Instruction

What you can learn from Jason Day’s win at the Arnold Palmer Invitational

Published

8 years ago

Mar 22, 2016

What can you say about Jason Day? He’s overcome adversity and trauma in his life, becoming one of the world’s best golfers. And with his first PGA Tour win of the 2015-2016 season, he moved ahead of Rory McIlroy and into the No. 2 spot in Official World Golf Rankings.

In this article, I’m going to discuss three things that were key to Day’s victory at the 2016 Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill, and what GolfWRX readers can learn from them.

Strategy

“There was not one shot today where I was comfortable,” Day said after his final round, in which he shot a 2-under par. It’s crazy to think this was the case, as I teach a lot of amateurs who, if they don’t feel comfortable over the ball, might not be able to shoot within 10 shots of their handicap. Even though Day’s technique is good and his understanding of his golf swing is profound, he doesn’t start trying to FIX his swing during tournament rounds, particularly when he’s in contention. Day accepts when his swing is not working at the highest level, and simply tries to score as low as he can.

I remember Butch Harmon famously saying that Tiger Woods was “playing golf swing, not golf” at the 2013 Masters. Tiger had a poor run of shots around Augusta’s Amen corner, and was obviously trying to tinker with his swing mid-round.

When you’re hitting the ball poorly, accept it and try to score your best with what you brought to the course. If you’re hitting a draw or fade, allow for it. Fixing your swing is best saved for the driving range or you next lesson.

Technique

Day swings it as sweetly as anyone on the PGA Tour, hence his No. 2 ranking. But it’s not all great in the stats department. He’s ranked 158^th in driving accuracy this year, indicating that he’s had his fair share of shots from the thick stuff. Day is ranked 63^rd this year in greens in regulation, however, so go figure.

Well, the shot Day hit to the No. 9 green on Sunday was one of the best of the tournament. If you don’t remember it, he found his tee shot in the right rough, had 168 yards to the pin, hardly any green to work with, and hit it to 14 inches from the hole.

How did he do it? All golfers find themselves in the thick stuff from time to time (apart from Moe Norman), so it’s crucial they know how best to play these kinds of shots. First, they need to generate enough speed in their swing to help get their club through the grass. That’s why golfers can’t slow their swing down on these kinds of shots.

Second, like any elite player, golfers need to contact with the ball first. If they get a large amount of grass between the club and ball, it could spell disaster. The grass can turn the club face closed on an epic scale, causing shots to go well left (if you’re right-handed) of the intended target.

To minimize the affect of the grass, golfers need to “drag the handle,” as I call it. In other words, they need to feel like the butt end of the golf club is the first to get to the target on the downswing. The club head will feel like its miles behind them and in a different time zone, but that’s ok. The move encourages the much sought after V-shaped angle of attack needed to ensure the club face meets the ball first, and not the grass.

Mindset

The shot that will be remembered the longest from the 2016 Arnold Palmer Invitational is likely Day’s shot bunker shot on No. 18. He had 30 yards to the hole from behind the green, with the green sloping toward toward the water in front. Needing a par to win and a bogey to tie, it was never going to be an easy shot, but Day made it look ridiculously easy.

Again, Day’s technique is pretty darn good, especially out of bunkers, but as one of my old mentors liked to say: “You can have the best technique in the world, but if you have low confidence and nothing between the ears, you ain’t never gonna make it as a player.”

Day went into that shot focusing on what he WANTED to do with the shot, not what he DIDN’T WANT from the shot. I could put my mortgage (and more) on the fact that most amateurs would go into that sort of shot trying to avoid the water. The Jason Day’s don’t even contemplate the possibility of thinning it into the water, chunking it and leaving it in the trap — at least when they’re playing at a high level.

Trust me, you will be far better off focusing on what you WANT to achieve with the shot than what you DON’T want to achieve. Bad shots in this game are inevitable, but you’re less likely to hit them when you’re concentrating on the process of hitting good shots.

Do you have further questions about Day’s performance or what I wrote about in this article? Post in the comments section, and I’ll do my best to respond.

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Richard Cartwright

Richard is the Head Golf Instructor at Whittlebury Park Golf and Country Club in Northamptonshire, UK. He's on a journey to discover why he couldn’t achieve success as a Tour Pro at a young age, and is helping golfers understand what they can do to reach their potential. He uses using Trackman and GASP LAB video analysis, and well as his own experience, to help his students discover the "why" in their games.

5 Comments

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Mar 24, 2016 at 1:03 pm

that you shouldn’t swing like JDay as you’ll hurt your back, your career will be short and you will only have a few wins and won’t be able to play when you get older

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prime21

Mar 23, 2016 at 5:55 am

The only part of the article I don’t understand is the Butch commentary. While I understand the premise, I have a hard time believing that the best players in the world just say “who cares” & make zero corrections to their swings when they’re off. I vividly remember Butch walking Tiger through an “over the top” rehearsal during a rain delay at Bethpage, because he was getting stuck. Would this not be considered, “playing golf swing”? To say that when they’re off, they accept the misfire that is occurring and go with it, like somehow it can be accounted and played for, is misleading. The best players in the world know they’re faults to a T and are well equipped to deal with they’re off days. Depending on the miss, I suppose a player could account for it via alignment or ball position adjustments, but most likely I believe they will find the good pattern via rehearsals or even position drills. This would allow them to identify right from wrong and get the right on track more so than earlier in the round. If they couldn’t adjust on the fly, then they would lose more often than not when faced with the above predicament. Most importantly, when your miss is 20 yds wide left like J Day’s was early on Sunday, than you can’t just magically “play golf” in that manner, some adjustment must be made or your golf ball will simply keep “playing” in the water hazard left of the green.

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- Richard Cartwright
  
  Mar 24, 2016 at 2:38 pm
  
  Hi Prime21,
  You make some good points but I definitely wasn’t saying that elite players ‘don’t care’ if they hit a bad shot, of course they do, but to win a tournament you have to let go of the bad shots. Amateurs tend to remember their bad shots far more than their good.
  The main difference is the elite players KNOW what has happened, weekend golfers tend to take a stab in the dark and guess what has happened when they hit a bad shot, which leads to indecision, which leads to very inconsistent ‘army golf’ (left, right, left, right). A recipe for high scores.
  You will be far more effective changing things on the range than you would be out on the course. It is far too tempting to revert back to ‘old swing’ on the course and what feels comfortable.
  
  Reply Report comment
Richard Cartwright

Mar 22, 2016 at 12:25 pm

Hi David,

I agree, but the purpose of the article was to help weekend golfers learn from what Jason did on the final day at Bay Hill. Unfortunately, not all of us are going to be lucky enough to receive a text off Woods to give us confidence before our next game of golf.

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David

Mar 22, 2016 at 11:55 am

Amazing that you did not include anything under the mindset section about Tiger Woods text messages that Day received every hour. Day himself said those were a critically important factor in his win.

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Instruction

Clement: Laid-off or perfect fade? Across-the-line or perfect draw?

Published

17 hours ago

Apr 24, 2024

Shawn Clement

Some call the image on the left laid off, but if you are hitting a fade, this could be a perfect backswing for it! Same for across the line for a draw! Stop racking your brain with perceived mistakes and simply match backswing to shot shape!

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Instruction

The Wedge Guy: The easiest-to-learn golf basic

Published

4 weeks ago

Mar 29, 2024

Terry Koehler

My golf learning began with this simple fact – if you don’t have a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, it is practically impossible for your body to execute a fundamentally sound golf swing. I’m still a big believer that the golf swing is much easier to execute if you begin with the proper hold on the club.

As you might imagine, I come into contact with hundreds of golfers of all skill levels. And it is very rare to see a good player with a bad hold on the golf club. There are some exceptions, for sure, but they are very few and very far between, and they typically have beat so many balls with their poor grip that they’ve found a way to work around it.

The reality of biophysics is that the body moves only in certain ways – and the particulars of the way you hold the golf club can totally prevent a sound swing motion that allows the club to release properly through the impact zone. The wonderful thing is that anyone can learn how to put a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, and you can practice it anywhere your hands are not otherwise engaged, like watching TV or just sitting and relaxing.

Whether you prefer an overlap, interlock or full-finger (not baseball!) grip on the club, the same fundamentals apply. Here are the major grip faults I see most often, in the order of the frequency:

Mis-aligned hands

By this I mean that the palms of the two hands are not parallel to each other. Too many golfers have a weak left hand and strong right, or vice versa. The easiest way to learn how to hold the club with your palms aligned properly is to grip a plain wooden ruler or yardstick. It forces the hands to align properly and shows you how that feels. If you grip and re-grip a yardstick several times, then grip a club, you’ll see that the learning curve is almost immediate.

The position of the grip in the upper/left hand

I also observe many golfers who have the butt of the grip too far into the heel pad of the upper hand (the left hand for right-handed players). It’s amazing how much easier it is to release the club through the ball if even 1/4-1/2″ of the butt is beyond the left heel pad. Try this yourself to see what I mean. Swing the club freely with just your left hand and notice the difference in its release from when you hold it at the end of the grip, versus gripping down even a half inch.

To help you really understand how this works, go to the range and hit shots with your five-iron gripped down a full inch to make the club the same length as your seven-iron. You will probably see an amazing shot shape difference, and likely not see as much distance loss as you would expect.

Too much lower (right) hand on the club

It seems like almost all golfers of 8-10 handicap or higher have the club too far into the palm of the lower hand, because that feels “good” if you are trying to control the path of the clubhead to the ball. But the golf swing is not an effort to hit at the ball – it is a swing of the club. The proper hold on the club has the grip underneath the pad at the base of the fingers. This will likely feel “weak” to you — like you cannot control the club like that. EXACTLY. You should not be trying to control the club with your lower/master hand.

Gripping too tightly

Nearly all golfers hold the club too tightly, which tenses up the forearms and prevents a proper release of the club through impact. In order for the club to move back and through properly, you must feel that the club is controlled by the last three fingers of the upper hand, and the middle two fingers of the lower hand. If you engage your thumbs and forefingers in “holding” the club, the result will almost always be a grip that is too tight. Try this for yourself. Hold the club in your upper hand only, and squeeze firmly with just the last three fingers, with the forefinger and thumb off the club entirely. You have good control, but your forearms are not tense. Then begin to squeeze down with your thumb and forefinger and observe the tensing of the entire forearm. This is the way we are made, so the key to preventing tenseness in the arms is to hold the club very lightly with the “pinchers” — the thumbs and forefingers.

So, those are what I believe are the four fundamentals of a good grip. Anyone can learn them in their home or office very quickly. There is no easier way to improve your ball striking consistency and add distance than giving more attention to the way you hold the golf club.

Clement: Stop ripping off your swing with this drill!

Published

2 months ago

Mar 4, 2024

Shawn Clement

Not the dreaded headcover under the armpit drill! As if your body is defective and can’t function by itself! Have you seen how incredible the human machine is with all the incredible feats of agility all kinds of athletes are accomplishing? You think your body is so defective (the good Lord is laughing his head off at you) that it needs a headcover tucked under the armpit so you can swing like T-Rex?

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