A Dozen Swings, Analyzed

It's been a while since I've done an in-depth analysis of a pro's swing, primarily because it's getting much easier to find useful ones online. For example, Golf Digest has put up a series of pro swing analysis videos (it's up to 12 at the time of this writing) all done by David Leadbetter.

The 12 swings belong to:

1. James Hahn
2. Bill Haas
3. Sergio Garcia
4. Patrick Reed
5. Justin Thomas
6. Jordan Spieth
7. K.J. Choi
8. Charles Howell III
9. Chad Campbell
10. Carlos Ortiz
11. Tony Finau
12. Stewart Cink

The link at the beginning of this post takes you to the Spieth analysis but I'm embedding the one for Patrick Reed here, simply because I think Patrick's swing is more unusual.



Now these analyses aren't perfect. For example, David doesn't mention that Patrick has that weird slide with his lead foot in large part because his left ankle is stiffer than that of many players. Still, the information is extremely useful and covers a wide variety of players whose swings represent many different approaches -- for example, Justin Thomas gets a tremendous amount of distance despite being a relatively small person while Tony Finau is tall yet hits the ball farther than many other players his size. There are rookies like Ortiz and veterans like Cink. And Jordan is very young while K.J. is... well, beginning to think more about the Champions Tour.

Whether you're a Leadbetter fan or not -- and I know most of you have faves and non-faves among the better-known teachers -- he's a very knowledgeable instructor and you just might pick up something useful that you can easily incorporate into your own swing. You may even enjoy it just because you're curious about the variety among successful Tour swings, so take a few moments to check them out.

And speaking of Leadbetter... no, I haven't forgotten about his new book The A Swing. I'm nearly finished with it and will put up a book review shortly.