In this video we’ll talk about the differences between the golf swings of Mac O’Grady and Steve Elkington and review some tips on how you can apply this to your golf swing. For more information on Zoom or in-person lessons, visit dochetygolf.com. For golf swing analysis, find me on Skillest.
Hi I’m John doy and this is a new YouTube series for me where we’re going to look at two great ball Strikers and nerd out on their similarities and differences and I had to start this out with my teaching Mentor uh m o Grady and then my childhood who I wanted to swing
Like Hero Steve elkington uh I was a teen in the ’90s and both these guys were playing well Mac won twice uh in the late 80s and then elk you know won 10 PGA Tour events in that 90ish time frame won a PGA in 95 um and almost won the Open
Championship in 2002 uh so I’m 63 he’s 6’2 it was a great kind of person body size shape height to uh emulate and so we’re starting with elk um another reason why I want to put these two guys is you got one guy super upright much
More um up and down vertical plane Mac much more round rotational based golf swing so we can really see some big differences uh while we still see some similarities as well um both of them were taught kind of in that golf machine family you got elk worked with Ben Doyle
Ben Doyle worked directly with the guy that wrote the book Homer Kelly and then you got Mac who worked directly with Homer Kelly um and probably worked with Ben Doyle to probably had brushed shoulders with all those guys at some point way early in his career as well um
But anyway so you’re going to see two totally different ways to get the job done uh but both came up from the golf machine family which is renowned kind of for having multiple patterns not teaching one way to swing but kind of picking out the fundamental things you
Need to focus on and giving you some options lots of options um so we’ll start at address you know first thing I notice obviously is Max tipped over more Elk’s much more upright Elk’s chins up Max chins down uh that that chin up thing chin down thing is very important
To Morad in mro Grady’s research to get that fobal field or your vision facing directly at that golf ball it makes a lot of sense you wouldn’t see a baseball hitter have his chin up and looking at the sky while the pitcher is releasing the ball and then at the last second get
His eyes on the ball um you just don’t see that in any sport really um and golf you do golf you see the chin up and people looking down their cheekbones at the golf ball and the main reason why with these more upright style swings is the left
Shoulder and the left arm gets in the way it it collides with the chin so getting the chin up gives you that space to have that range of motion where max style being more tipped over the arms are going to swing much more around his body it’s really not going to have that
Collision and uh have to have that chin up like elk is um both of them have a very rounded spine I’m using this on for map um to video this and draw all these lines it’s a wonderful thing all my clients get access to it um saves all
Your videos to the cloud so it doesn’t fill up your device um but both of them have very neutral rounded spines um you’re not seeing that will zalatoris anterior tilt kind of posture where the butts up and the back’s arched that that style setup where you look like this um
Flexes your back muscles and definitely puts you at risk of injury where the other way looking like Nicholas Palmer Sneed Mac elk where you’re almost you are sucking your stomach in engaging your core muscles that’s rounding the spine like an angry cat doing it this way work engaging the core um relieves
The muscles on your lower spine very nice way to set up to the golf ball very round and down um way to set up Max got a little more knee Flex he’s lower that means that club shafts running more through his zipper his arms are hanging
Down both of them are but Elk’s more upright Elk’s club’s going up more above the belt buckle um which makes sense he’s about to take this thing straight up um all right we’ll look at P2 P2 is really big in Morad and Matt krady to get this sequence right to get the club
Head to run through the hands at P2 it’s a delicacy it takes a lot of sequence for that to match up every time most people are going to be like elk and have this club head come inside the hands at P2 uh this P system I’m talking about
Mac um created it just to communicate easier P1 being set up P2 is this club shaft parallel to the ground in the back swing and so on um just makes it easier to to say where we’re at in the swing um P2 is real easy to go inside especially
On the more upright postures or people that turn early extend early um that clubhead just going to want to come in as soon as that right wrist bends back you don’t want to the wrist up cocking the wrist uh messes up a lot of the things the golf machine teaches but
Um it puts a lot of pressure it makes you kind of get the pressure and torqus to happen in the downswing where you don’t want them to be um so just bending the right wrist back in the takeaways what we want and then flexing the right elbow Fanning the right elbow will
Naturally the left wrist the amount it needs to be cocked um you know if we run this up the big differences are going to start to show up now so Max’s getting this club much more around him um although that left arm is still up
And on that top Peck um so even though this clubs more deep and around he still loaded that arm up on that top Peck Elk’s going to purely almost lift it from here so he’s going to go straight up at the top so not a lot of
Rotation um really from from either one of them they’re not really over rotating or over twisting um really a function of where Mac pulled his arms back to um gave him that extra a little bit and then and then elk a lot less turn and a
Lot more lift actually has a little bit of a slide from the FaceTime view um so this is where things just really change um now I mean of course uh being this tall elk is being that close to the ball getting this up right the dangers of
This swing are are going to have the swing direction to go too far left um if he opened up too much and didn’t side Bend his swing direction would go left in a hurry uh Mac the danger with this style swing getting wrapped back in here
And a little lower is definitely to have the swing Direction go too far to the right so you’re going to see things in the downswing that are going to negate both of those um uh pitfalls in the down swing we’ll start with Mac Mack’s going
To keep that left arm up on that top Peck as he opens up and gets the Hand p have to go out and as that’s happening um his body his right shoulder is going down out and forward as that’s happening uh to help promote that hand path from
This deeper position for it to come out as that left arm stays up um elk on the other hand already has the up so while he’s still going to open up you can still swing under plane from here you can still get the swing Direction too
Far to the right where Elk’s at it’s not uh guaranteed to have the swing Direction left too much uh you can get it going too far right if his arms were to fall and he were not to open and just purely slide he could get
Too far out swing to the right but so you need this opening watch his left knee swing open his hand path will come out over the shoulder but as that’s happening in his case as he’s opening up and getting his hand path to come out he
Is side bending more than mac so he’s going to start side bending as that opening is happening the hands are going out to the ball nicely that’s dropping the shaft back um he is opening but he’s definitely side bending more which is get keeping that right shoulder where
Max right shoulder is definitely going down out and forward Elks is pretty much just going down to the ground not really going much out and not really going much forward so this is where you’re going to see the real big difference in the release elk is going to run out of right
Arm a lot sooner than mac because of how this body had to tilt back as he was opening up so then you’re going to see this huge release difference and um when I first got in the teaching business that was a big deal you had the Slingers
And then you had the Hogan like release and max style release where there wasn’t that crossover and a big function of that why Elks is doing that and Max is not is really a function of what the body had to do in Max’s case to get the swing Direction established to bring
Everything out his right shoulder his right side of his body had to go down out and forward a lot more to get that established where elk because of the lift really had more fall back as he opened up to get that swing direction to
Not go too far left he also had to open to make sure it didn’t go too far right and then that shoulder stayed back and that right arm ran out of right arm and that’s why it looks like this crossover release see with Davis Love as well BJ
Singh Phil Mickelson um the guys usually on the more upright planes um and not the rotational base guys U that are bringing it from deep and then changing their swing directions around more with the rotation of the body um that’s your big difference in these two is how they get the swing
Direction established how they get that angle of attack the shallowness established based on all really kind of started its setup so how they set up to the ball upright close to the ball or bent over a little farther from the ball um how the club wrapped around how they
Got the club head out with the body rotation or it was already out and up and they really just need a little little rotation with a little fall back all that established things for this release that happened but if you go to their impact and you see when that
Moment of truth happened you’ll see a lot of things that are pretty dang similar right elbows flexed so elk did not run out of right arm on this shot that would have been a pull hook he did not his right shoulder was down enough to where he had the left wrist uncocked
The right wrist slightly bent right arm relaxed and bent underneath that left arm um he is not running out of right arm you’ll see most bad swings their right arm is completely straight at impact you’ll watch the best ball Strikers and their right arm is going to
Be bent um regardless of the plane angle so you look at Elk on a very vertical plane Mac on a very rounded plane um this structure Homer Kelly he called it the flying wedges um you’ll see most of the golf machine guys pose this impact with this flat uncocked um left hand
This bent back right hand this bent right elbow this uncocked left wrist this bent right wrist this look at impact um is very consistent most people I see impact with the wrist cocked the right arm straight and that’s causing a lot of flipping and then chicken winging
To not chunk it um you’re losing a lot of control with The Sweet Spot the club face the radius of the ground it makes that consistency of that solid strike so much more hit or miss than coming into impact like this uh this needs to be the
Goal and then find a swing and a body shape and a style that fits yours and then grab some of those alignments and make them your own and that’s hopefully the goal of this YouTube series is to start kind of taking really great players putting them side by side next
To somebody else maybe you’ll find your model and um then start studying those pieces understanding them identifying them and then incorporating them into your swing I’ll stand up now and just run through a couple of the things and give some examples um of the upright swing and the uh
Maco Grady flat swing and hope this mic picks up my voice all right so you got El much more upright of course you’re not going to see my feet here and then you had a lot more lift and then this lift he’s already got a lot of the up in the out
With the hands but he still needs to open up so the hands are still going to come out but that side Bin’s going to kick in a lot earlier in his case to get that shaft to shallow as the hands go out to the ball so that right shoulder
Is just pretty much going to go down that left wrist is going to uncock to impact and then right past impact because that right shoulder just went down he’s going to see a lot more of this crossover release in Max’s case things were much deeper much more tipped
Over and then his body while that left arm stayed up brought everything out so that right shoulder went a lot more down out and forward in transition and then he’s going to kick side bin in much later near the ball instead of kicking that side bin up here early to get that
Shaft tipped out getting that body much more down out and forward before that side been kicked in getting that right shoulder in place to where now he’s not going to run out of right arm until very late more into the finish of the golf swing so I hope this video helped uh
Clear up some things and maybe get you started on um finding a model and I hope it’s successful and you like it and I hope youall have a great 2024
3 Comments
World class JD 🏆📈
👍🏼
Love it.