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In this swing analysis video we're gonna take a look at Adam Scott. Now Adam

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Scott

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has one of the best swings of our era as far as a lot of the geometry so I'm

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not just gonna sit here and play through a swing and tell you how perfect the

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club looks there or at the top of the swing or etc. We're gonna get into some

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of the details of some of the key movements that makes his swing look the

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way that it does, function the way that it does, and potentially gives him a

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little bit of trouble when it gets to putting. So hopefully you'll enjoy this

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analysis video as we take a look at some of the key movements of the

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transition and downswing for Adam Scott. So the two key movements that we will

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look at in transition are going to be the arm shallowing and the sequencing or

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how he's powering the swing with his total body. So first let's look at this

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arm shallowing move. He's one of the examples that

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people use of look he just brings his arms straight back down on kind of the

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same position or same plane that he was swinging back on. Now what I'll say is

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okay that's fine I'm not saying that the club is making a huge major shallowing

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move I'm saying that the arms are because if we take this position here in

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the backswing you can see where his chest and where his pelvis are facing and

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you

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can see that the elbow actually let's go a little bit further back so we can

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see

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you can see the elbow there is pointing pretty close to straight down towards

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the ground. It's got a little bit of internal rotation but it's pointing

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pretty much down towards the ground. So what will happen is from the top of the

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swing as he starts down now his arm is pointing a little bit more out but the

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big thing is compared to his body if his arms and club are in a relatively

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similar position to where they were in the backswing so right around here then

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if his body has completely changed by definition his arms have also changed in

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order to maintain that same space. It's kind of like if I had you standing up

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on

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a you know a wobbly board and your head was staying in the same place but your

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body was moving all over the place technically your neck is moving a lot

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in order to keep your head still even though it looks like your head is

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staying still. So if his arms don't look like they've changed a whole lot but

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his

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body looks like it's changed a ton he's made some major arm and shoulder

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movements in order to attain that look. So what we'll see is the elbow is now

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pointing a little bit more down even though the body has rotated a significant

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amount. In order to make that happen the arms will have had to have rotated to

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the right of his body or shallow to a very good bit. You can see it a little

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bit

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from the face on view as well where the elbows pointing kind of straight down

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there and then as we go up towards the top of the swing and return back to that

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same position now the elbow is pointing kind of more out or well out in front

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of

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the golf ball as opposed to pointing straight down at about that same position

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or you know orientation compared to the camera. So even though it doesn't look

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like he's having this shallow move all the all the indicators are there and

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everything's pointing to the fact that his arms have shallowed a good bit

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during

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transition otherwise he wouldn't be able to have the body rotation that he's

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gonna have during the remainder of the downswing without getting too steep. So

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now let's take a look at one of my favorite topics which is how golfers

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power their swings. So we're gonna take a look at how Adam uses his entire body

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to power the swing. So I basically want you to look and kind of pay attention

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to

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these major joints. So what's happening at the foot ankle what's happening at

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the

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knee what's happening at the hip and then what's happening in the mid spine or

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just below the shirt buttons kind of in here. So what we'll see is as he goes

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up

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towards the top of the swing you'll see there's actually some movement in his

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foot. I'll show it in a little better camera angle or a little better camera

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quality view. But you'll see that there's an overall pattern of it looks like

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everything is moving together and yet if you were to go frame by frame it looks

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like the foot is moving slightly before the knee the knee slightly before the

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hip and the hips slightly before the chest. So there's this almost duality of

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trying to have clear sequencing of the lower body before the arms in club and

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before the upper body but then there's also this facial connection and you want

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to make sure that all the links between the bodies are not getting too

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disconnected. It's a key source for transferring power all the way to the

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arms in club and a lot of golfers even very good golfers don't have nearly the

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look of the connection between the different segments that Adam is

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demonstrating here. Now from the face-on view you'll again see that total body

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movement and you'll see a pretty quick weight shift where he gets his his hip

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over onto on top of that lead foot by about the time the lead arm is parallel

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and then he can really go into that bracing strategy as he goes into the

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release. For the arm and hand purposes he's got just classic release stuff so

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if you were to copy one position this position that he gets into I refer to

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as follow-through position indicates a lot of really good mechanics so he's got

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his pelvic tilt going on where his glutes are squeezing his hip is in

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extension you can see how he's got this really smooth curve going from his

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spine

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all the way down to his foot he's got great arm extension he's got full

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unhinging of the wrist so that the club is not past his hands he's it's just

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very good mechanically for what we want to do with the driver and if you're

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able to accomplish even attend to this you're probably gonna be a pretty good

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driver of the golf ball from the down the line view you can see that he hasn't

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really come out of his spine angle he's continued to to side bend as his arms

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are extending away there's just lots of really good pieces here that you would

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want to try to emulate so now I want to talk about two things one one that goes

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on with his feet so we can see that timing of how quickly he gets into his

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lead foot and then we're going to talk a little bit about a shoulder girdle so

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this is a really good quality clip here and I think that it helps you really

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visualize and see what's going on the timing of when a lot of these pressures

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and things tend to happen so you'll see from the face on view that it looks

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like

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he gets on to his left side pretty quickly so by the time that left arms

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parallel to the ground so I want you to see a neat little timing thing which is

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once he gets to right about there you'll see that foot shift back away from the

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line just slightly that foot would not be able to shift away from the line if

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he

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was still actively pushing through the ground so he's he's kind of pushed

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through

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the ground and it does his Jackson 5 or weight shift move but it's done by the

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time he gets to about here and then as he goes to rotate or transfer and start

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the bracing with that lead leg you'll tend to see that that trail foot is

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almost free-floating and shifts back just slightly so I know a lot of golfers

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try to really push through the the inside part of that foot all the way down

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into

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the into impact just want you see how quickly that weight shift move should

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happen if you're then kind of using more of your total body to swing the

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club as opposed to just using your arms if you tend to use your arms as the

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power source what you'll tend to see is you're going to shift to the that lead

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foot a little bit slower and use your lower body more as positioning instead

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of speed one of the ways you can tell that he's using his total body to create

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power is if we get it to this position you can see that the club shaft is

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roughly parallel to the target line is so is his chest so essentially the same

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thing is if he was standing up and he had the club parallel to his chest not

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perpendicular like if you take your normal address position right there the

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club is perpendicular to his chest but then at this point the club is still

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parallel or even behind his chest and he'll maintain that relationship pretty

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much as long as he can and you'll see that right around here as he approaches

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impact it's still pretty close to that parallel to his chest so the club is

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well behind him the only way the club would stay well behind him for that long

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is it if he's powering it more with the body rotation and side bend and not

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with

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extension of the arms or chopping of the arms so then the last little piece

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would

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be to notice an area where we could potentially get some improvement because

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I believe there there's always something you can do to improve your swing if

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you're happy with it that's great go for it but some of these guys who are best

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in the world are constantly tinkering on their swings

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Adam Scott's not one of them so I think that and from a swing standpoint there

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's

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not a whole lot that I would change I'm going to show you an area where if we

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focus on what's going on up in this region we get an idea that there may be

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some some dysfunctional pattern there that could be impacting his short game

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especially his putting so what you'll normally see is down through this hitting

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area you would normally see a pretty pronounced movement of the shoulder

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girdle or the shoulder blade Adam doesn't really do that it's almost like

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his shoulder blades are fixed in in position on his rib cage so as a result

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what you'll tend to see is you'll see a little bit more of a comp compensation

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through his neck which allows that shoulder to by by compensating with his

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neck kind of tucking his chin and turning his head more to the right that's

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gonna

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oh that's going to mimic the movement of having the shoulder working a little

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bit more around you'll see the to the right part a little bit more from the

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face-on so right about now as the arms want to extend he's he's bringing his

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head towards his shoulders as he's bringing his neck forward so he's using

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this muscle called the sternocal item mastoid to really create some tension

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on the top of the shoulder girdle which will make the arm stronger when it then

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goes to extend but the big thing you'll see is as he goes through there's not a

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ton of shoulder blade movement and I like this camera angle because it's so

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clear and you can see because Adam has pretty pronounced back you can see a lot

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of the lines that make up some of the muscles around the shoulder blades you

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can see that there's some movement but not a whole lot the white shirts are

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usually the easiest to see this so here's an example of Brent Snedeker and you

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can see through the ball just kind of the edge of his scapula and then through

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the

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ball you'll kind of see the shoulder blade working a little bit more around

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kind of like so again this isn't going to be a problem for the full swing in

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fact what he's doing there is going to provide a lot of safety and civility but

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it looks like it's a little bit locked up the place where that would show up

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would be more of putting because as guys like Stan Utley have demonstrated when

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your shoulder blades have free mobility it makes it a little bit easier to

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control the path and the movement with more of the elbows and shoulders and a

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lot less with the hands and wrists so I had a little trouble finding a good

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face

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on camera of his short putter putting stroke but you'll see that there's a

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little bit more of an arm in hand release as the movement appears to be

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happening a little bit more below the elbows and in the spine not a ton here

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in the shoulder griddle this actually fits a little bit better with his long

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putter style because this can pretty much lock the scapula in place and then

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it's really easy to control the face but just by having more of the movement at

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the ribcage and the grip position pretty much takes the wrist out so he's

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effectively locked this all into one lever and then controls it a lot with

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his body he's already shown with his full swing that he's really good at

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controlling precision and the location of of where this club is swinging by

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using his body so this makes a lot of sense for him it'll be interesting to

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see how he holds up to transition transitioning to the short stroke for

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this upcoming year where the long putter is gonna be banned so if you like the

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way we break this down head on over to GolfSmart Academy and check out our

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membership program we're in all the drills that help you build a solid

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transition and release and some of the key concepts that we discussed here in

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this video