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| SET-UP AND FIRST
MOVE: Custom-built for power
The first thing to say about Tiger is that he has conditioned
his body to play golf. He works harder in the gym than any player
on tour. But the crucial thing in all this is that his body is
balanced; he works on the muscle groups in proportion to the role
they each play in the swing. With his coach, Butch Harmon, Tiger
has figured out the perfect angle of attack, and found a way of
using all his strength to hit a power fade. The secret to repeating
this lies in eliminating all unecessary movement, not just in
the swing but also at address: no superfluous waggles, no nervous
jiggling of hands and club about the ball. Tiger is totally focused
and relaxed. He creates straight lines in the lower part of his
back and legs, flexes his knees and holds his head high. A good
posture allows the arms and hands to hang perfectly to meet the
club – just like this. |
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TAKING IT TO THE TOP: Width
first created, and then maintained |
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| Tiger
creates great resistance in his swing. That much is evident from
the moment he moves the club away from the ball. We can see that
his lower body is braced, the hips reluctant to turn as the upper
half begins the coiling process. Basically, he trusts that his
bottom half is going to hold steady and he simply rotates his
upper body against it.
In the initial stages of his swing, Tiger’s clear objective
is to establish as much width as possible – witness the
fact that his wrists have barely started to hinge as the arms
reach a horizontal position, and indeed they are barely hinged
even as they reach the top. This is sheer power play; a swing
that is all about turning the upper body about the axis of the
spine. Tiger’s astonishing athleticism is laid bare at the
top: the shoulders have turned fully through 90 degrees, while
the hips have barely turned through 30 – all of which explains
where Tiger’s tremendous leverage comes from. This is a
model of how to use ‘resistance’ in the swing to create
power. It is the the swing of a player whose method is based on
generating power with his body-centre, his ‘core’. |
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