Post by Richie3Jack on Dec 5, 2013 9:51:45 GMT -5
Keegan Bradley was ranked 2nd in my Driving Effectiveness algorithm for 2013. What's interesting is that the #1 ranked golfer in Driving Effectiveness was Henrik Stenson who very narrowly beat out Bradley. Stenson utilized a different method to his terrific driving by hitting downward roughly -2 degrees with the driver. I was told by somebody in Keegan's 'camp' that Keegan's attack angle with the driver is roughly at +2 to +3 degrees. Stenson generates more club head speed (120 vs. 118 mph), but for all intents and purposes these guys are still high speed players.
Stenson relied much more on accuracy, hitting over 70% of his fairways. He was a frequent user of the 3-wood off the tee. I discussed the issues that most Tour players have with 3-woods off the tee in 2013 Pro Golf Synopsis. So Stenson was more of the exception than the rule. Keegan relied more on distance as he ranked 11th in Distance while hitting 62% of his fairways. Stenson was 66th in distance. The piece that made Stenson more effective off the tee was his incredibly ability to avoid fairway bunkers (9th) and Missed Fairway - Other shots (5th).
Anyway, I'm showing 2 swing sequences. One with Keegan's driver and one with Keegan hitting an iron. The iron looks like a shorter iron. Keegan's main issues in his career has been his iron play. In 2011 when he won the PGA he was a mediocre iron player, ranking near the 150's in all of the Zones. In 2012 when he had a 'breakout season', it was still mired by average play from the Danger Zone and mediocre play from the Birdie and Safe Zones.
This year Keegan ranked 20th from the Danger Zone, but was mediocre from the Birdie and Safe Zones. Remember, Zone play accounts for shots from both the fairway AND the rough. Keegan was hitting a good amount of fairways, yet still struggled from the Birdie and Safe Zones. That should be an indicator or how his iron play holds him back from being a top-3 player in the world. And I think these swing sequences show some things as to why he's terrific with the driver and struggles with the irons:
I think the caddy view shows a better representation of the strengths and weaknesses of Keegan's swing than the DTL view. When I think of Keegan's swing, I generally think of Jim McLean's philosophy that the rear knee should maintain its flex in the backswing. There are golfers that can play great golf doing that, but it sets off a chain reaction. The hips will stop turning at about p3 and then the arms will lift to get the club into p4. This will cause an upright left arm plane.
However, if we look at this sequence, there appears to be some straightening of the rear knee. At P4, the right knee and right hip are clearly higher than the left hip. And he doesn't get that 'reverse hips' look that golfers sometimes get by maintaining the rear knee flex. And there is this picture as well.
Again, the right side higher than the left side and it's pretty clear.
The positives I see out of maintaining the rear knee flex is that the upright lead arm plane will provide a bit more leverage and allow the golfer to generate more club head speed. The negatives are that it will require a larger compensation to shallow out the shaft plane and get the left arm inward enough.
The other thing I see is his head movement:
If you align his head up with the trees in the background, you can see that his head doesn't move much. He does have that 'power V' that is often talked about in circles. From looking at my statistics of great drivers of the ball over the years, those that create that power V *can* drive it very well. But, they usually were weak iron players. The players that have more of a stationary head and don't have that power V (i.e. Colin Montgomerie) *tend* to be better iron players than drivers of the ball.
However, I prefer that 'steady head' with no power V because there have been plenty of great golfers that hit both their irons and drivers well with that. Nicklaus being one.
Anyway, here's a look at Keegan's p4 with an iron
I didn't draw the red lines here.
I think whomever drew the red lines was being a bit generous as far as the hip level goes. But here the knees are relatively level. In the driver, the right knee was clearly higher than the left knee. In TGM terms, this is referred to as 'hip slant.' And we can still see that 'power V' here as well.
I have not physically watched Keegan enough to really know what his issues here are, but I would imagine that he has some low point problems when it comes to the irons. With the driver the ball is teed up and I feel from my experience that you can strike the driver well even if your low point is off. That's in part why I started looking at the statistical part of the game, I had run into too many high GIR % players in my life that could often do one or the other, but not both....hit the driver well and struggle with the irons or hit the driver poorly and hit the irons great.
This isn't to knock Keegan as he's currently my favorite player on Tour. And I absolutely adore his hip movement in the downswing. But, to me this is the way his swing in engineered to produce the results.
3JACK
