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Swing Analysis - Matt Wolff Vs Jim Furyk

As the last segment of our 3-part Matt Wolff swing analysis, I thought it would be fun to do a quick comparison to Jim Furyk. Despite the fact these (2) players have been discussed in the same breath lately, I believe their swings are actually quite different.

While they both share sharply vertical backswings and a strong shallowing of the club in transition, the ways in which they create these patterns are contrasting. Wolff generates more torso/pelvis rotation and sequences his downswing in a traditional "1-2-3" manner; this allows his arms to remain relatively passive before fully releasing at impact. As for Furyk, he rotates his torso/pelvis minimally in the backswing and relies on a vertical drop of the arms in transition to shallow the club. From there, he rotates hard through impact and his arms do not fully release until well after the ball is struck.

Ultimately, I think this is an interesting exercise as it shows how (2) world-class players can share a few common positions, yet have radically different "engines" behind them. Hopefully, it can provide a few ideas for examining the subtleties in your own swing.

 

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And this analysis video, we're going to do a quick comparison between gym fury and

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Matt Wolfswing, the see if they're really doing the same thing.

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So I see a lot of comparisons right now between Matt Wolf and gym fury.

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And I'm going to let these play through so that way if you're watching, you can go through

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and use the little, the comma or period case.

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You can frame back and forth and look at these swings and decide for yourself how similar

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they really are.

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Okay, so from one perspective, we can say that they both have a pretty big shallowing movement.

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We can see that the club kind of has some rotation in there and then the Matt Wolfswing,

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club has some rotation in there.

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So there's a pretty big, clean shift at the top of the swing.

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But that's pretty much where I think the similarities begin and end.

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If we look at Matt Wolfswing, we can see that there's not a lot of wrist movement and

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there's a lot of body movement to bring the club up to the top of swing.

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The body's happening from the hips and the trunk.

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When we look at gym fury swing, we'll see that most of the body movement is done here

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in that first part of the takeaway.

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He doesn't have very much pelvis rotation, he doesn't have very much trunk rotation,

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and he simply creates the height with the shoulders.

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Because he hasn't rotated, if he was to then really rotate his body, he would get steep.

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Everything would come outside the line.

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So then he creates a big shallowing movement at the shoulder, where Matt Wolf,

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because he had this big body rotation, his body can rotate and the shallowing movement

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is going to happen more at the wrist.

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He doesn't have to create this vertical arm movement of his shoulder on the way down.

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He can essentially keep the arms at a more consistent height compared to his body,

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and then shallow with the wrist while his body rotates pretty hard.

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So if we look over here with the gym, we'll see again a really big arm.

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If we're looking at the height of the arm compared to the chest,

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we'll see that there's a really big drop down there through transition as his hips turn out of the way.

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As his hips turn out of the way, you'll see that there's kind of a hinge,

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or there's a lack of communication from the lower body going into his chest.

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So basically his chest stays fairly close, then then it has a pretty good right through there,

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and then it has a pretty good rotation through impact,

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where Matt Wolf does a great job of rotating his lower body in his trunk,

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so he gets into a really good delivery position here,

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and then he can go a little bit more vertical and really kind of fire those arms down through impact,

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where because of gym's position, he can't really fire those arms through impact.

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It's more of a arms are along for the ride type situation.

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Now, while I think their engines are very different,

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some of the nuances of what makes them good at what they do is extremely different,

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I do want to highlight one little thing, which is if you are going to have a really big shallow movement,

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you cannot have a lot of forearm tension.

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So we're going to key in on two places where we can see that both of these golfers demonstrate

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softness, especially in the right hand at the top of the swing.

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All right, so we're going to look from two different views, but we're looking for

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what's going on with the right hand. So here with Matt Wolf, as I talked about in the

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driver analysis video, you'll see that right index finger open up and kind of come off the club,

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and it's going to stay, while the pressure of the index finger stays there,

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the, he's not gripping the club, which would be more of a sign of, of some tension in that

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top side of that forearm. So by having that hand a little bit more soft and open, that allows

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for that rotation and then he kind of re-grabbs onto the club right around here. Okay, so now

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if we look at Jim Furik and we go to the down the line view and set the face on view,

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it's not going to show up exactly the same, but as he does his shelling movement, you can see

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a gaping or a shadow appear between the right palm and the glove hand. In fact, when we get

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down to a kind of in this zone here, you can see that a lot of that right palm has come off the

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club. And part of that is because with where his elbow is that far behind him, if he was to keep

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the hand in contact with the club and he had normal joint range of motion, the club would be steep.

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So the only way that he can have the arm behind and get that amount of shallowness is to have

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the trail hand actually coming off the club. Well, if you're gripping really hard with that

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trail hand, you're probably not going to have it come off the club and then he gets it to re-attach

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kind of down in this zone here. So one big takeaway you can learn from studying these two golf swings

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is that if you want to have the club shallow in transition, you don't want to squeeze it really

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tight with that trail arm. But I want us to understand that simple plane shifts don't really

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indicate that every golfer is using their their body the same way. I would say that

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Matt Wolfe and Jim Furik are demonstrating two very different looking golf swings. They have one

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common element that that makes them easy to compare. But if you're trying to like learn how to

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apply it and understand your own swing, you want to understand some of these nuances of

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what powers this swing, so how are they using the body, what helps them make solid contract

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contacts, so how do they control their steeps and shallow balance and then how do they hit it straight,

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how do they control the club face, if we're looking at it more from that framework,

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then these two have very different golf swings.

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