Ricky Barnes Swing...WTF?

[bpschmid]

Can one of you swing gurus break this thing down for me? He just seems to lunge at the ball, using all upper body strength, as pointed out by last weeks tournament commentators. How did he win $1.8 million plus this year with that move?

[ET-Taylor]

because it is a repeatable action that he can rely on

[uttexas]

Ricky Barne's swing

[iacas]

Can one of you swing gurus break this thing down for me? He just seems to lunge at the ball, using all upper body strength, as pointed out by last weeks tournament commentators. How did he win $1.8 million plus this year with that move?

I slowed down one of his swings the other day. Yes, he lunges at the ball but it's actually later than you think. The ball's gone, and while what you see after the ball is gone is an indicator of what happened before, he's reasonably steady with his head through the hit (lower body properly goes forward) and THEN his head just lunges forward, quite late...

[uttexas]

As seen in the above videos, he has a nice steep shoulder turn (shoulders parallel to swing plane) and an incredible push forward of his hips into impact. His hip push forward starts earlier and he gets his hips more forward than most PGA players. Really great extension into impact. What is a bit unusual, is that after his follow through, he pushes his upperbody forward into the finish (instead of increasing or maintaining extension---which is what most people do)

[bpschmid]

Thanks Uttexas...it definitely looks better in slo-mo, and it looks good at impact. Wonder if that weird move is why is a relatively short knocker on Tour?

[uttexas]

One of the reasons he might not be maximizing his distance, is his restricted hip turn on the backswing. He grew up in the X-factor generation, so he might have believed it was a good idea to limit his hip turn on the backswing. If you look at his DTL video (the second on posted above), he could do a significantly better job of getting his belt buckle to face the camera.

[MJP]

Wow he has barely any hip slide and it stops really early. That's nuts. Well, at least in that first video posted.

[iacas]

Wow he has barely any hip slide and it stops really early. That's nuts. Well, at least in that first video posted.

Eh?

Plus, it's just a wedge...

[wrx_junki]

Doesn't Jeff Overton sort of "lunge" at the ball as well?

AK restricts his hips a lot on the backswing and seems to have no problems with distance.

To the OP, ask yourself how Jim Furyk consistently wins? Pros don't have picture perfect swings. Look at Fowler or Dustin Johnson, those are far from picture perfect and they do just fine on tour. They know their swings and put it to work. You don't win money by having the prettiest swing. Look at Arjun Atwal, I think his swing is ugly but he has a W on tour this year.