- Welcome back to sunny Naples, Florida.
I'm Adam Bazalgette,
two-time PGA Teacher of the Year award winner down here.
And today's subject: Lydia Ko's golf swing.
She's a phenom, let's have a look at it. Stay tuned.
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Well Lydia Ko's golf swing,
listen this girl's done some things
in professional golf I'm not sure anybody's ever done.
So it's pretty interesting to look at.
I feel like I can offer some insights in this
because David Leadbetter, as you may know from my videos,
long time friend and associate,
and I've had some chances in the last couple of years
to discuss his A-swing at length with him,
and that's largely what they're using.
So we can get into his A-swing,
we can look at what she's doing,
hopefully you'll find this interesting.
I'm going to come back at the end of the video
and show you some things I think
you can apply to your game there.
If you like this video, subscribe to the channel,
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Let's check it out.
So there she is hitting a middle line, it looks like.
Down the line view,
and the hallmarks of this A-swing,
or Lydia's swing, certainly at the beginning
are you'll see the pivot of the body,
the way the body's moving influences the club.
The club is very, if you like, very much out in front
of the hands, or very slow to respond to the pivot.
And it keeps it in a good balance.
And you'll see that club head never
gets back here behind the hands.
And really throughout the swing,
the club is always in response to the pivot.
Now let me give you a couple of thoughts here,
as I've talked to David about the way this A-swing works,
and just some of the basic foundational concepts
of how he arrived at it.
Then we'll keep moving forward with Lydia.
So when I've talked to David Leadbetter about this A-swing,
the two things that he says are foundational:
Number one, the backswing's generally too complicated,
he's just seen so many people over the years
take 20 years trying to fix their backswing.
Still all haven't come to grips with it.
So he's trying to make it simpler.
And number two, trying to get a blend,
some sort of harmony between
some people prefer an upright back-swing, some a flat,
is it in-between or whatnot.
So here's the two ways he solves that.
Number one, in terms of simplicity,
so that you're not working on it forever,
your left arm for the right-handed golfer
is not out at right angles to your trunk,
it's down underneath your trunk, pretty close to you here.
So as you engage your pivot, it would be natural,
it appears to be more across your body and close to you.
That's the least complicated,
versus say extending it away from you.
Number two in that regard,
the most instinctive and simple wrist cock
is directly up and down, and that's natural for a person.
This less so.
So he believes if you keep this relationship
of left arm and body, and you add some wrist cock as you go,
more in that plane though,
that is the simplest and easiest to repeat.
And once you start gapping and changing
the way your wrist works, you're adding things in
that are pretty hard to sort out.
And in terms of the flat, upright debate,
he likes to think it's both.
So the left arm, because of it's relationship to the body
is in a flat position,
but the club shaft itself is in a more upright position.
Worst combination, I think, is arms out there and club flat.
So it's simple, everything is in it's most natural angles,
and it has a really good blend of inward flat
that gives you power,
but also upright balance to the golf club.
So let's watch her go through those moves.
And you can see as she starts her pivot,
you can see how that core of the body
is winding in this fashion as we mentioned there.
Beautiful strong move, very dynamic look.
And if we go back to this view,
again you'll see how the left arm
gets pulled in across the torso there
and yet the golf club, the balance of it,
never gets behind her hands
and is almost vertical at that point.
And the expectation being, if you can get back
where the club responds to the body that much,
and the club is that vertical,
and if you like imbalance,
as the club responds to the body on the way down,
and she does a fantastic job separating her hip motion
from the rest of her motion.
Look how her hips independently, or largely independently,
move from the top segment of her trunk.
Her shoulders are noticeably closed
and her hips are noticeably open at that point.
Takes a bit of physical talent, but it's a great way to play
and if you can use that lower body well,
from that A-swing backswing,
that club is gonna tend to drop in there behind you.
Just look at the angle of that,
fairly late in the backswing we'll call it,
and just look how the club passively responds
and drops behind her coming down.
And with the club in that slot,
with the club dropping behind her,
she has a green light to really turn into the ball.
There's no way she's gonna come over the top
with the club dropping her like that.
And of course she just does a great job
and hits down on it beautifully.
Looks like she's hitting kind of
a knockdown hold-off shot there.
And here's that front view again,
and we'll see some of the things she does.
She does a lot of conventional things as well,
not that the A-swing's that unconventional.
You'll see her hat there against the Kia logo,
very common for great players,
they pivot to push into the ground a little bit.
And you can see she's slightly lowered
from the top of that black Kia sign.
But the edge of her hat is right against that logo,
so it's pretty steady throughout.
And like all good players,
you will notice that the golf club,
if you mark it in space midway back
is closer to her body with more wrist cock coming down.
That's the result of that great lower body motion
and passive arms.
There's absolutely no premature thrusting
at the ball with that golf club.
Great balance there, just a beautiful solid line
between the left arm and the shaft as she hits it.
And pretty much just makes it
look easy there as she does it.
And you'll see this is a little, it's more than a pitch,
but it's certainly not a full shot,
looks like about a 50-, 60-yard sand wedge.
And you'll see the same pattern here even in that,
as the left arm in across her body,
the shaft pretty vertical,
and the club totally responsive to the hips coming down.
Just drops in the slot.
Right in there for a great impact and through she goes.
So this is great motion, this is motion to a large extent
you could learn from and copy from a little bit.
Let's have a look at how you might do that.
So pretty impressive to watch there,
obviously it's working super well for Lydia.
And let me just say again, I know David very well.
He is a bright guy, he puts a lot of thought into this.
It's not just some random scheme
to try and create something new.
He's worked with biomechanists and whatnot on this.
And this is a very viable method,
and it's a pretty simple method if you'll practice it.
So let me see if I can give you a little help
as to how you can get started
and how you can make some progress.
First off, the pivot David strongly believes,
and I 100% agree,
is more of this kind of movement
in your abs and your body. It's not so much a turn.
He likes this drill where you put your hands at your side,
this would be just the first foot of the takeaway,
and use your abs to pull one hand up and the other down.
I feel that from here.
That's the kind of movement.
I like the image of you starting a lawnmower crank like that
and pulling the chain of a lawnmower using your abs.
How would that feel?
That's more of what we're looking for.
And as we said early, all we're trying to do
is maintain that left arm relationship.
So initially, just practice that,
pulling the lawnmower, feeling that left arm nice and close.
Gotta be coming from here,
really not that difficult to do.
Where it gets tricky for most people in my experience
is trying to get the club more up.
In other words, not whip that in
as they activate their wrists,
but get the club up without gaping
and getting their arms up.
That's the most people is initially is a little more tricky.
So here's how I recommend you go about that.
We'll put a ball on a low tee.
We'll start with practice swings
and then some very soft moderate sized shots.
This is what I found works.
Once you've mastered this a little bit
and you're feeling the left-arm body movement,
just preset your wrists, pause for at least a second or two,
and then make your backswing.
Now I'll grant you, the club will be hanging
a little excessively in front of you there.
That's okay, you're trying to get the feel for something.
It's not very complicated to do,
you get the wrist out of the way,
you crank it and feel that position.
Just kind of get yourself accustomed to it.
After a little while, crank it back
and swing through like that.
Once you've had a few minutes at it,
go ahead and tee up a golf ball.
Little baby 7-iron.
Hinge, pause, crank.
Pop it out there like that.
I could feel the club re-routing
a little bit as I came down.
As I always say in these videos,
don't make solid contact the priority at the beginning.
Let your mind relax, get outside your head
and feel some new things there a little bit.
And I promise you I've been around
some pretty bright people with the brain.
You might find the first 15, 20 minutes of this,
woo, this is a little bit of struggle,
or it's a little bit new. Hang in there with it.
There's that little magic line you cross
after a couple hundred reps
where all of a sudden it's anything but natural,
but it isn't that difficult.
You've just go to break through that barrier.
And then of course you gotta work it a little bit
until you trust it.
Small swings and then big swings.
Intermediate drill by the way,
once you've hit some with the wrists fully cocked,
hit some with just the partial wrist cocked,
and do the rest of the wrist cock in the backswing.
It's not a difficult backswing to make,
and it can be very, very effective.
Well I hope you found that interesting,
I hope it gives you some appreciation for the A-swing,
how it works a bit, and of course the great talent
and the great way she uses it.
ScratchGolfAcademy.com is my website,
we've got full courses in every aspect of the game,
if you're interested.
And of course I hope you'll subscribe to this channel
and take advantage of all the free content we put out.
And hopefully a lot more coming your way.
I appreciate your attention, hope you found this helpful.
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