Francesco Molinari Swing Analysis

Hey, what's up Rotary Swing Golfers. Welcome back to a brand new video this week. I'm RST instructor, Chris Tyler, and this week we are focusing in on the 2018 British Open Champion, Francesco Molinari. Who was able to play Carnoustie, this entire weekend, without making a bogey, which is absolutely incredible. So, congratulations to Francesco.

We get a lot of write-ins and requests on ways to become more consistent in the golf swing. And Francesco's got a lot of key points in his swing that we're going to focusing in on this week, so that you can start implementing those into your own swing and become a much better ball striker this year. Let's go ahead and get started now.

Okay, we're going to start off this video with one quick caveat by saying that, not every single time that we do a tour analysis, do these players have 100% of the RST fundamentals in place. But we are going to focus on some of the key points, and some of the attributes, that are very common with what we teach at Rotary Swing. We're going to go ahead and look at Francesco's impact position very close-up today, both facing on and down the line. Let's go ahead and get into the point of contact, both down the line and face on.

The first thing that we're going to focus on, from a face on perspective, this is a really key point for a lot of you golfers out there trying to get control at the bottom of the swing arc, is the position of the lead shoulder. Your lead shoulder is going to be your primary pivot point in the golf swing. This is going to determine where the club wants to bottom out. Now, if the lead shoulder is perfectly stacked over, on top of, the left ankle, so you have the left ankle, left hip, left knee, and left shoulder all stacked right on top of one another, then we know the golf club, when both hands and arms are fully extended, is going to bottom out just inside the lead shoulder.

So, we would have the ball position just off of our left ear in order to be able to hit down on the golf ball and compress it. Now, here's what I want you to think of. If this left shoulder moves back in this direction, at all, what does that do to the bottom of the swing arc? Well, that shifts it back, right? So, when you shift the bottom of the swing arc further back in this direction, what does that force you to have to do with your hands? It forces you to have to throw it a little bit earlier, so it's going to make it much harder for you to be able to maintain lag, can start making you really flip the club, can get you into some lackluster impact positions, where you don't have forward shaft lean.

We really want to work to have the lead shoulder as close to being stacked on top of the left ankle, as humanly possible. This is a very safe position that he's worked into, and it's also a good consistent position that allows us to control the bottom of the swing arc. First thing being, position of the lead shoulder. Let's work on getting that stacked all the way on top of the left ankle.

Now, second attribute, position of the lead wrist. When we are over onto our left side, we are looking to have this left wrist either flat or slightly bowed. What that's going to allow us to do is going to allow us to stay in control of the club. It's going to allow us to lean the shaft forward, which, in turn, is going to lead to compression. If we see our hands further back in this direction, and the club head working in this direction, then we know that we've flipped it. And that, in turn, is going to be adding loft, which, generally, around 80% of the shot shape that you see in the air is going to be dictated by face angle and the other 20% is dictated right around with the path.

If you're changing the face angle very quickly at the bottom of the arc, chances are you're going to have some erratic ball striking behavior. First thing, position of the lead shoulder. Second thing, position of the lead wrist.

Now, the third thing is the position of the spine. Being able to maintain spine angle throughout the entire golf swing; takeaway, back swing, down swing, and even long into the follow through, is really critical. Because that's going to keep us from having to make compensation with the hands and the arms. It's going to allow us not to have this carousal effect from our spine, where we're having to work on timing and get the spine back into its original position from where it started. If I back this up to his starting point, you're going to see that his spine angle is exactly where it was when he started the golf swing. You don't see any variance in that.

Now, one of the key points that allows him to be able to maintain his spine angle down in the hitting area is right down here, his trail foot. You will see a lot of great ball strikers, with their trail foot rolled in on the ground. You will not see them with their right foot kicked up. Now, you will see it with their driver swings, where they have kicked the right foot up off the ground. Now, all that does, yes, we are working on leveraging the ground. We are working on using the right side to help get things out of the way.

We are working to try to get the hips cleared out, as much as humanly possible. But with an iron swing, what the right foot does is, it helps us maintain posture and it also allows us to stall the body and allow the hands and arms to work independently from the body, at this point, so we can release the golf for max speed at the bottom of the arc.

Okay, guys, those are the really key points of the body position that you're going to be looking for when you get into impact. You're going to be looking for a good position of the lead shoulder. Then look for a good position of the lead wrist. Then you're going to look, to make sure, that you're maintaining spine by keeping that right foot down on the ground. We've got some videos here to help you out with that. You've got the role of the right foot in the downswing. We've got impact alignments face on, and impact alignments down the line.

Check those videos out. Let's work on getting those body positions all sorted out this year and I guarantee you'll start hitting the ball much, much better.