Bubba Watson

[cnadon]

Does anyone have any insight as to why he sets up with so little hip bend, esp. when he's hitting his driver (quite nicely)? Sometimes he looks to me as if he's almost standing straight up and down, which doesn't seem very golferly.

 

[mjstrong]

I'd say, because he's going to add so much in his transition & downswing. If he started with more, he'd either have to add less in his downswing, or change some of his alignments. With a self-proclaimed home made swing, I doubt he'd want to mess with the familiar feels very much.

 

[ScottRob]

A bit like hogan in this regard. Hogan stood relatively erect to the ball with quite a bit of neck tilt...then added some tilt in the downswing (side bend?)

 

[Keefer]

I followed him last year at the Transitions Tournament in Palm Harbor FL. He has his own way. He curves most shots (both ways) and plays with an open stance and plays the ball back in his stance. He also hangs back on his back foot. He's a throw-back who has his own individual type swing that works for him.

You do see more homemade type swings on the Champions Tour than the PGA Tour. He's certainly found what works for him. I've read where he has one of the most positive angles of attack (driver) on the PGA Tour also.

 

[duckhook]

Does anyone have any insight as to why he sets up with so little hip bend, esp. when he's hitting his driver (quite nicely)? Sometimes he looks to me as if he's almost standing straight up and down, which doesn't seem very golferly.

Bubba does have an upright swing plane (what Jim Hardy calls a 2 plane swing) but it is not unusually upright. Jack Nicklaus had a similarly upright plane with the elbow away from the body (flying elbow), and the hands well above the head at the top. This type of upright swing tends to get very steep on the downswing and as a compensation players like Watson and Nicklaus really try to widen the arc (radius) of the swing going back to offset the problem of coming in too steep during the downswing. But what really makes this swing so desirable is it's accuracy factor. Jack Nicklaus said in his book "Golf My Way"
"you must make a wide arc if you hope to capitalize from an upright plane" and
"to me the accuracy factor of an upright plane is too valuable to be easily discarded".
The reason an upright plane promotes greater accuracy is that the clubhead,coming into theball on the downswing, remains closer to the plane line for a longer period of time than a flat swing plane which comes into the ball much more from the inside of the plane line.
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