Fix Your Slice
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Flexing the lead wrist more than it was at set up is a key movement for squaring the club face. This move will fix your slice and help you hit it further.
Some golfers do it in the backswing, like Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka. Some in transition - like Henrik Stenson or Justing Thomas. Some during the release, like Rory Sabatini and John Senden.
Many amateurs have the club MORE OPEN than it was at set up and have to swing outside in or scoop it as part of the pattern.
Tags: Fundamentals, Poor Contact, Not Straight Enough, Chicken Wing, Cast, Draw vs Fade, Member Question, Concept, Intermediate
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In this analysis video, we're going to take a look at the motorcycle movement.
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So I had a question from one of the members about,
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can you do the motorcycle at the top of the swing instead of trying it to do it during transition?
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So I thought I'd do an analysis video where we take a look at the, where the motorcycle
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move really came from and how you can see it on 2D and what it looks like on 3D.
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Because you'll see on 3D it's pretty apparent what pros are doing with their lead wrist in order to help
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control the club face to set up for a more body-powered swing. So these two golfers here
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tend to have a more classic motorcycle pattern. And there's three places you can look for at the
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wrist position in order to determine when they're doing their motorcycle movement. The first checkpoint
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is when the shaft is parallel in the back swing. And what you're just going to look for is the angle
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between the wrist and the forearm. And you'll see that both of these golfers have a little bit of
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extension of that lead wrist. So they didn't really flex the wrist or do any of that motorcycle
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movement during the takeaway. And you can see in both cases the club face is just slightly
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more closed in the classic sense or just slightly more rotated down than vertical.
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Okay so now if we go up to the second checkpoint we're going to look at the top of the swing.
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So there might have been a little bit there. The wrist is pretty close to flat. It's definitely not
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100% but it's pretty close to flat. So we know that possibly they just then over on the right
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did some during that part of the swing. And or we don't see quite as much of a change so you can
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still see that there is a bit of an extension at that position there. So neither of these guys
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are really major backswing motorcyclists. So now sometimes it's a little harder to see. So I zoomed
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in so that we can look at their wrist here in transition. And now if I just kind of scrub back
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and forth you can see right there at the top of the swing. As he's already started shifting his
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weight and shifting his pressure you can see that that left wrist is starting to flex. And so then
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that second checkpoint is looking at the shaft roughly when it gets back down to where it was
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or back down to parallel. So now if you remember in the backswing his wrist was slightly bent this way
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and so now at this point is significantly bent the other way. He's flex that lead wrist
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probably a good 30 or 40 degrees and we saw most of it was done between the top of the swing
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because it's pretty straight there and that position there. So this would be more of the classic
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transition motorcycle movement. If we look at Henrik we're going to see less exaggerated but
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the same pattern. So when we get him down to about shaft parallel you'll see that there's a slight
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amount of bow. He's not one of the ones who does a he doesn't have the 40 50 degrees of movement
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like a Justin Thomas. He may be more in the lower end more like the 2030. But if I bring him back
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to his takeaway position you can see that okay right there there's clearly more
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extension in that lead wrist and then by the timing gets down to their after transition you can see that
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there is significantly less. That is the motorcycle movement and these two are demonstrating the most
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classic timing which is happening during transition. Before we look at the timing of what other
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tour pros do let's look at some 3D graphs to make it easier to see what we're about to look for.
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On the x-axis you have a timeline so you have a dress position top of the swing impact
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and finish. So here are the different phases of the golf swing and then on the y-axis this represents
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flexion and this represents extension. So the more that the graph is going down like this or is negative
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the golfer if it's negative they are in an extended position if it's going negative they are
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extending. If it the graph is positive they are flexing or sorry they're in a flexion position
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if it is going positive or trending upward then they are flexing. So basically from a dress position
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this golfer had about 13 degrees of extension which is a little low so this is let's say a weaker
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grid. During the backswing they increased their extension about 10 degrees or so so that they had about
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25 degrees at the top. So a little bit of cup at the top of the swing right here and then all this
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from here to here this positive movement is flexing the wrist until this position here which is about
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shaft parallel or a little bit after shaft parallel. So the majority of the downswing this golfer
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is pretty consistently flexing that lead wrist which will rotate the face in a more close position.
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This transition flexion like this is the classic version of the motorcycle movement.
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All right in the second graph we have another PJ tour winner and this golfer is demonstrating
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more of the backswing version of the motorcycle movement. So what you'll notice is the between
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address and top of the swing that's where we see a big uptake and it's really this is about
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shaft parallel so it's really during setting the club where this golfer is flexing the wrist
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or doing a pretty massive motorcycle movement because you can see that they started around 45 degrees
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extended and then at the top of the swing they've gone to a slightly you know five maybe even
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78 degrees of flex. Now what you'll see is they don't really increase it any more from there. In fact
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they decrease it a little bit as they're kind of going through that early transition maybe they're pulling
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down just slightly with the arms which causes that the typically increase but you'll see that coming
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into impact there's a little bit of an increase so this movement here is typically from
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created more when the body is rotating as opposed to pulling too much with the arms but then you'll
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see the classic release of that position so then at impact it's called for a had a stronger grip
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and you'd see it impact they have a slight extension of the wrist or a slight cup so they're not
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totally bold at impact but you can see compared to when where they started they are somewhere about
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30 or 40 degrees more flexed than they were at set up so if transition is the most common
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and the backswing is probably the second most common this is by far the least common and this is
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more of a release motorcycle this golfer will tend to look like they have a open or extended wrist
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down in transition we'll look at a couple examples of golfer who have more of this pattern so you'll see
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that this golfer started with a weaker grip flexed during the takeaway but then extended it to
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cup the wrist and create more of like a vertical lag situation at the top of the swing now
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this golfer starts the flex a little bit but it's kind of plateau here as they have a pretty
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pronounced cup midway through the downswing so this is a golfer where you would look at them at
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let's say somewhere around here is probably shaft parallel and somewhere around here is shaft parallel
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and you would say that this golfer is actually more extended during the downswing than they were
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in the backswing but then what would be hard to see is you would look at them at impact and you would
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notice that they had a significant amount of flexion in that lead wrist at impact so they would look like
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they had a boat or flat left wrist even though at at delivery position they still had a cup to wrist
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so this is the minority I haven't seen too many golfer's like this where it's flexing
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and doing the motorcycle movement of about 30-40 degrees in this short period of time but there are
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at least a handful of examples who do this pattern pretty well. Lastly we'll look at a higher
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handicap amateur golfer who battles with a slice and now you'll see why the motorcycle movement is one
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of the critical movements to developing your stock tour swing so right around here he starts at about
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20 degrees no problem flexes the wrist during the takeaway so kind of has a inside and shut
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look at shaft parallel and then during the second part of the backswing he tends to extend the
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wrist and really kind of cup it as he's hinging his wrist so he tends to have a look of a really
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big wrist set at the top of the swing where he's got somewhere around 30 degrees of extension of the wrist
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and you'll see he tries to start with his body and he tries to give a little bit of the
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motorcycle movement but it's the scale here it's most of the pros we're doing at about 30-40 degrees
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you can see that he's doing it somewhere around 15 and then the bigger problem is because he had
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increased the amount of extension at the top of the swing that 15 degrees barely gets it past where it
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was set up and then when he hits the ball you can see right there he's hitting the ball with more
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extension in the wrist than he had it set up that means that he's opened the club face compared
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to where it was it set up and the only way that he's going to hit this street is if his hands
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are back so he doesn't have shaft lane and if he swings more outside in that's the only way that
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he's going to get this wrist position to hit the ball at the target so if you're trying to get
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more shaft lane if you're trying to get out of a slicing pattern learning the flexion move learning
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the motorcycle move is one of the key movements that you'll want to incorporate in your swing
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in the rest of video we're going to take a look at those two other examples of Torpros who
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do the motorcycle movement either to end the backswing or during the release okay so here we
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have two golfers who are going to then demonstrate more of the backswing motorcycle so here at the
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first checkpoint you've got the wrist is slightly extended pretty close to flat and then as he
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goes up towards the top of the swing you'll see he's got it in a boat position so you can see the
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between that first checkpoint and this one here he has increased that flexion and then by the time
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he gets down to shaft parallel he's increased it a little bit more but most of it was done
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during that setting phase during the backswing he probably would be a blend of some backswing
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some transition haven't actually seen his 3D graph though now you may see notice that the two
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examples I'm using for this backswing motorcycle movement hit the ball fairly long I can tell you
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that the 3D graph that I used was a PGA tour winner but he's definitely not one of the longer he's
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probably not even in the top 100 in terms of distance so I don't want you to think that doing it
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in the backswing is more powerful but for some it does especially some amateurs it's a little bit
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simpler because you don't have to focus quite so much on movement during transition so here we have
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Dustin again that checkpoint you can see just a little bit of flexion there and then as he gets to the
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top of the swing you'll see a very pronounced amount of flexion and then as he comes down
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you'll see relatively close to the same amount he had at the top of the swing he's going to look a
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lot closer to that backswing motorcycle graph okay so it's a little bit trickier to see the release
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motorcycle so I'm going to show you two different golfers we're going to look at Roy over here from
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this is Roy Sabotini we'll look at him from both views and you'll see it's a little bit harder to see
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the amount of extension from the face on but the only reason I'm going to use the face on is so that we can
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confirm that at impact and just past impact you'll see that he's got a fair amount of bow to
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that wrist right so here's pretty much the top of the the radius and then the hand is a boat a little bit
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away from that okay so now if I fast forward to his down line you'll see that when I get him down
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first let's do the takeaway checkpoint so take away checkpoint you can see
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fairly straight okay we know he's going to increase that by impact when I get him back down to that
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checkpoint you'll see that it's still fairly straight if I go one frame let's go up you can see that
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it looks like it still has a fair amount of cup to it and it's pointing well up towards the sky
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compared to the other two so that means that between here and impact is when he's doing that lead
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wrist flexion move or that motorcycle movement over on the right we have John Senden this is a
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great close up of the hands and so we don't even have to really look at it from down the line you can
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see here that there's clearly a fair amount of extension now here's where the release
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motorcycle movement will really come into view so he's going to go and as he's approaching
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impact you can see that as he was releasing the club he was also flexing the wrist it's hard to
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see because the wrist is rotating at the same time you can see it's got a fair amount of extension
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there and then at impact all that extension is gone so you do have the option as far as when to choose
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to work on the motorcycle movement you can either do it during the backswing and just kind of try to
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keep it there or you can do it during transition that's the most common time or you can do it during
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the release that requires more of a hands feeling but some guys really like the feeling in the lead
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wrist went bowing through impact so those are three different versions of the motorcycle movement
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if you're having a hard time putting this movement into your golf swing then it could be more of the
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shaft shallowing or more of being blocked by sequencing or shaft shallowing or what the right
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arm is doing there's lots of reasons but this is a key movement for you to train if you really want
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a master of your golf striking so if you're looking for these key movements you'll start to see
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that some of the weirder swings like let's say a gym if you're still demonstrate the key movements
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common with most good ball strikers so you'll see you saw not a lot of flexion not a lot of
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flexion and then by the time he gets down to shaft parallel you can see there's kind of the angle
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of the wrist there's or the form and there's the wrist and see about 20 degrees of flexion or so
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so he's more of the classic transition motorcyclist but you'll start to see the common moves that
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build up an elite golf swing and you'll learn to discount some of the unique timing movements that
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make their swings their own individual version of the stock tour swing