Adding More Turn and Width to Heather's Golf Swing

Today one of my golf partners played a round at the Arizona Biltmore golf course in Phoenix, AZ with "the best women golfer I've ever seen." He liked her swing so much that he taped it and sent it to me asking for my analysis. After watching the video, I thought that a few improvement could easily take her game to the next level.

The first thing you will notice from the video is that she is really able to swing hard and generate a lot of club head speed. I wouldn't necessarily change any of this, although I'll talk about her release after hitting the ball below. The problem I see is in her backswing position. Adding more width to her swing would increase her swing arc and thus increase her club head speed.

Consider professional golfer Gary Woodland's swing and a recent article about it titled Woodland's Wide-to-Wide Driver Swing.

Compare the two positions above with Heather's position at the top (in the image below).

The NO! side of Gary Woodlands swing looks pretty much like Heather's position at the top. In order to get into the YES! Width position, Heather would need to turn her hips and upper body more, extend her left arm back into the width dimension and keep her left foot on the ground or at least tilted to the right rather than raised off the ground on her toe. These changes would create a bigger swing arc (imagine a circle from the extended green arrow at the top all the way around to the ball) which could generate more swing speed and power.

Heather's hand release (above) might look unusual given some conventional golf instruction where instructors will tell you to "shake hands with the target," but this is not the only way to release the club. E. A. Tischler in Secrets of Owning Your Golf Swing describes three release patterns: covering, cornering and extending, the last one being "shake hands with the target." 

Jeffrey Mann describes Heather's release as the "no-roll" release (here) and shows Mike Bennet's release from the Stack & Tilt video as an example. This is a part of Heather's swing I would not change and certainly contributes to her accuracy and obvious power. An interesting question is whether Heather would benefit from moving toward the Stack & Tilt swing (just in case she can't get into Gary Woodland's great backswing position). Forward tilt toward the target would help keep her left foot on the ground and allow her to turn her upper body more easily.


Finally, to return to Gary Woodland, my golf partner and I followed Gary during the Waste Management Phoenix Open Pro-Am this year and the video above is one I took of his iron swing on the par 3 12th hole at the TPC Scottsdale course.