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In this analysis video, we're going to take a look at Bubba Watson.

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But Watson is a lefty and one of the longest hitters on tour.

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I'm going to show you that he's got some classic movements to his swing, but a

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few things

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that are a little bit unorthodox that give him some of his unique looks.

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So Bubba Watson is known for shaping pretty much every shot

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and hitting the ball long way, kind of playing with reckless advantage.

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I'm going to show you how he has a lot of classic characteristics to his swing.

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A lot of things that I like and that we see in the stock to our swing model.

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And we're going to go over a few of the things that give him kind of some

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uniqueness to his swing,

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especially in the bracing and the follow through.

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So if we look at his backswing, you'll see a fairly classic kind of one piece

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takeaway.

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From the down the line, you'll just see that there's one of his trademark moves

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.

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He'll set up with a little bit more of an open stance.

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But that doesn't take away from his one piece takeaway.

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So it's largely a big body movement, muscles of the core, hips and trunk

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that are moving the club away.

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But he does tend to use a little bit more of the arm lift,

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which gives the club the appearance of going a little bit more outside the line

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.

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Not that that really matters.

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What that does is that helps create a little bit more of this vertical arm

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movement,

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which he's then going to shallow out very nicely in transition.

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So at the top of the swing, you'll see that since distance is a priority of his

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,

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you'll see a big full turn.

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So you'll see lots of movement happening at the ankle, the knee, the hip, the

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rib cage,

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the shoulder, all the way up through the chain.

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But you'll see that he did a great job of keeping his arms somewhat out in

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front of him.

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Even though he's had a ton of lift, you can see that the trail elbow hasn't

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worked

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its way behind his body into a stuck position.

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You can see if his trail elbow had worked behind his body,

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you would be able to see it kind of in this position over here.

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So because his arms are still in an okay position, even though he has this long

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swing,

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you'll see that his first movement with his arms during transition is to really

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shallow out the club and get the back of the left wrist roughly parallel to his

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shoulders

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or perpendicular to his spine.

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So he has a really good job of shallowing out from the arms.

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You'll also see that he does a tremendous job of sequencing the lower body.

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As his upper body drops down, he's kind of compressing against the ground

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to give him something to really push with.

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You can see that his lower body opens up very, very nicely.

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You can use the barrier of kind of by about the time the lead arm is parallel

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to the ground.

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If you're going for power, you want to have your hips relatively square.

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That's showing that you've started this swing more with the lower body than

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with the upper body.

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Here you can see he gets his hips back to square when that left arm or when his

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right arm is still well above parallel.

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So kind of in the same position with these two swings.

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A tremendous job of sequencing the body and he's got lots and lots of

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flexibility

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which allows him to then have this kind of exaggerated look.

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But now as he approaches delivery position, he's continuing to power it with

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his body.

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He's continuing to shallow it with the arms and he's squaring the club face

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very nicely.

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So when he's in this delivery position, you'll see a pretty good variety of

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where he likes to have the club,

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the shaft plane where the club head is in relation to his hands.

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All those affect his face to path and he's really good at moving around the

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face to path to have larger amounts of curved.

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So from the face on view, you'll see that transition move.

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He does a really good job of getting his lower body to start and then he does a

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great job of setting up for his bracing.

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So this has been largely a body pull on his arms and then once he gets to right

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about here, we're now going to start the release.

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And so what you'll see is he does a great job of pushing through that lead leg

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to kind of create this little chain reaction

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that's going to cause the arms and the club to then want to extend as he goes

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into the release.

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But he's done such a beautiful job of positioning his body that his arms are

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able to extend freely and he gets in this really classic looking bracing

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position.

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Now, one of the unique things that you'll tend to see is that movement of his

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lower body or his feet through impact.

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You'll tend to see this vertical movement with a lot of golfers who hit the

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ball a long way compared to their body weight.

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So skinnier golfers are going to tend to have to rely on this pushing

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vertically against the ground in order to create enough friction to create

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enough rotational speed.

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Now, his shallowing, his sequencing, his release, all that stuff looks very,

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very classic.

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One of the things that gives Bubba some of his trademark uniqueness and kind of

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flair is his follow through movements and his finish position.

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So once he gets through this bracing into his follow through position right

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about here, what a lot of golfers would do is they would continue rotating

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their upper and lower body

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while the arms kind of were the speed of the club was being absorbed more by

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the body instead of the arms.

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Bubba is a little bit unique in that he tends to freeze his body and absorb

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more of the speed in his arms and wrists through the movement there.

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And then his body just kind of casually rides that momentum of the arms and the

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club up to the finish.

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So instead of using more of his hips and his trunk to absorb the speed, you can

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see him hinging this knee a little bit, which is usually coming from that hip

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flexor.

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And you can see his upper body kind of bracing and moving back that way.

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So instead of absorbing it with bracing through the hips and the trunk, he's

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absorbing it with more of his quads, his knee, and more of his shoulders.

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So it gives a little bit of uniqueness to the way the club exits because right

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around here, everything is pretty classic.

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If his body just continued rotating, then it would look very much like a Jason

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Day or an Adam Scott.

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But what happens is because his body hasn't really continued rotating, the

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wrist helped the club pass the body very, very quickly.

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And then because the body hasn't continued rotating, the arms now start moving

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in a much more vertical, almost hold off look to his follow through.

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So as a fun comparison, I flipped Adam Scott because normally when they're

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comparing Bubba or Phil to the righties, they flip Bubba or Phil to the righty

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position.

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But I want you to take a look and see a lot of the similarities.

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So we've got a fairly similar amount of body rotation.

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You've got really good arm extension, slightly different positions of the shaft

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and club face, but overall, a lot of similarities there.

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So now what you'll see is as the club passes his body, his primary goal is no

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longer controlling the path of the club.

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It's now safely absorbing the speed of the swing.

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And so what you'll see is it's largely the wrists that are absorbing the speed

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of the swing.

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And then his body just kind of stays facing towards the fairway like so.

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So if we take it to about the same position, where the hands are about the same

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position, what you'll see is that Adam Scott has turned his body a good 20 or

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30 degrees.

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And that's where he's absorbing the speed of the swing as opposed to Bubba

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doing it mostly in the arms and club.

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It'll look a little bit more exaggerated when we look from face on.

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So now looking at Jason Day, we can compare some of the things from the face on

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.

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So you'll see that even though they had very different looking backswing loads,

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we're getting into a similar unloading pattern.

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As we move Bubba through those similar positions, you'll see that, again,

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compared to what we had with Adam Scott,

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not a dramatic difference. He's a little bit further behind, so he's bracing

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slightly differently.

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What we'll see now is as the club passes Jason's midline, he's absorbing it

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more with body rotation and trunk rotation.

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So you can see that it's mostly the hips and the shoulders. There's not a lot

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going on there with the wrists.

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So now if we take Bubba, here he could be doing the same thing.

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But what ends up happening is once he gets to the hands passing the midline,

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now most of the absorption is going to happen in the wrists

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and vertical movement of the knees as opposed to continuing rotating his trunk

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and core.

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So this is one of the cases where the flare and the uniqueness to his swing is

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kind of at a point where I think it's non-critical.

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Unless he was battling some type of injury, either in that lead knee or

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potentially in the neck shoulder or elbow area,

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I wouldn't see any reason that you'd have to change it because he's having

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great success with the face-to-path relationships.

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He's having great success with sequencing and empowering the swing.

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He gets into a really good bracing strategy. It's just that absorbing of the

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speed after all the key movements of the swing are done.

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So if you want to understand which movements of your swing are critical and

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which movements are just your style,

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head over to Golfsmart Academy and check out our membership options.

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In the membership program, you could submit your swing and we'll do a video

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voiceover just like this on your swing

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and show you where you could potentially stand to improve in terms of distance

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or consistency or whatever is ailing you.