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In this analysis video, we're going to look at the sway pattern.

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Now the sway pattern is any amount of lateral movement of the pelvis away from the target.

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The tour average is about half an inch, which doesn't show up very well on video.

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It's barely anything.

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The easiest way to view the sway is from the face-on camera view.

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If you draw a line from the outside of the ankle to the outside of the hip, we're looking

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for any amount of movement to the outside of that line or away from the target.

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The two areas you can look at to see the effects of the sway are going to be this amount

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of space right here, or you can look at the trail foot if it's subtle.

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So if you were to look at the foot and we took this golfer through his backswing again,

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you would see that as he goes towards the top of the swing, that foot is going to roll

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onto the outside.

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That provides a very poor platform to then push off of during the transition in the

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down swing.

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Mechanically there's a small advantage for one power source, which we'll talk about later.

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But the pattern of the sway is typically inconsistent contact with the irons, and especially

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with the irons.

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You will tend to struggle with fat and thin contact, but there's no real advantage from

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a consistency or any particular shot that is helped by having the sway pattern.

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So it's typically one of the more frustrating patterns because it simply just builds

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inconsistency.

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There's a small handful of tour examples of swayers, but probably the most prominent would

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be BJC.

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So if we were to draw the line from the outside of his hip to the outside of his foot, we

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can take him up towards the top of the swing and you will see a clear shift into the

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backswing of the or a clear lateral movement of the pelvis into the backswing.

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But if you were to pay attention to his trail foot, you would see that he never really

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rolled to the outside of the foot.

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That's something that you'll typically only see with an amateur sway, where a pro sway

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will just have this lateral movement.

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Another example of a tour player who has the sway pattern is Camille of a Jigas.

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Now this camera moves, so that's not going to be a very good thing to use the line

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for, but just look at the amount of space in this chair compared to his white pants.

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As you'll see during the backswing, the amount of space is going to decrease slightly.

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He has a much more subtle sway than BJC, but he does have a sway.

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He will also note that he does not get onto the outside of the foot the way the amateur

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is due, that is purely a movement that is going to cause inconsistency and lack of drive

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from the lower body.

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So there's kind of two different versions of the sway, the tour sway and the amateur sway.

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Now it's important to note that these two examples, and I'm sure there are others, but

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these two examples, hit lots of golf balls in order to keep their consistency because of

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the inherent built-in inconsistency to the sway pattern.

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Typically if you're going to be very good with a sway, you need to hit balls almost every

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single day in order to keep your the subtleties to your timing, your rhythm, and knowing

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where the bottom of your swing is.

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Now let's take a power path and face perspective and look at what the sway does for the overall

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swing.

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I'm a power perspective, this sway actually helps load the let.

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Now the let is a large muscle that connects the pelvis or to the upper arm.

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So it kind of spans half of your back and it's a very large muscle.

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When the pelvis shifts, laterally away from the target, it helps get the basically the

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top of the let in a more powerful position compared to the bottom of the let.

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So frequently with these amateurs, if I'm going to use my lat and my shoulder to pull

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my upper body or pull my arms down, whether that's a pull straight vertically or a pull

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with rotation, the sway actually helps load that lateral movement.

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You'll see in both of these cases of amateurs, there's a pretty clear movement of that

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left shoulder, rotating and slightly lunging during that transition movement.

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And the sway to finish the top of the back swing helps make that movement more powerful.

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With the tour sway pattern, you will see that even though there's a sway, VJ is still

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able to initiate the swing with the upper body or sorry with the lower body and the pelvis

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and you'll see that the left shoulder weights its turn before it pulls.

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This is largely due to what the amateurs sway does to the foot and getting on the outside

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of the foot pretty much weakens your ability to push with that trail rig like and

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to create hip or pelvis rotation.

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So it leaves you with pretty much an upper body dominated swing.

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That upper body dominated swing will tend to steep in the path of the club.

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In addition, the amateurs sway will tend to have a trouble getting a fair amount of pelvis

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side bend as they come back into this delivery position where the tour sway, you'll

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see that VJ is still able to maintain pretty good movement with the pelvis and he's able

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to get his lower body farther ahead of his upper body.

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He hasn't gone into his side bend quite yet and if we take him right about there, you

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can see a certain amount of side bend but it's probably easier if we look at zipper

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to short buttons.

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The sway will tend to support or tend to move more with this lunge pattern and you'll

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see his zipper to short buttons is a little bit more vertical.

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From a face perspective, the sway by itself does absolutely nothing for changing the face

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orientation to the path.

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The sway by itself does not have any necessarily common compensation but one common pattern

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is to have sway combined with early extension.

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So since the sway is going to create a steepening of the swing path because of where the upper

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body is going to go, typically that early extension will help balance that back out.

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Also because the lat gets loaded, it's very common for the arms to work a little bit

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more vertically in this sway pattern and so the body moving in towards the golf ball

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during the downswing which we will describe more in the early extension section is a common

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way to balance that back out.

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So even a golfer like VJ saying who has more of that tour sway and less of the steepening

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of the arms will still have a slight amount of the early extension to balance out or

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to compensate for some of his sway mechanics.