Jacob Huizinga Golf Swing

[Richie3Jack]

Here’s a swing from golfer Jacob Huizinga.



I came across this video because I was looking at scores for tournaments and had seen Huizinga’s name up near the leaderboard quite often. I thought he might be related to former Miami Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga, but their names are spelled differently (didn’t know that at the time).

Anyway, I wanted to see if he had a swing and if he was playing college golf anywhere (he is, at West Florida).

I can see why he shoots some consistently good scores (unfortunately, his camera stinks)



That’s pretty nice club stability prompted by the rotation of the pelvis. Although he underflips a bit and we can start to see that before impact.



He doesn’t quite get the left leg extension at impact, IMO. And the left hip stays more in line with the left ankle. He’s also got a ton of right hip internal rotation and it’s way too soon. He also comes inside quite a bit.



My guess is that he probably has issues with ‘getting stuck’ and leaves some shots well out to the right. I doubt he hooks many when you look at his slow rate of closure. But, unlike a lot of ‘getting stuck’ players, he does have a good amount of Anterior Pelvic Tilt in transition.



I would like to see him play more to see what his full game looks like. But, I like a lot of things of what I see in his swing. If I were recommend something to him, it would be to work on the right hip external rotation to prevent the lower body from getting so far out in front and to use the ground better. After that, I would probably look at what is causing him to drop the left arm so far down in transition. Hopefully that would square up the path and that alone I think would eliminate any under-flip.

I am a bit surprised he is not playing for a bigger college program. Unfortunately, in Florida you have U. of Florida, Florida State, U. of Central Florida, Miami, U. of South Florida and U. of North Florida and that’s about it. FSU can tend to ignore Central Florida players and Miami and USF tend to like their foreign players. And the UCF, and UNF programs don’t really have the greatest facilities. The good thing is that transfers happen quite a bit in college golf, but he may be committed to graduating from West Florida when all is said and done.

The only thing that concerns me is that some instructor will look at his swing and try to slow down his lower body so he won't get stuck. But, that takes away the main strength of his swing...the ability to rotate the pelvis which creates power and a stable club head. I think he just needs to work mostly on the right hip in the downswing and his problems will slowly be fixed.



3JACK

[dhc1]

Rich,

Could you please expand on how he could work on right hip external rotation?

Thanks.

[Richie3Jack]

Sure,

Here's Jacob:



And here's Sam Snead:



We can see that the positions of the right knee are completely different. That's because Jacob has dual IR of the hips and Snead has dual ER of the hips.

I believe that the IR of the right hip allows for him to drop the club more inside. He's giving himself more room on the inside and that's how he comes 'under plane' and has a path well out to the right.

I think if both hips were in dual ER, he wouldn't have that room and he would not come so far under-plane and then under-flip.

I think it starts more with the backswing as we can see a major difference in the lower body action (particularly the knees) between Jacob and Snead.



I'm only using Snead because he's probably the best example of getting the dual hip ER and it starts with the backswing where the lower body is in a better position to get into dual hip ER.

One thing I missed with Jacob's swing is that he retains the rear knee flex instead of straightening out the right knee.



So, he would probably have to fix the rear knee in the backswing first and then work on getting dual hip ER. The knee extension in the backswing would allow him to *be able* to get dual hip ER in the downswing. Then he would have to learn how to get into dual hip ER now that he is in a better position to hit it.







3JACK