Lydia Ko is one of the best female professional golfers to have ever lived and is not yet 30 years old. In the Lydia Ko golf swing analysis below, PGA Professional Jack Backhouse breaks down key elements of her swing that give her the chance to contend in tournaments week in and week out and win multiple players of the year.
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Lydia Ko Golf Swing Analysis: Set-Up
Ko is yet another example of an elite golfer with a perfect set-up position. A neutral grip, good stance width, perfect balanced posture, nice spine angle tilts, there is no bias to her setup, and there is no need for compensatory moves from here. Please copy this.
Ko’s ball position is directly under her left shoulder, which is perfect. In this article, I discuss why you shouldn’t use your feet for ball position.
Backswing
Lydia Ko has a very wide first phase of her backswing and actually loads her trail side quite early. This is a trait that we see in a lot of Sean Foley coached players as creating width and an early pressure shift sets you up in the backswing for great things in the downswing.
Ko allows her head to turn away from the target, which frees her up to create a huge shoulder turn. At the top of her swing, her hands are above but behind her trail shoulder, with a square clubface.
As she approaches the end of the backswing, Lydia Ko actually starts transitioning to her downswing by shifting and lowering her lead hip, which sets her up to create a lot of rotation into the strike. This is why she strikes the ball so well.
Downswing
With all the rotation Ko creates with her body in the downswing, the club head shallows very early, tracking back behind her from the top of the swing.
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Because Ko recentred and shifted her hips late in the backswing, she doesn’t move laterally an awful lot in the downswing, but instead turns her a body an incredible amount.
She does a great job of staying behind the ball with her spine tilt and head, and is really able to launch the ball.
Into The Finish
Lydia Ko has much more an under hand release, which keeps the face square and not turning over, rather than a rotational release that we see in the likes of McIlroy and Nelly Korda.
We see a great job of Ko extending her legs, hips, and spine into the finish, which keeps every moving part in her swing in sequence until the very end. There is no slinging of the club or excess movements here, just a graciously balanced finish.
What can we learn?
There are so many great things in this golf swing it is hard to put them down into one short article, but here I’ll try boil it down to a few points.
- (sick of saying this) GET YOUR SET UP CORRECT
- Huge shoulder turn in the backswing
- Early shift and rotate
- Send the club behind you in the downswing
- Extend the arms through the finish.
If you enjoyed this Lydia Ko golf swing analysis, keep an eye out for more tour winners’ swing analysis in the future.
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