Learning From the Great Seasons (and Swings) of Rory McIlroy, Lydia Ko and Scottie Scheffler
As the inimitable Yogi Berra put it, “You can observe a lot just by watching.” The Yankee Hall of Fame catcher wasn’t talking about improving your golf game by tuning into Tour pros on TV, but the Yogi-ism still applies here. Even with the major professional circuits finished for the year and the cold weather in many parts of the nation there is still plenty of PGA, LPGA, Champions, and European Tour tournaments re-airing daily on Golf Channel (not to mention the end-of-year “silly season” events), meaning each day offers a plate full of TV golf watching opportunities to savor, study, and learn from.
But before we get started, let me share something Gary Player told me years ago during an interview. He said, “a lot of golf fans think we pros have one swing that we repeat time after time, but the truth is even though our swings may look the same to them, we’re always experimenting or trying something new in the effort to get better.”
Where better to begin than with a discussion of the golf swings of Rory McIlroy and Lydia Ko, the current world No. 1s? Both players had seen their performance fall a bit in recent years after having set the standard for golf excellence. Coming into this season, McIlroy hadn’t won a major in seven years and Ko hadn't in six. Thanks to small and interestingly opposite adjustments each player recently made to their swings, however, both have clearly regained their top-of-the game form.
McIlroy, recalibrated his swing’s fast and powerful body rotation—always the key to his action—this year by lowering or flattening his left arm’s swing plane in his backswing, so that now both it and the club shaft arrive at the top of his swing positioned slightly under his right shoulder. As recently as last season, that left arm and shaft swung back on a slightly more upright plane to a position above his right shoulder at the top of his swing.
McIlroy’s flattening or “deepening” (the word Jack Nicklaus used for the same type of adjustment he made in his swing in the late 1970s) of his backswing plane this season allows him to again pivot faster and more aggressively in his downswing and through the ball again, as he has in essence reconfigured his body and club into a more compact spinning unit and system. Think of a figure skater on ice who folds and tucks her arms snugly into her chest in order to spin as fast as she can, then extends her arms to bring that rotation to an abrupt halt.
Back on dry land, this small adjustment has paid off big time for McIlroy, whose 321.3-yard average driving distance was second by .1 yard on the PGA Tour in 2021-22 (behind Cameron Champ) and reaffirmed him as the current game’s best driver of the golf ball. Some other contemporary rotational or fast-pivoting players whose swings you might observe and learn from include Sergio Garcia, Jon Rahm, Matt Kuchar and Rickie Fowler. Of course, the archetype for this low-left-arm-plane swinger remains the great Ben Hogan.
Opposite to McIlroy’s change, Lydia Ko this year steepened her backswing plane, which over the last few seasons had fallen or dropped to a flatter or “lower” alignment in relation to her right shoulder at the top of her swing. TV viewers toward the end of this year saw Ko practice or drilling this steep takeaway action very distinctly in her extended waggle or pre-shot routine before every full swing.
By re-reclaiming the kind of upright/higher backswing plane, which served her so well during her incredibly productive 2014-16 seasons, Ko once again was able to generate maximum clubhead speed and control. She achieved this not by a fast and tightly wound rotational action like McIlroy’s, but rather by using her body more as a structural system of support and transportation “tool” for her high arm swing and full clubhead arc. Now, Ko can once again channel a tremendous amount of momentum and force through her club in a free-flowing motion into the ball. We can call Ko, then, more of an arm swinger than a rotational player, with many other contemporary Tour stars such as Justin Thomas, Cameron Young, Will Zalatoris and Inbee Park fitting into this same category.
Golfers would do well to ask themselves if they self-identify as fast-moving body-pivot swingers, or high hands-and-arms swinging players. Some might say, “I can do it both ways,” and that’s great. If one doesn’t work one day for them, these golfers have the other type of swing to fall back on.
Scottie Scheffler, the 2022 PGA Tour Player of the Year, burst into superstardom this year with his Masters victory in April, after having accrued three other wins in his previous five tournament starts. He also brought to the attention of golf fans perhaps the most unique hip/pelvis and lower body action the golf world has seen since … well, since watching LPGA Tour star Lexi Thompson swing the club. Both Scheffler and Thompson, 26 and 27 respectively, counter torque or twist their hip or pelvic joints backward in the opposite direction of their forward turning shoulders as their clubs approach then release through impact.
Distinctly visible on TV, especially during slow motion playbacks of his swings, Scheffler’s counter hip torque action drags and slides Scheffler’s right leg and foot forward and inward as he strikes the ball. Similarly, when watching Lexi on TV, observe how as she approaches impact, the torso portion of her golf shirt, creases, wrinkles, and appears to fold and flow backward to the right in an opposite response to her forward swinging shoulders.
Keep in mind that while it is an abundance of talent that allow Scheffler and Thompson to swing as they do (that said, these counter-torquing forces motions exist in all golfers’ swings, though to less dynamic degrees), the goal of all golfers remains to engage utilize their core muscles in their torsos in synchronizing the turning of the body and the movement of their arms throughout their swings.
Speaking of the marvelously integrated motion of quality golf swings, let’s look at the wonderfully full and rhythmic golf swings of this year’s LPGA Rolex Rookie of the Year, Atthaya Thitikul, (age 19) and of 2022 PGA Tour Rookie of the Year finalist, Tom Kim (age 20). No doubt while the fluidity and flexibility of theses swings have much to do with their practitioners’ limber age, these two golf swings can remind all golfers to swing their clubs with as full a range of motion from startup to finish.
Let’s conclude not with not with something I saw on TV, but with words I read here, specifically something Collin Morikawa said to golf writers at this year’s World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba in Mexico.
Addressing the stress he felt this past season at not playing his best, and the conundrum he felt about his faltering swing, Morikawa inadvertently expressed the often overlooked yet essential ingredient golfers need for an enduringly healthy game. He said, “I've just been kind of trying to figure out what was wrong when it was simply just kind of a body thing and just the way my body was moving …”
So many top-level golf instructors today use, if not rely on, a tool chest of high-tech external measuring devices that include TrackMan and FlightScope, both of which record ball spin, speed and direction, amongst other clubface and clubhead data, at impact. However, Morikawa’s comment directly redirects our attention inwardly, to a solution that lies in a process called “proprioception,” which provides us with the our awareness of how our bodies move through three-dimensional space (whether hitting a golf ball or not).
A great book to help us improve our sense of proprioception remains Timothy Gallwey’s "The Inner Game of Tennis." First published in 1974, the tome has become a landmark study in the then burgeoning field of sports psychology, and one that professional coaches Pete Carroll and Steve Kerr have revered and used with their football and basketball teams. With the help of a little bit of imagination, much of the book’s content also works great for golfers, who by substituting the word “golf” for “tennis” whenever possible, will find themselves amazed at how much it will improve their games.