- Welcome to Naples, Florida.
I'm Adam at in Bazalgette,
two time PGA teacher of the year award winner,
founder of Scratch Golf Academy.
Today, great subject,
the Golf Swing of Sergio Garcia.
Stay tuned.
(instrumental music)
So recent master's champion, Sergio Garcia,
what a great golf swing.
We're going to have a look at that today
and we're gonna flush it out, not in great, great detail.
We'll look at the main pieces,
but I'm going to try to get some ideas to you
as to how much of it you can incorporate.
We all love is lag.
I'll give you a drill at the end and some thoughts
about how to do it.
And I'll also give you some ideas,
if you're not quite that flexible as we go along,
how you can match the amount of lag
you can create to your body motion.
We'll just have a fun look through this
and compare them with a couple of other great,
great players that have some similar tendencies.
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that's my home website.
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Alright, let's take a look at the Masters Champs,
Sergio Garcia.
So there's Sergio.
We're gonna breeze through a few things.
I'm gonna try to get some things
that you can apply to your game.
You may not have quite his body or flexibility,
and we'll flesh that out as we go,
but we'll have a broad look at his swing
and compare it interestingly
with a couple of other player's swings.
And of course the thing you always read about
and hear about with Sergio is his amazing lag,
and it's well worth hearing about.
And that would really be defined as the angle
between his lead arm and the club shaft.
But I like to think of it as the narrowness
of his downswing.
Look how close to him that club is
as he comes down.
And that provides tremendous power
and tremendous freedom through the shot.
Very, very important thing is it's a dynamic lag,
that means it's something in motion like a whip.
If you look at his backswing there,
and we'll have a quick look at his left arm and club
and then you look at his downswing,
it's completely different.
There's a massive narrowing of that,
and when he gets down there, he's not just holding lag.
I mean he's got a ton of lag right there,
but he is, watch that right wrist and arm.
He snaps those straight and he releases the lag,
so it's very whip like, it's very dynamic.
It's not just sort of stiffly holding lag.
We're gonna get to that at the end of the video.
I'm going to get in front of the camera
and give you some ideas as to how
you can get at least some of that
into your golf swing and it'd be interesting to see.
Now let's have a look at a guy
he's compared with occasionally or at least
I think he could be, Ben Hogan,
wouldn't we all like to be compared with Ben Hogan
when it comes to stroke in the ball?
Let's look at the down the line view
and you see something kind of interesting here, I think.
If we look at, Sergio, let's get him into his downswing.
Now Hogan looks like he's just hitting
like a 3/4 wedge getting warmed up in this one,
I don't know for certain.
But he had a fairly compact swing
but not quite that short.
But let's look at how similar,
look at the left arm and club there.
Look at the hips,
and especially look as they get down their impact,
let's put him right before he hits the ball.
And we'll do the same as Sergio,
and it is pretty unusual even with the greatest players
in the world to see the arms
that much directly underneath the body.
If you look at that right forearm,
it is literally aim down the club shaft
and almost inside the ball target line,
very difficult to do for most people.
But it is a, you can really, really hit the ball straight
if you can get that over the ball
and your arms that much underneath you.
That's another thing I might notice.
You'll see Sergio
or whatever that sort of maintenance building
is in the back.
Look at the top of his hat there,
plunges down a little bit.
Lot of great players do that and they get criticized for it,
well let's say Tiger often gets criticized for it,
but a lot of great ball strikers have done that.
You'll see Hogan's cap dipped down a little bit
under that caddies legs there,
so very compact, arms right underneath them.
Just a great, great look.
Let's have another quick look from in front,
right there.
And one thing too, when you have that much lag
it keeps the club away from the ground
which makes it easier for the golfer
to keep that body nearer the ground.
It provides room for you.
I just want to show you an interesting little comparison
and then we're going to get in front of the camera
and just try to give you something here
so you can make sure, cause hey look, I love Sergio's swing.
I love Hogan's swing.
I can't quite do what they can do.
Certainly not with a level of success they can,
but just physically I can't do it.
So you've got to match your body motion
to what you can do.
Now let's have a look at another great lagger
of the club for a moment.
It'd be Fred Couples, and we'll stop him,
let's put him about there.
Now watch Fred.
Fred's a little bit older in this video
versus where Sergio is.
They're both tremendous laggers of the club.
Now watch as we progress into the downswing though,
watch how different their body motion looks.
Do you see how much more side bend Fred has?
He's driven his hips more laterally than Sergio.
A lot more tilt and yet very similar look,
brings Sergio down in the arms.
Or what's the reason for that?
Look at much more stacked on upper body
is on top of lower body is for Sergio.
Well, the fact of the matter is,
let's have a quick look here.
There's Sergio down the line again
and let's put Fred down the line.
This is Fred from a senior tour event here
in Naples recently.
And, you know, we're going to have a look at that there.
Now watch the difference here.
Here's Sergio's left arm playing.
Look how much more upright Fred is,
that he's just a much more upright swinger.
His downswing, he certainly slotted it pretty well,
but his downswing is a lot steeper,
a lot near his shirt collar than say, Sergio.
Look how much more across his body, Sergio's arm is
and look how much more behind his body
with Sergio's club shaft as he comes in,
probably to Fred.
It's over here some somewhere.
And, when you do that, you, when you do what Fred does,
when you steep it, you've gotta tilt back more
in order to get in the club in a proper hitting position.
So let me get outside in front of the camera
and see if I can help you for a moment,
sort of figure this out for yourself.
Then we'll come back
and look at Sergio hitting a few drives.
So let's have a look at plane here.
Now if you're like Sergio and you can get the club in there,
you have to go more down towards the target line
to get the club in line
and get your body more over the club,
if you're going to swing up this target line.
At the end of the day, that's what counts.
Can you deliver the golf club pretty much up
the target line right there,
approximately matching it shaft plane?
So if you're Sergio, if you're here,
you've got to get lower and get down.
If you're more Freddy and you're a little higher,
you've gotta tilt back a little bit,
get your hands a little higher
and you can get it up the target line.
And you've just got to match this up.
I'm kind of in the middle with my flexibility range.
So get something like this.
Use the lines on your carpet,
get the club in a slot and you think you can get it in
and just see if you can work it down the target line
and kind of flesh out this pretty simple geometry
for yourself.
I'll just say this.
If you can't put your arm up in front of you like that,
if you come get your forearm beyond vertical,
you're not going to be flexible enough to do
what Sergio does.
You'll be a little bit more like Freddy.
So let's have a very quick look at his driver
as he is one of the literally best drivers
in the history of golf.
And then we'll get back outside
and we'll talk about how you can get some of that lag
into your game or hopefully I'll do my best.
And is it any wonder he's such a straight driver.
If you look at the shaft plane,
he's literally on that early in his downswing.
Not easy to do, even a hair under it.
But the delivery of that,
I mean I can get under it,
but I'd be swinging in this direction to do it.
He's not doing that.
He's keeping his body angles
and what a delivery of the club,
just write down that shaft plane and wham,
out she goes.
You're gonna hit a lot of quality straight drives
if you can do something close to that.
Quick look face on, a little something unusual
in his backswing, not just peculiar to his driver,
but with all this clubs when I see him had full shots,
he gets a lot of right shoulder turn there,
it gets well behind him
and it kind of gets his right ankle and knee
to roll out of it.
You don't usually see a really great ball striker
with their right foot that rolled out.
It doesn't hurt him though.
He gets going here, starts his downswing,
there's the tremendous lag.
And he does something else
that a lot of big time laggers of the club do.
You might see Dustin Johnson or Tiger Woods do,
he'll back away from the target.
Watch his head there a little bit as he hits.
And I think when you have that much off lane,
if you don't back up a little bit,
you can wind up with a downward hit.
So that gives him a nice level hit.
As he backs up it really snaps the wrists out there
through it and it creates a great line through the shot.
Pretty centered finish there.
But just one of the best drivers in history.
So let's get back outside.
Okay, so let's conclude it.
How are you going get some of that lag,
maybe not as much as he has,
but how are you going to get some of that lag
into your golf swing?
All great players do this.
And you know what?
You can do it a lot better than you think, I'll bet you.
When I teach golf, and I'm a full-time golf teacher,
I frequently, if the student is here,
come around in front of them,
kind of grab the front of the shaft
and we hit some little 15, 20 yard chips together.
And let me tell you what I feel.
It's an interesting experience
because you start to feel what they're doing
to the golf club.
What I feel is tension.
You can almost sort of sense the anxiety
and poking at the golf ball.
That is what prevents you from having lag.
And I'm telling you, if you can take a rock,
this is a golf ball,
and you can at least get two skips on the water
on a decent rock,
you don't have to get five or six,
you know how to lag the golf club.
Take this club at the bottom of the metal,
and again all this anxiety and poking at the ball,
all this trying to keep lag.
Just relax and create the kind of motion
you do to skip a rock,
and you're going to find you're really,
really gonna feel this for the first time.
You just have to be playful and do it.
I liked the little image of a paint brush.
If you had the paint brush dipped in paint
and you just had to pop paint all along the grass
out there in front of you, you could do it.
You could create that pretty easily.
Can you do it to the level he does it or to the amount?
It depends on your flexibility, et cetera.
But I promise you if you'll have a little fun,
you can really break through with this.
So make a couple of little swings,
cast a couple of imaginary stones.
Just relax.
And just let the club work for you a little bit.
Don't fight it.
Don't prioritize solid contact at the beginning.
Loosen it up a little bit.
And again, try to harness the feeling
you'd have in something else like skipping a rock
or the imaginary paint brush thing
and you'll get some lag in your golf swing, I promise you.
So I hope that helps you with Sergio Garcia.
Hope it gives you some things that you can take away,
maybe some ideas that you can add into your golf game
and hit the ball a little bit better.
If you like the channel,
please subscribe for YouTube videos.
Would love to have you go to scratchgolfacademy.com,
my home website.
Have full courses in all aspects of the game.
And we'd love to have you check that out.
Thanks again for your interest in my videos.