you see much more than studying video or watching on TV. As you can imagine most of the players were hitting the ball prodigious distances with little apparent effort. Some were obviously swinging very hard but the majority looked to be playing well within themselves. One individual was about 5' 10" tall & looked about 10 stone but he still hit it around 300 yards off the tee.
Studying the players it looked to me that the power was being generated in two ways:
1. Every player I watched had the lower body turned anti clockwise before anything else, clearing the hips extremely early. This obviously moves the hands & arms very fast in a whiplash type action. Rory, in particular does this.
2. A lot of the swings were short & appeared not to have a lot of shoulder turn or wrist cock. However, when you look closely at the swing sequence virtually every player was still setting his wrists as the downswing started i.e. reducing the angle between the shaft & left arm. This creation of lag, & its release into the ball, combined with the speed at which the upper body is travelling, produces the effortless looking power which the pros have.
I'm sure that the above has been advocated by many, if not all coaches, but to see it close up in action is really educational. Following my visits I went to the range and tried to put into practice the two above points. I have a tendency not to clear the hips in an effort not to pull the shot left (it seldom work!) I know pretty well exactly how far I carry a six iron at the range, I'm there often enough, &, when I executed the shot properly, I was pitching an 8 iron almost as far as the 6. If I failed to clear the hips I was getting the most spectacular semi-circular hooks you've ever seen & if I forgot the lag the pushes were quite spectacular. On the course on Tuesday I knocked two drives past someone who I normally struggle to keep up to. It still feels so foreign that I struggle a bit with it but I'm sure it's worth persevering with.
It's a long time since I watched any live golf but you can really learn by being close to the players.