Welcome to Play Smart, a regular GOLF.com game-improvement column that will help you become a smarter, better golfer.
Shots hit on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Masters week may not count on the scorecard, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t important. The work that happens early week at Augusta National can oftentimes be the difference between wearing the green jacket and becoming just another footnote to history.
In recent years, golf fans have gotten an even closer look at how players are going through this prep. With the debut of the Masters range tracker, you can see every shot hit on the practice tee throughout the week. It’s heaven for golf nerds.
Another neat integration comes courtesy of CBS’s utilization of GOLFTEC’s OptiMotion technology. With it, they can break down players’ swings like never before. This week, they captured defending champ Rory McIlroy’s swing — and highlighted a key move that all golfers can learn from.
Copy this Rory move
On the swing in the video above, you can see the weight distribution between McIlroy’s feet throughout the swing.
The weight starts fairly evenly distributed between both feet as he starts, and then it shifts to favor the trail side as he takes the club back. However, it does not continue shifting away from the target throughout the entirety of his backswing. Instead, his weight is maximally shifted away from the target (about 65 percent) when his lead arm is parallel to the ground. Then, it starts to gradually shift back toward the target.
By the time his backswing is complete, McIlroy has already started shifting his weight back to his lead side, with only 59 percent of his weight favoring his trail side. This move — known as re-centering — is crucial for solid ball striking, and is seen in every good golf swing.
“When we look at amateur golfers — particularly those who struggle to generate consistent contact — we notice they do not follow this same pattern,” says GOLF Top 100 Teacher Nick Clearwater. “Instead of shifting up to 20 percent of their weight toward the target by the top of the swing like the pros do, they typically shift only a fraction of that percentage.”
McIlroy’s swing demonstrates this move well — and it’s something you should strive to copy if you want to improve your ball striking.
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