It’s always educational to look at the technique of successful PGA Tour players, especially one as consistent over the past 18 years as Pat Perez, who has won at least $900,000 in 14 of the 18 years since gaining his card in 2002. Perez turned pro in 1997 after playing for a national championship team at Arizona State, and it took him 5 years to attain his PGA Tour card. I happened to have filmed him in the 2002 PGA Championship at Hazeltine on a Saturday morning after finishing my 2nd round and missing the cut ( Friday’s round was cut short by a massive rainstorm, and you’ll see the range at Hazeltine look like it’s under water, which it was) in what was Perez’s rookie season, and then again at the 2008 Kemper Open at Congressional where I got nice face on and down the line views of Pat on the range, footage I am sure he has never seen. He has been playing the best golf of his career since recovering from shoulder surgery in 2016 with 2 of his 3 tour wins since then, and made over $4 million in 2017. His swing has changed quite a bit over the years, moving from a more upright backswing plane to one much more across his body, and what stands out in the most recent swings we see here is his takeaway, where he moves his hands, arms and the club up and away from his body as he creates a perfect LAFW (left arm flying wedge) and puts the shaft right on plane at P3 with enough forearm rotation to have the clubface right on plane as well. From P3 To P4 he continues to lay the club off to the left which negates the need for a lot of shaft shallowing, and as he keeps the club well in front of him on the downswing sets the stage for a nice left to right ball flight. He is one of the few players you will see on Tour with positive hip thrust (he is definitely “out of the box”), but his strength and shaft control compensates just fine.
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