Post by Richie3Jack on Jan 7, 2014 11:11:59 GMT -5
I’ve felt for a long time that Tom Watson was perhaps the most underappreciated golfer of all time. I started to feel this back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s when I would see Greg Norman and Sergio Garcia rack up any endorsement deal they wanted and have their faces plastered on every piece of golf media known to mankind while Watson was basically endorsed by Ram Golf (later on a minor deal with Adams Golf) and that was about it.
Here’s a guy that has won 39 PGA Tour events and 8 majors (only missing out on the PGA). Oh yeah, he won 5 British Opens. In the era of Jack and Trevino with Johnny Miller’s short dominance. Compare that to Greg Norman’s 20 PGA Tour victories and winning the British Open twice and Sergio’s 8 PGA Tour wins and 0 majors. Sometimes, life is completely illogical.
Anyway, Watson’s game always seemed to fly under the radar outside of him being known as this incredible putter earlier in his career and losing his putting later in his career. I blame that on the improved grass surfaces as you will see older footage where most of the good putters had wristy ‘pop’ putting strokes. I was told that was a big part of Arnie’s slide as he got older, he could no longer drain putts like he used to.
But, what we see from Watson if we look at his data from 1980-1990 is that he was a darn good ballstriker. And he hit the ball a very long ways. The sequence below is from 1996 when he was 47 years old. He had a lot of flexibility and to me he looks like he had very strong wrists and arms. While he wasn’t exactly long off the tee when he almost won the British Open at the age of 60 a few years ago; he was about average distance off the tee for the field which indicates he could hit it deep in his prime.
His address looks fairly ‘normal’, but he does appear to aim a bit open. This usually indicates a fade type of shot, although some may open their stance to help make their inside-to-out path more square. He also has a narrow stance with his feet only very slightly flared. With the narrow stance, he will not be able to make a large CoP shift and is more likely to be rotational in movement than lateral.
And one of the things I notice is that he lifts his left heel off the ground. You simply don’t see that these days although this was very prevalent before 1985. I think it all starts with his narrow stance and not much foot splay at p1. He simply figured a way to move his CoP and CoM back in the backswing by lifting the left heel. I think from a backswing perspective, this is more in line with what Dr. Young-Hoo Kwon along with Chris Como have been discussing.
It is hard to tell how much he moves the head in this sequence because there is not a lot to align his head with. However, I have seen an earlier swing sequence and his head is fairly steady. He aligns his cranium a bit to his right to begin with at address and then makes a small move away from the target with his head at p2, then he keeps the head in that same alignment (of course, it swivels) into p4.
The one thing I really like about his backswing is how his hips move. They are ‘narrower’ at p4. There is hip slant. This to me beats the ‘reverse hips’ with no slant where the golfer tends to get out of sequence and can’t figure out the low point location. I just think that the hip movement into P4 and how the hips are positioned at p4 can solve a lot of problems for the average amateur. If there’s one thing that I have seen massive improvement upon in my dad’s game, which has gone from a 20 handicap to about 13, it is this.
The other thing we notice with Watson is that he has a very long backswing with a fairly upright left arm plane. Most golfers get like this because they turn their shoulders too flat and they do things to restrict their hip turn in the backswing. I don’t see any of that in Watson. Yet the swing when it is in motion doesn’t seem overly armsy either. I think his backswing is not very armsy, he just flies the right elbow. That combined with his flexibility produced a very long backswing, but he did it with the left shoulder turning downward and the not restricting his hip rotation.
To me, it’s not that long backswings are always bad, but how many amateurs get to have a long backswing is usually vastly different from how Watson got a long backswing.
On the downswing his shaft plane is fairly steep for a Tour player. A lot of Tour players get confused with ‘coming over the top’ when they have a shallow shaft plane, but their left arm just juts out more than normal. With Watson his left arm seems fairly inward, but the shaft is a smidge upright.
And what see is some tremendous extension. Particularly in this wonderful picture:
Tom used to have a big reverse C finish and I think it was just a way of his brain telling him to get into extension in order to get the ball up in the air with that steeper shaft plane. Particularly back in the day when he was hitting persimmon drivers.
3JACK
Here’s a guy that has won 39 PGA Tour events and 8 majors (only missing out on the PGA). Oh yeah, he won 5 British Opens. In the era of Jack and Trevino with Johnny Miller’s short dominance. Compare that to Greg Norman’s 20 PGA Tour victories and winning the British Open twice and Sergio’s 8 PGA Tour wins and 0 majors. Sometimes, life is completely illogical.
Anyway, Watson’s game always seemed to fly under the radar outside of him being known as this incredible putter earlier in his career and losing his putting later in his career. I blame that on the improved grass surfaces as you will see older footage where most of the good putters had wristy ‘pop’ putting strokes. I was told that was a big part of Arnie’s slide as he got older, he could no longer drain putts like he used to.
But, what we see from Watson if we look at his data from 1980-1990 is that he was a darn good ballstriker. And he hit the ball a very long ways. The sequence below is from 1996 when he was 47 years old. He had a lot of flexibility and to me he looks like he had very strong wrists and arms. While he wasn’t exactly long off the tee when he almost won the British Open at the age of 60 a few years ago; he was about average distance off the tee for the field which indicates he could hit it deep in his prime.
His address looks fairly ‘normal’, but he does appear to aim a bit open. This usually indicates a fade type of shot, although some may open their stance to help make their inside-to-out path more square. He also has a narrow stance with his feet only very slightly flared. With the narrow stance, he will not be able to make a large CoP shift and is more likely to be rotational in movement than lateral.
And one of the things I notice is that he lifts his left heel off the ground. You simply don’t see that these days although this was very prevalent before 1985. I think it all starts with his narrow stance and not much foot splay at p1. He simply figured a way to move his CoP and CoM back in the backswing by lifting the left heel. I think from a backswing perspective, this is more in line with what Dr. Young-Hoo Kwon along with Chris Como have been discussing.
It is hard to tell how much he moves the head in this sequence because there is not a lot to align his head with. However, I have seen an earlier swing sequence and his head is fairly steady. He aligns his cranium a bit to his right to begin with at address and then makes a small move away from the target with his head at p2, then he keeps the head in that same alignment (of course, it swivels) into p4.
The one thing I really like about his backswing is how his hips move. They are ‘narrower’ at p4. There is hip slant. This to me beats the ‘reverse hips’ with no slant where the golfer tends to get out of sequence and can’t figure out the low point location. I just think that the hip movement into P4 and how the hips are positioned at p4 can solve a lot of problems for the average amateur. If there’s one thing that I have seen massive improvement upon in my dad’s game, which has gone from a 20 handicap to about 13, it is this.
The other thing we notice with Watson is that he has a very long backswing with a fairly upright left arm plane. Most golfers get like this because they turn their shoulders too flat and they do things to restrict their hip turn in the backswing. I don’t see any of that in Watson. Yet the swing when it is in motion doesn’t seem overly armsy either. I think his backswing is not very armsy, he just flies the right elbow. That combined with his flexibility produced a very long backswing, but he did it with the left shoulder turning downward and the not restricting his hip rotation.
To me, it’s not that long backswings are always bad, but how many amateurs get to have a long backswing is usually vastly different from how Watson got a long backswing.
On the downswing his shaft plane is fairly steep for a Tour player. A lot of Tour players get confused with ‘coming over the top’ when they have a shallow shaft plane, but their left arm just juts out more than normal. With Watson his left arm seems fairly inward, but the shaft is a smidge upright.
And what see is some tremendous extension. Particularly in this wonderful picture:
Tom used to have a big reverse C finish and I think it was just a way of his brain telling him to get into extension in order to get the ball up in the air with that steeper shaft plane. Particularly back in the day when he was hitting persimmon drivers.
3JACK
