WEBVTT

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In this analysis video, we're going to look at the sway pattern.

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Now the sway pattern is any amount of lateral movement of the pelvis away from

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the target.

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The tour average is about half an inch, which doesn't show up very well on

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video.

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It's barely anything.

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The easiest way to view the sway is from the face-on camera view.

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If you draw a line from the outside of the ankle to the outside of the hip, we

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're looking

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for any amount of movement to the outside of that line or away from the target.

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The two areas you can look at to see the effects of the sway are going to be

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this amount of

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space right here, or you can look at the trail foot if it's subtle.

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So if you were to look at the foot, and we took this golfer through his back

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swing again,

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you would see that as he goes towards the top of the swing, that foot is going

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to roll onto

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the outside.

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That provides a very poor platform to then push off of during the transition in

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the downswing.

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Mechanically there's a small advantage for one power source, which we'll talk

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about later.

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But the pattern of this way is typically inconsistent contact with the irons,

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and especially with

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the irons.

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You will tend to struggle with fat and thin contact, but there's no real

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advantage from

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a consistency or any particular shot that is helped by having the sway pattern.

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So it's typically one of the more frustrating patterns because it simply just

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builds inconsistency.

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There's a small handful of toward examples of swayers, but probably the most

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prominent

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would be the chasing.

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So if we were to draw the line from the outside of his hip to the outside of

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his foot, we

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can take him up towards the top of the swing and you will see a clear shift

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into the backswing

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of the or a clear lateral movement of the pelvis into the backswing.

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But if you were to pay attention to his trail foot, you would see that he never

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really rolled

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to the outside of the foot.

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That's something that you'll typically only see with an amateur sway, where a

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pro sway

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will just have this lateral movement.

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Another example of a tour player who has a sway pattern is Camellio Vijegas.

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Now this camera moves, so that's not going to be a very good thing to use the

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line for,

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but just look at the amount of space in this chair compared to his white pants.

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As you'll see during the backswing, the amount of space is going to decrease

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slightly.

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He has a much more subtle sway than VJ Singh, but he does have a sway.

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You will also note that he does not get onto the outside of the foot the way

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the amateurs

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do.

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That is purely a movement that is going to cause inconsistency and lack of

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drive from

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the lower body.

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So there's kind of two different versions of the sway, the tour sway and the

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amateur

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sway.

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Now it's important to note that these two examples, and I'm sure there are

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others,

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but these two examples hit lots of golf balls in order to keep their

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consistency.

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Because of the inherent built-in inconsistency to the sway pattern, typically

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if you're

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going to be very good with a sway, you need to hit balls almost every single

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day in order

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to keep the subtleties to your timing, your rhythm, and knowing where the

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bottom of your

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swing is.

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Now let's take a power path and face perspective and look at what the sway does

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for the overall

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swing.

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From a power perspective, this sway actually helps load the lat.

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Now the lat is a large muscle that connects the pelvis or to the upper arm.

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So it kind of spans half of your back and it's a very large muscle.

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When the pelvis shifts laterally away from the target, it helps get basically

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the top

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of the lat in a more powerful position compared to the bottom of the lat.

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So frequently with these amateurs, if I'm going to use my lat and my shoulder

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to pull

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my upper body or pull my arms down, whether that's a pull straight vertically

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or a pull

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with rotation, the sway actually helps load that lateral movement.

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You'll see in both of these cases of amateurs, there's a pretty clear movement

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of that left

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shoulder rotating and slightly lunging during that transition movement and the

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sway to finish

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the top of the backswing helps make that movement more powerful.

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With the torso pattern, you will see that even though there's a sway, VJ is

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still able

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to initiate the swing with the upper body, or sorry, with the lower body and

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the pelvis,

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then you'll see that the left shoulder weights its turn before it pulls.

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This is largely due to what the amateur sway does to the foot and getting on

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the outside

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of the foot pretty much weakens your ability to push with that trail leg and to

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create

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hip or pelvis rotation.

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So it leaves you with pretty much an upper body dominated swing.

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Upper body dominated swing will tend to steepen the path of the club.

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In addition, the amateur sway will tend to have trouble getting a fair amount

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of pelvis

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side bend as they come back into this delivery position, where the torso way,

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you'll see

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that VJ is still able to maintain pretty good movement with the pelvis and he's

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able to

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get his lower body farther ahead of his upper body.

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He hasn't gone into his side bend quite yet, and if we take him right about

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there you can

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see a certain amount of side bend but it's probably easier if we look at zipper

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to shirt

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buttons.

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The sway will tend to support or tend to move more with this lunge pattern and

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you'll see

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his zipper to shirt buttons is a little bit more vertical.

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From a face perspective, the sway by itself does absolutely nothing for

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changing the face

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orientation to the path.

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The sway by itself does not have any necessarily common compensation, but one

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common pattern

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is to have sway combined with early extension.

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Since the sway is going to create a steepening of the swing path because of

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where the upper

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body is going to go, typically that early extension will help balance that back

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out.

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Also because the lat gets loaded, it's very common for the arms to work a

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little bit more

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vertically in this sway pattern.

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The body moving in towards the golf ball during the downswing, which we will

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describe

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more in the early extension section is a common way to balance that back out.

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So even a golfer like Vijay Singh who has more of that tourist sway and less of

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the

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steepening of the arms will still have a slight amount of the early extension

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to balance out

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or to compensate for some of his sway mechanics.