The Pro Tour Biggest Hitters Swing Sequence X Factor Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles
The Pro Tour Biggest Hitters Swing Sequence X Factor Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles

If we do some analysis now of the tours biggest hitters or the world’s biggest hitters in the game of golf there’s often a couple of key elements you would expect to see in the big hitters, but some people go against those theories and actually swing the club differently. Most big hitters have slightly longer than normal golf swings and I guess if we pick one big hitter, it will be John Daly ‘the wild thing’ well known for stepping up to the golf ball, swinging the club back as far as he can, gripping it and ripping it which is often his logo that he has on the side of his bag. This thing could go 350 yards down the middle or 350 yards on to somebody else’s fairway and that’s part of the issue is that when you swing the club very long you often get very loose and you loose a lot of your consistency and your accuracy.

So if we now try and combine powerful shots with a little bit more control, we look at somebody like Alvaro Quiros, a Spanish player who plays on the European tour and often leads the driving on the European tour, and his swing is very different to Daly, he swings the golf club back often very short of the parallel position and also a little bit laid off at the top pointing off-line that helps him drop it in and hit through the ball very quickly. But the one thing that both of those players create is something I’m going to call a big X factor or ‘a big X angle. Now the X factor or the ‘X angle is the difference between where the shoulders point and where the hips point.

So if I set up my shoulders and the hips will point in the same direction but the X factor is how much I can rotate this stick, this way with my shoulders without letting this one on my hips follow. If the two go the same direction I’m going to end up with a swing that doesn’t produce a great deal of power. So you can see this more easily, I’m, just going to set this up so I wear a cane through my bold loops there. That’s going to help me able to make a swing and keep the hips visible for the camera as well.

So when I set up now, I’ve got everything nice and parallel pointing in the same direction but I want to try and turn my upper body as much as I can without changing my lower body position. If I can set this way you’ll see that nicely. So turning the hips as much as I can without turning my – so turning my shoulders as much as I can without turning my hips enables me to create that X factor, winding that up. Then I release that and spring load into the down swing. If I make a back swing that looks like a nice big back swing but you can see here I’ve simply turned my hips and my shoulders the same amount, there’s no X factor, there’s no stretch, there’s no tension in my voice as I do that.

I turn back and I turn through, but there’s no great deal of power. So the big hit is the John Daly’s, the Alvaro Quiros's, they make a real big backswing there with the upper body but leave the lower half where it is, you can hear my voice that's a lot more tension. Then during the down swing they actually unload the hips first, that creates even more X factor so I turn back nicely here and then unwind with my hips, that tightens the angle even more then finally the hips rotate, rather the shoulders rotate round and now my shoulders go more than my hips the other way, so we go from one X to the opposite X and that creates the most power that you can manage during your swing.

So that’s how I’d like you to now swing the golf club to feel like you’re getting more power not necessarily just swinging longer and longer back because the risk here is you loose control, but swing back as far as you can without doing too much with your hips, create the X angle, release the hips quickly to wind the X angle even tighter, release through fully, drive down the target line, everything turning quickly to your left and release round through a big finish and that’s the common trend that all the big hitters have in their swings.

 2013-07-08

If we do some analysis now of the tours biggest hitters or the world’s biggest hitters in the game of golf there’s often a couple of key elements you would expect to see in the big hitters, but some people go against those theories and actually swing the club differently. Most big hitters have slightly longer than normal golf swings and I guess if we pick one big hitter, it will be John Daly ‘the wild thing’ well known for stepping up to the golf ball, swinging the club back as far as he can, gripping it and ripping it which is often his logo that he has on the side of his bag. This thing could go 350 yards down the middle or 350 yards on to somebody else’s fairway and that’s part of the issue is that when you swing the club very long you often get very loose and you loose a lot of your consistency and your accuracy.

So if we now try and combine powerful shots with a little bit more control, we look at somebody like Alvaro Quiros, a Spanish player who plays on the European tour and often leads the driving on the European tour, and his swing is very different to Daly, he swings the golf club back often very short of the parallel position and also a little bit laid off at the top pointing off-line that helps him drop it in and hit through the ball very quickly. But the one thing that both of those players create is something I’m going to call a big X factor or ‘a big X angle. Now the X factor or the ‘X angle is the difference between where the shoulders point and where the hips point.

So if I set up my shoulders and the hips will point in the same direction but the X factor is how much I can rotate this stick, this way with my shoulders without letting this one on my hips follow. If the two go the same direction I’m going to end up with a swing that doesn’t produce a great deal of power. So you can see this more easily, I’m, just going to set this up so I wear a cane through my bold loops there. That’s going to help me able to make a swing and keep the hips visible for the camera as well.

So when I set up now, I’ve got everything nice and parallel pointing in the same direction but I want to try and turn my upper body as much as I can without changing my lower body position. If I can set this way you’ll see that nicely. So turning the hips as much as I can without turning my – so turning my shoulders as much as I can without turning my hips enables me to create that X factor, winding that up. Then I release that and spring load into the down swing. If I make a back swing that looks like a nice big back swing but you can see here I’ve simply turned my hips and my shoulders the same amount, there’s no X factor, there’s no stretch, there’s no tension in my voice as I do that.

I turn back and I turn through, but there’s no great deal of power. So the big hit is the John Daly’s, the Alvaro Quiros's, they make a real big backswing there with the upper body but leave the lower half where it is, you can hear my voice that's a lot more tension. Then during the down swing they actually unload the hips first, that creates even more X factor so I turn back nicely here and then unwind with my hips, that tightens the angle even more then finally the hips rotate, rather the shoulders rotate round and now my shoulders go more than my hips the other way, so we go from one X to the opposite X and that creates the most power that you can manage during your swing.

So that’s how I’d like you to now swing the golf club to feel like you’re getting more power not necessarily just swinging longer and longer back because the risk here is you loose control, but swing back as far as you can without doing too much with your hips, create the X angle, release the hips quickly to wind the X angle even tighter, release through fully, drive down the target line, everything turning quickly to your left and release round through a big finish and that’s the common trend that all the big hitters have in their swings.