How Will Zalatoris Rebuilt His Swing | Film Study | Golf Digest

Will Zalatoris stormed into professional golf, making a name from himself at the top of the game and impressing his peers. But the swing that got him there was also his downfall. Back surgery followed and he was forced to rebuild his golf swing. In this Film Study, our very own Luke Kerr-Dineen breaks down the changes Zalatoris and his coach, Troy Denton, had to make to his swing and how they could affect his game in the future.

Senior Editor: Luke Kerr-Dineen
Director of Content: Jamie Kennedy
Editor: Baranowski
Executive Producer: Christian Iooss
Footage credit: Titleist

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Did you see that right there it happened in the space of a few micros seconds faster than you can blink and almost impossible for the naked eye to see alone but it’s a move that can ruin amateur golfer’s swings and it can end careers to appreciate will zat’s

Comeback from injury and maybe even avoid injury yourself it’s a move you really need to understand so let’s take a closer look the golf swing is a combination of tilts turns and bends lots of different parts of your body tilt turn and bend when you swing a golf club but one of

The most important is a movement called side Bend it’s a term you may have heard before side Bend is this kind of reverse C shape on the down swing in every good golf swing the lower body body shifts ahead of the upper body as the club approaches impact which by

Effect tilts the upper body back the gap between the upper and lower body increases and that’s how side Bend is created but anyway side Bend is really important for a bunch of reasons one of them being that it helps golfers hit up on the board with their driver which

Helps them hit the ball further but side Bend in some ways is like adding salt to your food don’t add enough salt and your food will taste BL and boring but add too much and then it starts to ruin the meal it’s really bad for your health too

You just need the right amount to make the perfect dish many amateur golfers usually don’t create enough side bend their lower body stays back and their upper body goes forward which causes them to get Steep and over the top and if the club face is open hit really big

Banana slices but Junior golfers and Pros golfers with lots of flexibility they have the opposite problem they tend to create too much side bent and that’s what was happening to zalatoris as he started the downswing his lower body would drive aggressively forward as his upper body hung back all

That side Bend meant that as zotus rotated through his right hip would begin to rise up while the right side of his lower back stayed down when this kind of excessive side bending happens it compresses and crunches The L4 and L5 discs in the lower spine that’s a problem because as

A study by Dr David Lindsay explains those discs in the back don’t have much muscle or bone to protect them if you’re a junior golfer watching this or a parent of a junior golfer it’s an important concept to understand because those discs when they start sharing together that’s what creates a lot of

Lower back pain and injury and coaches they have a Keen Eye for this stuff after his injury salor said he dived deep into his golf swing with his longtime swing coach Troy Denton together they paid a visit to the titless performance Institute zorus decided to make some changes not an easy

Decision considering he was one of the best ball Strikers on tour but a necessary one coach Denton says taking zotor out of back pain came down to one swing thought get your butt back and turn around the corner you see before zalatoris had a tendency to pick up his

Arms very vertically on the back swing with his arms this High Denton explains that zalatoris would need to add a ton of right side Bend in the space of just a few fractions of a second on the downswing tilting out of it that was his only way he could shallow the club and

Hit the ball well zator is really talented and really athletic so he did this well he became the best ball striker in golf doing this but it started taking it all physically so that’s when the changes came first the pair loosened up Will’s posture to take pressure off his lower back used to

Be slightly curved now it’s more in a straight line and then the pair started working on moving his arms more around his body rather than straight up the change in Direction was small just a few inches but by moving his arm slightly more around him it landed zotus in a back

Swing position where he didn’t need to Hilt like crazy on the downswing he could get his butt back and turn the corner as he rotated through that allowed zotus to have a little less side bent which takes pressure off his back and even improved his consistency along

The way as zotor explains in his own words you know now I’m I’m way more rotational and way more horizontal with what I do um as opposed to being more up and down and you know like I said it’s more it’s just simplifying stuff it’s not changing moves it’s not

Changing um what I’m doing it’s just you know I mean you know think it through left heel off the ground with a bunch of side bend that that just does not add up to feeling very good on your back it’s early days in it’s comeback and the

Changes there’s still a work in progress but the signs so far are good zalatoris 2.0 and his coach have calculated a new recipe of bends turns and tilts and it seems to have all the right ingredients to take back to the very Top