- Welcome, my name's Adam Bazalgette,
two time Teacher of the Year down here in Florida,
founder of Scratch Golf Academy.
Rory McIlroy, one of the most exciting players in golf.
We're going to have a look at his swing today.
Try to give you a couple of things
you might be able to apply that he does so well.
So stay tuned.
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So we're going to have a look at Rory's swing here
in just a moment here.
We're not going to do it in great, great detail,
but we're going to go into some of the things
that make him such an effective
and particularly such a powerful hitter,
and I'm going to come back at the end
and give you some ideas
as to how you can apply those to your game
maybe a little bit.
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Let's have a look at Rory here.
Okay Rory McIlroy here.
This is more recently.
That's the 18th hole of Bay Hill.
The thing I would point out with Rory
is there's obviously a lot of great things with this guy.
He's always been a good player by the way, phenomenal,
phenomenal junior player in Northern Ireland.
He's got great God-given talent.
But he hits it really, really far for a guy his size,
for a guy any size for that matter.
But whereas Bubba Watson's 6'3, 6'4
Rory's about 5'8, 160ish.
Now he's gotten a lot fitter
and stronger in recent years for sure, and that helps.
But he's always had this gift for power.
A lot of it's just his God-given talent
and his fast twitch muscles,
but let's look at a couple of components
you might apply that would help you.
First off, very athletic posture,
balance here in the balls of the feet.
A lot of people couldn't get their back
to look quite that straight
based on their natural physique,
but he does a great job of it.
And here's a couple of things I'd point out for Rory
that you might apply to yourself.
Really great looking backswing there.
Lots of information on that on our videos at Scratch Golf,
so let's leave that alone.
But notice how he kind of drops his arms
in behind him a bit coming down.
You can see that little inside loop there.
If we look at him hitting a wood here,
you can see those arms kind of drop behind him.
It's almost like there's a little bit of this type of loop.
Now on Trackman I'm told from good sources
that if that's the target line at impact,
he's swinging in to out
more than almost any other great player.
You don't want to do too much of it
because you won't have any directional control
over the ball, but when the club drops back in behind him
it creates more distance between golf club and ball
than it would if the club was over here.
And I promise you, if you're going to get maximum speed,
you've got to keep the club as far away from the ball
for as long as you can as your lower body works,
so that there's that last second whip in there of speed.
So Rory drops it in there behind him.
Never goes out and attacks the ball too much.
Another thing you see him do
that's a hallmark of long hitters,
watch how his head lowers as he starts down.
Tiger gets incessant criticism on TV for doing that.
Tiger has always done that
and you see great players do that throughout history.
So I don't know why they pick on him so much for that.
Now, certainly Tiger does his a lot,
but watch Rory lower his body.
All he's doing is he's grabbing the ground with his feet
so that he can spring and use his hips harder as he hits it.
You'll see baseball players do that
as they get ready to step in to bat the ball.
Grabs the ground, he let's the club drop behind him
and then he just whips it through there.
Now let's have a look from in front.
There's Rory a little bit younger,
not quite as buffed out and fit as he is now.
Well he's pretty fit, but not quite as thick and strong.
Watch how, if you see the golf club in space there,
watch how as he starts down
he really lets it load back towards him there.
Again, you've got to have some flexibility
but a lot of that is great sequence.
So if you picture that white post back there,
he's letting the club load towards him,
and as we saw from the other view,
back there towards that post.
And again, as his hips get going,
that golf club now has a long way to travel
and that's where he gets that speed from.
Great release too.
You'll see his hips going.
Now watch his hips stabilize right there
and you'll see the energy just snap out to the golf club.
Hips get there, they stabilize,
whip of the club, and then he goes through.
So a very, very powerful swing.
So you start to get an idea there with Rory
as to how he hits the ball so far.
Again, a lot of it's God-given.
He's a super, super talented kid there
and he's got a great body for golf, but again not a big guy.
So here's a couple of the things I would recommend
as you start to practice what he did.
Get a golf club, if you're a right handed player,
turn it upside down, grab it in one hand,
and if you were going to
picture skipping a rock, that kind of a motion.
Or if you were going to beat a carpet there,
start to feel what it's like as you start down
to feel that this club sort of loads behind you
and stays as far back there as possible,
and again very elastic relative to your body,
and see how far you can let the club get behind you
before it whips back in front of you.
Then of course,
you can try it with two hands on the golf club,
nice and soft in the arms.
And again, practice that transition
where you can let the club bounce behind you
and then whip through.
It's really not that hard to do.
I promise you.
Not so easy, necessarily, when the ball's on the ground
and you're worried if you'll even hit it when you try that.
So what I would do first is I would get a tee.
Just stick a tee in the ground, make some smooth swings,
and clip that tee.
Let the club work behind you
and clip that tee as you go through.
And once you've clipped it pretty successfully,
a tee isn't that intimidating.
Put a ball up there.
We're not looking for tons of speed initially.
Feel it on that scale,
a little easier to hit it off the tee.
And gradually build some confidence and build some speed.
See if you can incorporate this into your game.
It'll really help you.
The final thing we saw Rory do so well,
once he's loaded it and it's behind him,
hey, he doesn't just drag the club through and waste it.
He gets down in there and pops the energy out into the club.
So see if you can practice that a little bit.
Once you've made your move
and the clubs behind you a little bit,
firm those hips up
and feel the snap of energy out to that golf club
for a really nice robust pop of the hands there.
That's sort of an idea there.
If you can free up and even incorporate this to some extent,
I'm confident you're going to hit the ball further,
maybe not quite as far as Rory,
but you'll definitely going to hit it further.
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Thanks again.
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