- Hi, Adam Bazalgette here in the golf studio,
down here in Naples, Florida.
Two-time PGA winner of the year, down here in Florida
and founder of Scratch Golf Academy.
Today, we're gonna have a look at the great young player
Jordan Spieth and what makes his swing tick.
Stay tuned.
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Okay, we'll see what makes Jordan
such an incredibly good player,
at least my opinion of what does,
and then I'm gonna come back at the end of it
and give you some ideas as to how you might incorporate
some of these things into your game.
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is ScratchGolfAcademy.com.
Let's go ahead and get started here with Jordan's swing.
Okay, let's have a look at Jordan, here.
It looks like he's hitting a,
oh, it's hard to tell.
I would say a seven or an 8-iron, probably.
Maybe a 6-iron to a par-3, here.
And what makes him so good?
Well, listen, he's got a lot of intangibles,
this guy right here.
He didn't just suddenly burst onto the thing.
He was a great junior player.
He played briefly in college,
was a phenomenal college player and has just absolutely
come on strong on the pros and has continued to do so.
He's also a fantastic putter and, by all accounts,
I've never met him, just a great person from a great family.
It seems to show up pretty well on TV.
So why is he so good, in terms of hitting the ball?
The main thing I think you can take away from this,
if we look at it from a couple of angles,
is he just uses his body so freely
and dynamically in the down swing
and he lets his arms be really passive and reactive to that,
which gives him a lot of repeatability.
Now he's a pretty good-sized guy.
He's pretty strong and he's obviously got some speed.
He's a young guy so he can hit it pretty far doing that.
But let's have a look at that in practice.
So nice, simple backswing line, straight away from the ball.
He has a couple of slight idiosyncrasies,
kind of curls that left hand a little bit.
Never been able to examine his grip up close
but it looks just a little, little bit unconventional.
Beautiful, clean, plane lines though,
lovely position at the top.
Now, watch this lower body.
Watch him drive that and, I mean,
at that point in the down swing, there,
you can already see that his knees
are back to square with the target line.
In other words, he's unwound his legs enough at that point
that he's back to his address position.
He's also got great squat against the ground, there,
and by the time he gets into that ball.
I mean, you can really see a lot of the back of his body,
so he is freely clearing out there
and it just pulls those arms through,
where he really doesn't have to rely on his hands much
at all to square the club.
He has, as I said, a couple of unconventional,
slightly unconventional looking things.
We'll see his arms from the front view.
He almost drags them through and bends that left arm
a little bit more than you might suggest,
but obviously it's working pretty well for him.
Great body motion, there.
You'll notice as well, he does a nice job as he does that.
A lot of people,
when they try to use their body really aggressively,
tend to pull up or lose their body angles.
Now this camera may not be 100% still.
It's pretty still.
He sinks down in there a little bit
and you can see the front of his hat logo
and the back of his tail, right in that spot,
as so many great players do.
He's compressed slightly down into the ground.
It gives him a much more dynamic look,
and boy is he on the mark, there, as he hits it.
Beautiful motion through the ball.
Now, have a look at this view of him.
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I would hardly call that unconventional
but there's certainly some bend in the left arm, there.
Not always typical of today's great players
and a moderate amount of wrist cock.
If we look at his body motion, here,
he loads in behind the ball, maybe a little more than most,
but he's still certainly well
within the confines of his ankle
and he's got a very nice kind of load there in his hips.
It's not like he's shifted or lost any stability there.
Here's the bit I'd really like you to see
from this angle, though.
Let's just put a little bracket on the front of his hips,
and in his case, even a little bit if you look at his head,
as he starts down,
he really creates some push towards the target.
I mean, look at that move there.
And you can see how passive his arms are.
They haven't done a thing as her starts down there.
Just hanging in space.
So many of us tend to really fight to get the club
down to the ball and over speed our arms up
relative to the body.
Not Jordan, that is a fantastic move
and it's just really putting some pressure down
in that foot from where he can clear out from.
Again, you can see he's slightly lowered himself
as he does that and once he's there,
he just rips through there.
Again, there's that slightly awkward looking
left arm position, but hardly something to criticize,
especially not with his record.
And his wrists have released beautifully there
and there's just a lot of energy going out to the target.
So it's a swing where he never looks
like he's guiding the ball.
His body works beautifully
and his arms respond so nicely to that.
So let's see what we can take away from that,
that might help you.
So as we mentioned there, with Jordan,
great body motion, beautiful weight transfer,
arms are passive to the body
and the body is really oriented out
to the target as he goes through.
So here's a couple of ideas you might take away
to try to implement some of that in your game.
Number one, you've gotta experience what it's like
to have your body more open as you hit the golf ball
or more facing the target.
And I think if you take a short iron, this is an 8-iron,
look out to the target, no ball,
and just picture tossing the golf club out there.
You can even toss it if you like if no one's around
and just start to notice hey,
if I was really tossing a club there versus, say,
trying to hit a ball here, how would my body feel?
I guarantee you, you wouldn't toss with your body like that.
You'd be in this sort of a position.
Once you've rehearsed that a few times,
look down a bit and see if you can create
the same type of an image.
And you've gotta feel something
before you can really repeat it,
so that's what we're looking for in this golf swing.
And then I'd simply hit a few
kind of half shots out here like that,
emphasizing not only trying to duplicate that,
but as much as possible, emphasizing that the arms are soft
and responsive to the body.
There's no hit whatsoever in the arms.
Something like that.
You can see the sort of rhythm I had there.
No urgency, no hit,
and try to duplicate that sort of body motion.
Initially, it's a little scary.
It feels like you're almost going beyond the ball
and almost opened up too much,
but I promise you, that's a secret that can really help you.
If you can get some of that in your game,
you may not be hitting it quite like Jordan,
but you will improve your golf game.
Hope this helps.
If you like it, hit the like button.
You can subscribe to the channel.
We'll get you more of these videos
and of course the home site's ScratchGolfAcademy.com.
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