– Hello again, Adam Bazalgette down here in southwest Florida. I'm two-time PGA teach of the
year award winner down here, founder of Scratch Golf Academy,
interesting subject today. The golf swing of Lexi Thompson. Stay tuned. (upbeat music) Well, Lexi Thompson, exciting
player, interesting player, had a phenomenal,
phenomenal junior career, and we'll get in to a little bit about what she's done there, but
she's an impressive ball hitter.
Has a few unconventional
things though in her swing. So we're going to have a look at that, and I'm going to come back at the end, and give you some ideas
as to ways you can get some of the good things in
her swing into your swing. At least to some extent. Think you'll find these interesting, but we'll start with her swing. If you like this video, please
subscribe to the channel. We'd love to get you more free content. Scratchgolfacademy.com is my website, we have all the content there, plus courses in every aspect of the game. Let's get started. So there's Lexi, she's six-feet tall, hits the ball a long way. Now she was a prodigious
talent as a junior player, she qualified for the US Open at age 12, and she won a LPGA tour event at age 16.
She's 21 now, she was born in 1995, and again just has had a fantastic career. She's won seven times at
current count on the LPGA tour, and several more around the world. So let's have a look at it here. One of the first things that
struck me, was for a driver, and this is a really good camera angle, she has the ball pretty far back. I mean that is not
typical, and I looked at a few different driver swings of hers, and that seems to be
about where she plays it.
Obviously it works for
her, but let's see maybe why she does that, but
that's a little unusual. Other thing that's a
little unusual with her, I love the beginning of her backswing, but she really turns a lot. And for just a medium amount of hip turn, she just gets those shoulders
cranked way, way around there. Must be extremely flexible, but there's a huge differential
between hips and shoulders, but for most people that would
be very difficult to get. Because you can see these
arms are swung way back behind her like that,
similar to John Daily. Very difficult for most
people to consistently keep their angle and deliver the club back in front of them and
impact when they do that, which she obviously can. So here she comes down,
and another feature you see that's a huge store of power.
Her hips move so independently
of her upper body, very much like John Daily again. And it just creates a
huge amount of stretch between hips and upper body,
and a lot of potential power. But she does it to such an extent, that you know, with the hips here and the shoulders still that closed, and the club that far around behind her, it takes a heck of an effort now to get that club released and caught up. But believe me, my goodness,
with all that torque and with the club as close to her as it is with all this angle
here, if you can time it and you can hit it, you're
going to hit the ball a long, long way doing that.
And of course she can. But it takes such an amount
of, let's say resistance, in the hips from here on
out, to let that club spring all the way back in front of her, it takes on a little bit
of an unconventional look. And I think, because
the club finally springs so, I'm going to say violently,
again she's won loads of PGA, LPGA events, so
I'm not criticizing her, I'm just saying that club really springs. It's almost like it whips past her hands, and I think that's why that
ball position works for her, because she gets a lot
of this look, you know, shaft leaning backwards pretty soon there verus most great players.
And you can see as she comes through, that she has to really put
the brakes on with her hips. In actual fact, if you
look at her hips there, in fact I'm going to split screen that, this is unusual again,
and you look at them a few frames later, they
have unturned if you like. They have actually
resisted to the point of flipping back in this direction,
but she needs and uses that to spring that club from way behind her back arm to the ball.
You might see that if
you looked at hockey. Here's a hockey player, an NHL player, I don't know his name but. Watch when he goes through
for this slap shot, the stick is going to accelerate
so much, he actually almost has to do the same thing with
his hips that she does there. They really decelerate, stall, and the deceleration here allows him to really snap that hockey stick. If you watched him from this
angle, it's a slap shot, you watch those hips, they, they really, he almost uses the backwards
movement of that foot to help stabilize the hips, which allows him to
really, whip the stick. That's kind of what she is doing there, when she goes through. So let's have a look at her,
let's say, down the line. Here we'll look at this view. Great posture, great posture there. And I think a terrific takeaway, you can't take the club
away any better than that.
We're not going to talk about it lot, but let's just say that's a
very very conventional takeaway. And although you can't really
see the amount of shoulder turn from here, here's where
it really gets longish. And those arms are way round behind her, and she fires those hips. I mean her legs are
square to that golf ball, and the club is still at horizontal. That is really difficult to do. But with it comes great potential power, but like she does, you really
got to be able to pop it and spring those arms to do that. So great separation between
between this segment and that segment as she comes down. And of course again, she's very athletic, she's very talented, she's six-feet tall, so that doesn't hurt either.
And now, she's got to really start to slow the hips down and whip that club. And one of the ways that she
adds resistance to the hips, is by springing up on
her toes a little bit. It really kind of freezes them. There's that slight recoil of the hips, a little bit like the hockey
player shifting his foot back. But it does the job. You just got to have a lot of talent, a lot of timing to do that. And it gives her a
little bit of an unusual, trademark look there
as she goes through it.
She's always had this as far as I know. I've seen her swing on TV
over the years a fair bit. It's hard to believe a 21
year old has been around on TV that long, but she has. That she sort of springs her
arms out away from her a lot, and they really work away from her quite a bit for a great
great golfer like that. There's that settling of the
hips and through she goes. But there's some elements
there, as you can see, that can help her really
smash the ball a long way.
Let's see if we can learn from that. Okay, pretty fun stuff there,
really a great swing to watch. Now just touching briefly
on that backswing, I wouldn't call it a problem, not for her, she's won loads of PGA, LPGA tours events, so I'd hardly call that a problem, but most people would struggle
if they got their right arm and shoulder that far behind them. First place, if you're
not super super flexible, and I'm assuming she is, she is obviously, just from looking at
her, I don't know her. You're probably not
going to tend to do that. And secondly, when I
have seen people do that, usually they don't get their
wrist cocked very well, could be a grip issue or whatnot, and so subconsciously, they
kind of make up for that by over swinging their arms and they tip and lose their balance a bit that way.
So I'm thinking if you're grip is good and you get the club set a little bit, and you're not as flexible as she is, you're probably not going to
have a big problem with that. So let's look at the power
moves that she does so well. Now first thing, and whether or not you're trying to duplicate her swing, if you're going to have power, you have to be able to separate the segments of your pelvic
area and your thoracic area. We've looked at that,
and how she does that. So drill I would give
you, this is a TPI drill, a TPI special, is can you
keep upper body pretty still, and rotate your hips freely and independently of your upper body. A lot of people find
that very challenging, and in many cases, it's
not so much that they lack the mobility, they just don't have the coordination quite built up to do it.
I played a lot of soccer
in England growing up and kicking a soccer ball,
there's a lot of that in kicking a soccer ball,
so I'm kinda used to that, plus of course all the
years I played golf. So if you can't stand
there and rotate your hips, almost completely independently
from the top of your body and pretty freely, get
in front of a door jam, an open doorway, put your
hands on the sides there which stabilizes your upper
body, and practice it there. You can build up that coordination. You need to be able to do that in golf, and even if you can't do it with the separation and flexibility as she does, if you can move your hips
independently of your top, you'll really help yourself,
and you'll load that power. And of course the other thing we noticed, was not only did she move the
hips independently of the top and let the club load in there, but she was then able to stabilize them and whip the club coming through. And that's another thing, that even if you can't do it at her level, you need to be able to do to some extent.
So I'm going to have you,
I'm going to suggest, you hit a few shots with
your right foot, drop back, right toe about in line with left heel. My trunk is square to
the line I'm hitting. Just take a short iron, and
this is actually a six iron, but you can take a seven,
eight, nine iron or something, and hit some little shots,
wack that club through, and if you keep that
right heel on the ground, and don't let this thing flip over here, it puts a lot of resistance in your hips. So drop that back, and sting a few nice little shots out there like that, and you'll start to get the
feeling for resistance here, as you go through, and how you can rip a little speed in the golf club.
Hope that helps you. Well, I hope you found that interesting, with Lexi Thompson's golf
swing, exciting player. Certainly got a few
idiosyncrasies in there, but some great stuff too. And if you liked the video,
subscribe to the channel, we'd love to get you more free content. We plan to have coming,
there's a lot of free content already there, and
strachgolfacademy.com is my website, all the free content is there along with four courses in
every aspect of the game. I hope you like those. Thanks again for your attention. (click) (click) (click).