- Hey folks, Adam Bazalgette back here
in Naples, Florida.
I want to talk to you today about
the golf swing of Rickie Fowler.
I won the PGA Teacher of the Year Award
down here twice,
and worked for David Leadbetter for a long time.
Hopefully I can give you a few insights
as to what makes it good.
So stay tuned.
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So as we look at Rickie Fowler here in just a moment,
I'm going to show you a couple of things
I think are great,
a couple of things you might apply to your game,
and I'm going to come back at the end of the video,
and give you a drill or two
that I think will help you.
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So let's have a look at Rickie Fowler,
and I'll be back to show you what I think
you can do to make it apply to your game.
There's Rickie Fowler,
terrific young player, he's 27 years old, 5ft 9,
at least he's listed at that,
and of moderate build, 155lbs or so.
Hits the ball a heck of a long way,
and this guy's been a really, really good player
for a long time now.
Played at Oklahoma State for a while.
So let's have a look, see what he does well.
One thing I'm going to point out as we go,
that's maybe a little unconventional,
I wouldn't recommend for the average golfer,
but pretty much everything else,
the more you could emulate it
the better off you'd be.
Let's have a look.
Here he goes, let me just quick box him in,
this is a nice, steady camera angle
with his body there.
You can see he pushes into the ground a little bit,
as pretty much any dynamic hitter does.
And he does something a little unusual here,
you'll watch the logo on his hat
sort of pull away from where it started.
I've looked at a few swings of him with irons,
and he does this a bit.
You don't see that a lot with great players,
but what you see that really makes up for it, if you like,
watch his lower body, his hip gets nice and deep there,
it's actually further back than it began,
and as he comes down,
not only does he unwind beautifully
with his lower body,
but he keeps his lower body all the way back in here.
And that gives him a lot of space there for his hands
as he goes through.
That is not easy to do,
but it is highly preferable if you can do that.
Rickie clears his lower body beautifully,
and really stays back in there,
and doesn't invade the spacing of the ball at all.
Not withstanding that he backs up a little bit there.
In terms of things he's worked on
with Butch Harmon,
I don't know specifically first hand,
but I'm guessing here,
that one of them is the take away.
He used to take the club much more out here like that.
They've cleaned that up, and it looks great to me.
His swing still has a tendency though,
to stay a little in front of him
going back, and correspondingly,
to lay off a little bit at the top,
which of course is fine.
Although for the average person,
they may not hit the ball quite as far doing that
as letting the club get on line,
or maybe getting a little bit
longer backswing than that.
But it works really well for him,
and he does it to such an extent
that you would think his club may come a little
over the top coming down.
Of course, it doesn't really.
It slightly steepens in the downswing.
You see it steepening there,
it's now on a steeper angle.
And again, I wouldn't necessarily recommend that
for the average golfer,
because they probably will come over the top,
but he has such dynamic lower body action,
and is able to keep his wrist slack so well,
that it doesn't in fact cause him to come over the top.
But I think it really protects from that
classic elite player tendency of
getting the club stuck in here,
and hitting pushes and hooks,
and it seems to really guard against that from.
Tiger Woods, if you've listened to his
press conferences over the years,
talked a lot about trying not to get stuck,
and he's referring to getting the club back here,
which is often the trait of better players,
so Rickie looks like he's never
in danger of that.
The club's in front of him there,
it's a little late off there,
and it's back in front of him here.
And obviously he's hitting the ball great.
Let's have a look at him from here for a minute.
The camerawork on the iron isn't that great,
it sort of double-ghosted there a bit,
but we can see really, really simple
dynamic body motion.
Very difficult for the average person
to turn that much, keep that much extension,
and still stay that steady on the backswing.
Their ideals, if you like,
but the average person's probably going to need
a little bit more of a soft left arm,
and a little bit more hip turn to do that.
Notice how Rickie beautifully leads
with his weight transfer to the left,
before his arm's ever come down.
And the secret to his power here,
is his hybrid.
You can see that gold club's about by
that guy's arm there,
as he comes down with that great lower body motion,
he dramatically increases his wrist angle.
Look at the club there,
and look at it there.
So very good action here, very responsive wrist,
I've talked about that quite a bit
in the videos I've done, if you've watched some of those.
And it's a key to power.
It's a classically good golf swing.
Why don't we talk a little bit about
what you might take away from it,
what might be difficult to adopt,
and we'll see if we can help you
with a couple of ideas here.
Okay, so great action there,
good fun to watch a talented young guy like that
swing the club.
Couple of things I think you might
be able to take away from it.
I mentioned from the face-on view,
what a nice job he does of keeping
stable in his lower body,
still making a good turn,
and still keeping good extension.
You need to find out for you though,
how much of that you can physically do.
So number one, make a couple of pivots,
and get a good full turn
with relatively as little movement as you can,
and see how far you can go.
You need enough movement to let you
get your back to the target.
For me, that's about like that,
and I can feel some stretch,
and some resistance, that's what I want to feel.
I don't want to feel sloppy,
but I can feel it's not overly restrictive.
Now, grip the back of your lead wrist, no club,
I'm a right-handed golfer, obviously.
And as you do this now,
push out a little bit with this right hand,
and keep this left arm nice and straight.
Trying to keep our heads still as well.
And again, for me, if I keep my arm that straight,
that's a little too restrictive for me.
So I'm going to need to be a little bit softer,
a little bit of movement down here,
and I can kind of find that blend
that's right for me,
where I've created resistance,
I have some structure in my arm but I can still complete
my back swing, and you just have to play around with it
a little bit, to see what the recipe
that's right for you is.
Now the other thing I said,
and this is really important,
I'm going to grab an alignment rod here.
You see these all the time at golf courses.
I've mentioned that Rickie does a great job
as he turns through dynamically,
keeping his legs back.
He does not push forward and invade that space,
and that is such a hallmark
of great ball strikers,
so take the alignment rod,
stick it in the ground like so,
towards the target,
and just place it so your knees
are up close to it like that.
Do this without a ball initially,
and make a few soft swings,
and feel like you can stay within that line.
Don't bump into the stick
in other words there as you go.
And just practice that a little bit, like so.
You might hit a few little soft pitches,
or pitching wedges to work on that as well.
Now a word of caution.
What I would not recommend,
and what you've really got to avoid,
don't, in an attempt to stay back,
just freeze your hips and push them backwards.
If you do that, not only will your balance be bad,
but worse still you could hurt your back.
Your lower lumbar back is not built to twist a lot.
So if your hips freeze too much
in an attempt to stay back,
you can wrench your back a little bit.
You have to be able to move freely,
release that right hip and go,
so we want to still be able to turn here,
but we want to practice it
so that we do it staying back in that area.
Most of you are not going to be able
to make a completely full finish
without bumping into that,
but we're at least talking through impact there,
stay in that position,
so you wouldn't bump it as you hit the ball.
Hope these thoughts are helpful for you,
again, subscribe to the channel,
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ScratchGolfAcademy.com is my website.
We'll see you another time.
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