Click here and enter your email address to watch the full video
Tyler Ferrell is the only person in the world named to Golf Digest's list of Best Young Teachers in America AND its list of Best Golf Fitness Professionals in America. Meet your new instructor.

Subscribe now to watch the full video.

Swing Analysis - Charles Howell III - Driver & Fitness Program

As a follow-up to the previous analysis video, we will now take a look at the dynamics of Charles Howell III's driver swing. Specifically, we will discuss how a player's dominant power source can reveal his/her tendencies for sequencing and miss patterns. We will also discuss how a properly designed fitness program can improve these items. As I have had the privilege to work with Charles in a one-on-one setting, this analysis video may also provide a better idea of how I approach coaching and training such an elite level player.

Tags: Driver, Analysis

00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,000
So in this analysis video, we're going to take a look at the driver swing of Charles Hald III.

00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:12,000
So in the first video, I did an analysis of his iron play and how geometry can really help make you a really good iron player.

00:00:12,000 --> 00:00:17,000
In this video, I'm going to talk a little bit more about the dynamics of his swing.

00:00:17,000 --> 00:00:24,000
And specifically, I'm going to share a little story about his fitness program and how that,

00:00:24,000 --> 00:00:29,000
how he trains his body can influence how well he's hitting his driver.

00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:34,000
Okay, so if we start this swing analysis the same way, if we look at the driver swing,

00:00:34,000 --> 00:00:38,000
we can see that he's got some pretty good track man numbers, right?

00:00:38,000 --> 00:00:43,000
Overall pretty neutral path, slightly close, so he's going to get a nice little draw,

00:00:44,000 --> 00:00:49,000
hitting slightly up on the ball. This is something that he and his coach have worked on the ability to do.

00:00:49,000 --> 00:00:57,000
That's helped him a lot, really solid numbers. So the question is, okay, he's got really good path numbers.

00:00:57,000 --> 00:01:05,000
Why would someone like Charles Hald tend to get some open club face issues?

00:01:05,000 --> 00:01:10,000
Because he'll tell you that his main miss is when he hits the ball off to the right.

00:01:11,000 --> 00:01:15,000
So I'm going to talk to you about what's going on in his swing that might contribute to that

00:01:15,000 --> 00:01:21,000
and how it might relate to your game if you struggle with either your driver or your iron play.

00:01:22,000 --> 00:01:27,000
So if we look at this position, shaft is pretty vertical. So even though he has lean or

00:01:27,000 --> 00:01:33,000
leg compared to his body, similar to what he had with the iron because his upper body is so much

00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:38,000
more behind the golf ball, the shaft is pretty vertical. That's one of the aspects that helps

00:01:38,000 --> 00:01:45,000
with that positive angle of attack. He's from the down the line, we saw that the club path was

00:01:46,000 --> 00:01:52,000
neutral. If we're looking at some of these checkpoints as far as where the club is passing

00:01:52,000 --> 00:01:59,000
compared to the hands, you can see two little checkpoints as far as where is the club in the

00:01:59,000 --> 00:02:03,000
follow-through when it kind of passes through the hands, the more that it passes on this side of the

00:02:03,000 --> 00:02:09,000
hands, the more it's going to be in and out and the more that it passes on this side of the hands,

00:02:09,000 --> 00:02:15,000
the more it's going to be out to in. So a lot of you golfers who slice the ball, you'll have the

00:02:15,000 --> 00:02:23,000
club kind of follow-up path from impacts where it'll go a little bit more low kind of like this.

00:02:25,000 --> 00:02:31,000
So anyway, he's got pretty good path numbers from these two which you can kind of see a little bit

00:02:31,000 --> 00:02:38,000
from the two checkpoints. Seeing that risk go into extension there in the down swing, it's often

00:02:38,000 --> 00:02:47,000
hard to see. So here is a 3D risk graph looking at flexion extension. So this is an older swing of

00:02:47,000 --> 00:02:53,000
Charles. He's actually worked on this and definitely gotten better at it. So you can see that he starts

00:02:53,000 --> 00:02:59,000
with the risk than about 35 degrees of extension and then during the backswing as he gets towards the

00:02:59,000 --> 00:03:05,000
top of the swing it's pretty close to flat but you can see right through here is he's starting to

00:03:05,000 --> 00:03:12,000
go towards extension until about delivery positions. I midway in the down swing and then from there

00:03:12,000 --> 00:03:19,000
when it goes positive like this that's when he's flexing that risk. So we can see right around here

00:03:19,000 --> 00:03:25,000
is where that little trough or that maximum extension in the down swing would be and then from here

00:03:26,000 --> 00:03:35,000
down to where right around this frame here he would be flexing the risk then lose a little bit as he

00:03:35,000 --> 00:03:42,000
goes through the impact. But what can happen is when you're opening that club face by extending

00:03:42,000 --> 00:03:48,000
the risk early in transition it adds a little bit of timing that you're trying to do when the club

00:03:48,000 --> 00:03:56,000
is moving really fast. The metaphor that I use is imagine we were playing bad men and the role was

00:03:56,000 --> 00:04:02,000
I was giving you heavier and heavier bad men and rackets. So at first with the bad men racket really

00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:07,000
light you can be totally out of position and just lick your wrist and square the club face up.

00:04:07,000 --> 00:04:12,000
But if I gave you a bad man racket that weighed two pounds, three pounds, ten pounds the heavier it

00:04:12,000 --> 00:04:19,000
got the more that you have to be in position earlier in order to line everything up because you

00:04:19,000 --> 00:04:26,000
couldn't rely on just changing it accurately last minute. Well when it comes to the driver the driver

00:04:26,000 --> 00:04:32,000
is a longer club than we swing it faster it's got more inertia. Essentially down at the bottom

00:04:32,000 --> 00:04:39,000
it's like a heavier racket and it becomes harder to then time up squaring the club face late. So a lot

00:04:39,000 --> 00:04:46,000
of the really accurate and really consistent drivers to golf ball tend to square it up early. Now

00:04:47,000 --> 00:04:53,000
I promised I'd talk to you a little bit about his power sources and how they relate. Charles has

00:04:53,000 --> 00:05:00,000
a tendency to pull down with the arms especially the lats. So I'll share a quick story from a

00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:06,000
tournament that I went to with him where they were on the range of this time he was working

00:05:06,000 --> 00:05:13,000
with Grant Wait and they were swinging really well. Had to you know just hit in lots of nice little

00:05:13,000 --> 00:05:19,000
draws and I said I walked over to him because I kind of had this idea about his over dominance

00:05:19,000 --> 00:05:24,000
with his lats and I said hey do you mind if I mess you up a little bit do a little experiment.

00:05:24,000 --> 00:05:30,000
He kind of laughed at me saying like you can't mess me up but low and behold I had him drop the club

00:05:30,000 --> 00:05:34,000
and get into like a lap pull down position so he's kind of like this and I went and put my arms

00:05:34,000 --> 00:05:40,000
underneath him to apply a little bit of resistance and I just had him pull down kind of you know

00:05:40,000 --> 00:05:45,000
a little aggressively just to activate the lats so I had him pull down for about 10 seconds.

00:05:46,000 --> 00:05:51,000
After that he proceeded to hit the next four balls about 40 or 50 yards right.

00:05:52,000 --> 00:05:59,000
So basically all I did was I activated his power source so that he was using more of his lats

00:06:00,000 --> 00:06:06,000
to pull the club down and when he was using more of his lats in transition he tended to open the face a

00:06:06,000 --> 00:06:10,000
little bit more and flare it off to the right. Now he's kind of a

00:06:11,000 --> 00:06:18,000
experimenter tinker by nature so when he went home a few weeks later he tested it out himself.

00:06:19,000 --> 00:06:25,000
He went to the he normally works out and then goes to the range so during his workout one day

00:06:25,000 --> 00:06:32,000
he did a lot of TRX rows and and lap pull type exercises and he said that he hit the ball

00:06:32,000 --> 00:06:40,000
really terribly felt like he was kind of stuck all day and then later in that week he did the

00:06:40,000 --> 00:06:46,000
program that we had designed so he did a lot more mobility work and a lot more stability work

00:06:46,000 --> 00:06:53,000
some end range strength but most of the heavier lifting was for his core and his legs and that

00:06:53,000 --> 00:06:59,000
they hit the ball great. So part of the equation when you're looking at the driver or the longer

00:06:59,000 --> 00:07:05,000
club swing is matching up how you power the swing with how you control the club face and what can

00:07:05,000 --> 00:07:12,000
happen is if you are a two upper body dominant that can tend to cause club face control issues with

00:07:12,000 --> 00:07:18,000
the driver and you typically wouldn't see the same level of control issue with the iron. So you want

00:07:18,000 --> 00:07:25,000
to be if you want to be really good and consistent with the driver we want to get more of the speed

00:07:25,000 --> 00:07:31,000
being created from your legs and your core and less from your arms and shoulders. If you're looking

00:07:31,000 --> 00:07:37,000
for clues with your power source sometimes it's activities away from golf that can help.

00:07:38,000 --> 00:07:45,000
So here's Charles doing an exercise in his gym where he's got swing fan and he's just kind of

00:07:45,000 --> 00:07:52,000
working on some backswing positions and you'll notice if we look at his foot you'll see that he has

00:07:52,000 --> 00:08:01,000
a tendency to get a little bit further down into the downswing before he gets into that heel.

00:08:02,000 --> 00:08:10,000
So you'll see that this right here if we kind of scrub back and forth is a little bit more of the upper

00:08:10,000 --> 00:08:17,000
body leading the core as opposed to the lower body leading the core. So this is an area where doing

00:08:17,000 --> 00:08:23,000
things like step drills and sequence drills helps to get the lower body involved earlier and that

00:08:23,000 --> 00:08:30,000
can also oftentimes kind of downregulate or deep power the upper body that improves your sequencing

00:08:30,000 --> 00:08:37,000
allowing a little bit better face control ultimately creating a little bit better situation for the

00:08:37,000 --> 00:08:43,000
driver. Oftentimes golfers with more of an upper body pull will complain of two situations that

00:08:43,000 --> 00:08:49,000
cause them to hit the ball or to lose face control and both of those situations are when the power

00:08:49,000 --> 00:08:56,000
source gets exaggerated. So one is when they're trying to swing hard so if you are the tendency to swing

00:08:56,000 --> 00:09:01,000
more with your arms and your upper body I advocate working on your rhythm and working on making

00:09:01,000 --> 00:09:09,000
sure that you resist the temptation to swing hard. The second thing is when you get extremely nervous

00:09:09,000 --> 00:09:15,000
when your body gets stressed you're going to tend to exaggerate or amplify your power sources.

00:09:16,000 --> 00:09:24,000
So if you have more of a pulling or arm dominant power source working on managing your emotions

00:09:24,000 --> 00:09:31,000
and breathing exercises and things like that might be helpful as well. But long term if you want

00:09:31,000 --> 00:09:36,000
to improve your driver's sequence I'd highly recommend getting your lower body a little bit more

00:09:36,000 --> 00:09:42,000
involved earlier and relying less on your arm pull for your power source. So this video is a little

00:09:42,000 --> 00:09:46,000
different than my typical analysis videos. Typically with the analysis videos I want to just

00:09:46,000 --> 00:09:52,000
share what golfers do really well but I've got some some inside experience from working with

00:09:52,000 --> 00:09:57,000
Charles personally and so I thought it'd be fun to kind of share how I approach things a little bit

00:09:57,000 --> 00:09:59,000
more on the coaching side.

Subscribe now for full access to our video library.