Let’s take a look at Shane Lowry in action at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship in January…
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Looking at Lowry’s full swing we can see that, going back, he makes a good first move and everything is going back together. Then he gets the club a little bit across the line at the top.
As he gets towards the top he cups the left wrist quite a lot but that doesn’t necessarily mean problems as it allows him to create more wrist angle and so potentially more power.
It’s all very natural and he looks to have done this throughout his career so that’s a good thing for his swing.
The transition is beautiful from the lower body and, having that cupped swing, he shallows the club quite a lot and that’s where he gets a lot of his power from.
If you do get it across the line if you are able to start the downswing from the ground up then you will shallow the club more as it’s trying to get back in line and in balance.
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Looking at his shot to the 72nd hole he has 281 yards to go and he manages to land it on the green with a little cut. This is a shallow cut and not a steep one so there is a lot of that power there.
Even on pitch shots a lot of the work is done with his body. His short game is so creative and he has such soft arms and wrists so it looks like he’s a handsy player but he’s much more reliant on the body and using a lot of speed. He can have that speed as he cuts across it a lot and that way he can’t impart as much energy through it, a bit like Mickelson when he plays his flop shot.
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With the longer shots he has quite a bit of width and then gets very open with the body, more than you might have considered, and he wouldn’t be able to hit those cuts from a square set-up or by getting trapped underneath it.
It’s quite surprising as we probably think of Lowry as being that handsy player but that’s necessarily the case with those long clubs.
What to practise: If you have a habit of getting across the line a good thing to work on is to get the feeling that the arms aren’t starting the transition down. The upper body is going to stay more stable and a bit more behind the ball and the lower body will start down first. That will mean that the arms will follow the sequence and the wrists will follow and the club will be the last to follow the move – so the club will naturally drop down.
Conversely if the club is too laid off they will try to steepen things in transition to get the club back in balance.
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Dan Whittaker is an elite golf swing and performance coach based at High Legh. For more information, visit his website.
