Today, I am going to answer another question we were not able to get to during our first live webcast of The Surge Show [NOTE: Surge will do another live webcast TONIGHT at 8 PM Eastern]. It seems to be a good follow on from yesterday's post about Tiger Woods and his need for a new swing. The question comes from Robert Christadore who asks:
"Surge
I, and I'm sure many others, learn best by emulation. I've always played at my highest level when I played with better players because their good habits (setup, rhythm, tempo, course management) were on display for 4 hours. Now I try to watch the best players in the world on display weekly on the PGA Tour.My question is: besides DJ which players that are generally in contention and are getting air time - Jason Day comes to mind - exemplify some or all elements of the upright swing that you teach. Besides naming them, maybe you could describe what they do correctly that we could learn from."
Well, Robert, there aren't any current PGA Tour players that I would say are vertical on both sides of the ball like DJ. If you think about it, that shouldn't be much of a surprise as most of these young players learned golf after X-Factor became the rage a few years back. Nonetheless, there are some that are getting more vertical in their backswing which may give us hope for the future. For real examples of professionals who swing vertically we need to look at the LPGA, past and present, as well as the Champions Tour.
My West Coast Director, the legendary Derek Hardy, who has taught the Surge Swing for over 25 years, was the swing coach for LPGA greats Beth Daniel, Sally Little and Jane Geddes. Beth once wrote Derek and said "The swing you taught me has stood the test of time", which is both a testimonial to Derek's extraordinary teaching skills and to the fact that a vertical swing is, indeed, a swing for a lifetime. More recently, the incomparable Annika Sorenstam is a vertical swinger as is Cristie Kerr.
If you look at the Champions Tour, almost everyone of these guys is a vertical swinger because that's the way they learned the game 40-50 years ago before rotational swing theories became the vogue. A great example is Craig Stadler who has a very pure vertical swing on both sides of the ball. So if you want to emulate professionals who swing like we do, start watching the senior tour on TV or, better yet, go out and watch them play if there is a Champions Tour event near you.
Watch today's video for some advice on how you can emulate these pros by focusing on your Forward Upswing.
Keep it vertical!
The Surge
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