Day and McIlroy driver swings - what differences do you see?

[pumaAttack]

It appears Rory straightens his arms faster than Day does on the downswing.

[DrvFrShow]

Jason has a restricted swing where everything remains steady throughout. He is extremely flexible. He keeps his left leg bent and resists against his hips and gets his shoulder turn with his thoracic spine. This builds a coil which Jason uses to unleash his power. His legs add whatever they can to his swing but not to the degree that Rory uses. 

The main differences are that Rory doesn't restrict his swing as much as Jason. Rory straightens his right leg more on his backswing allowing for more hip turn and dips a little on his downswing. Then he fires off the ground with his right leg through impact during his weight transfer for those extra few mph.

[Big Lex]

17 hours ago, natureboy said:

I see very different ball positions.

I noticed that too....Rory with the ball more forward. I wondered at first if it was because of slightly different address position relative to the camera, which it could be. But through the hitting area Rory seems to be hitting up on the ball a bit more so probably he does play the ball a bit further forward.

[RayG]

Enough to see that the days of an "individual" swing is over. Everyone from the junior ranks and up are being taught "the" swing. No matter what swing they had, it's being turned into this generic cookie cutter swing. 

Looking around at any tournament these days, if you didn't know who was where, you couldn't tell one from another. And no surprise, the number of players with "bad backs" and other issues are way up from the past. Leaving the modern player needing to hit the gym for 3 hours a day to strengthen their "core". Some people just can't handle this power based model. Whereas in the past, if you had issues you changed you swing which led to the variety of swings back then. OR you had a swing that didn't create the problem in the first place.

[Big Lex]

20 minutes ago, RayG said:

Enough to see that the days of an "individual" swing is over. Everyone from the junior ranks and up are being taught "the" swing. No matter what swing they had, it's being turned into this generic cookie cutter swing. 

I agree, to a point. "The" swing changes gradually over time. When I took up golf, Nick Faldo was the dominant player, and he had a Leadbetter swing where he strived to maintain flex in his right knee and allowed a little lateral movement to the right on the backswing (note: I'm not saying Nick actually did this....but Leadbetter taught that your rotate on two axes, not one. One on the backswing, one on the downswing). Anyway the swings in those years of typical tour players had a little less "stack and tilt" than is typical now.

I'm sure going forward we will see different swings still.

20 minutes ago, RayG said:

Looking around at any tournament these days, if you didn't know who was where, you couldn't tell one from another.

 

Yeah I don't know. Harvey Penick complained about this - cookie cutter swings - and his book was written almost 25 years ago. You look at a Masters film from the 1970s and there are a heck of a lot of guys in a reverse C Nicklaus/Miller swing. I think it's probably true that swings have been getting more and more homogeneous over time, but I think this is just the nature of the world and communication. With more people able to see pictures and slo mo video of pro swings, not to mention video game swings, kids coming up in the game have a widely advertised model for what to do. A lot of them are probably still largely self-taught, or at least partially, but it's just that they have the model there. In the past the world was smaller and people figured more things out without as much information as we have today.

20 minutes ago, RayG said:

And no surprise, the number of players with "bad backs" and other issues are way up from the past. Leaving the modern player needing to hit the gym for 3 hours a day to strengthen their "core". Some people just can't handle this power based model. Whereas in the past, if you had issues you changed you swing which led to the variety of swings back then. OR you had a swing that didn't create the problem in the first place.

I totally agree that the force of modern swings is quite a strain on the body, and requires more physical conditioning to support it. Golfers are becoming "extreme" in the sense of football players, going all out.

But I do think that players still adjust their swings to account for injuries. These guys are getting injured all the time, we just don't hear about it because most of it is minor, but if you talk to almost any guy on tour for more than a decade and I'll bet they are going to tell you how they've had to adjust their swings over the years to accommodate injury limitations.

In the end, I honestly don't think we know exactly what causes a bad golf back. And I don't think it's necessarily true that there are more bad backs today. Maybe, maybe not. When I was starting out, people took notice that Fred Couples and Faldo were finishing more straight up and down, less reverse-C than the previous generation, and this was held out to be a good thing, a thing that would be better for the back. And look what happened to Couples.

Lee Trevino had anything but a power swing, and he put tons of strain on his back and ended up having to modify his move in order to be able to keep playing. Boo Weekly, another guy not really considered a bomber or a terribly hard swinger, and his back is shot.

I don't think it has too much to do with swing style.  All styles stress the back. I think it has to do mainly with three things: 1) Your genetic predisposition to injury and your capacity for healing, 2) How hard you swing, and 3) How many swings you make. Numbers 2 and 3 are huge in players today relative to prior generations, in general.

Edited March 28, 2016 by Big Lex

[rehmwa]

1 hour ago, rehmwa said:

See the tree in the background and the tee marker (two references)?  I think the camera view is moved to the right on Rory - so the video is square to both based on the feet anyway.

changed my mind.  the relative position of the fixed objects don't change.  same camera position.  which makes sense

7 minutes ago, Big Lex said:

But I do think that players still adjust their swings to account for injuries.

Day has a bad back - who's to say that this swing isn't his "injury compensated" swing?

as for "cookie cutter" - this is presented as a bad thing.  I'd take exception to that - perhaps it's a tribute to better training and more availability to great examples by great players.  Who here really wants a swing that looks like Furyk? (yes I'd like his results, but I'd rather have Rory's swing to get there)

I like your analysis and conclusions, BTW

[natureboy]

2 hours ago, iacas said:

I think they're quite a bit differently aimed. Look at the relative position of Rory's hands, arms, etc. and where they sit against his body, relative to Jason's, and so on. The camera is left (relative to perpendicular to the target line) in Rory's case.

I double-checked and would say we're both partly right. Camera is minutely shifted, but I wouldn't call the camera angle significantly different. I think the evidence is for a more forward ball position for Rors.

2 hours ago, natureboy said:

IMO Day's stance is slightly closed to the line between the camera and the tee marker (left foot looks larger / advanced relative to the tee marker. Rory's feet look to be more at the same depth / distance from the camera.

I definitely see no evidence the camera has moved. Same tee, same boat, same round against each other. I think it was 14th based on background. Here's where the drives went (Day = Red, McIlroy = Blue):

Correction - a slight jog  of the camera between players. Not enough to change my view of relative ball positions. If anything the shift in camera position would make the ball seem relatively farther back in Rors' stance.

58 minutes ago, rehmwa said:

changed my mind.  the relative position of the fixed objects don't change.  same camera position.  which makes sense

So did I - slightly.

58 minutes ago, rehmwa said:

as for "cookie cutter" - this is presented as a bad thing.  I'd take exception to that - perhaps it's a tribute to better training and more availability to great examples by great players.  Who here really wants a swing that looks like Furyk? (yes I'd like his results, but I'd rather have Rory's swing to get there)

Furyk is sickly consistent with his swing, though. It may well be because of his loop rather than in spite of it. That full swing consistency plus excellent short game gives him a really unfair share of top 10's and 20's given his relative length and a very secure card. Plus his recent wrist problem is one of only two 'big' injuries in his career still going steady at 45.

[nevets88]

Not sure if this is a good comparison - angles and that's McIlroy right after his injury. But from this comparison, not the same.

[saevel25]

Rory does swing a lot out to right field. Jason Day looks to have a much more neutral swing path. 

 

[iacas]

1 hour ago, natureboy said:

I double-checked and would say we're both partly right. Camera is minutely shifted, but I wouldn't call the camera angle significantly different. I think the evidence is for a more forward ball position for Rors.

I never said the ball position was the same. They're different. So are the camera angles.

[mvmac]

7 hours ago, natureboy said:

I double-checked and would say we're both partly right. Camera is minutely shifted, but I wouldn't call the camera angle significantly different.

The camera isn't filming them at the same angle, I think it's because how Rory is aligned compared to Day. A slight difference can change how ball position looks. Here's a better angle.

 

6 hours ago, nevets88 said:

Not sure if this is a good comparison - angles and that's McIlroy right after his injury. But from this comparison, not the same.

Yes much difference lead arm positions (more depth) from 4-6. Part of that is due to the way the hips/legs work on the backswing. Rory has more of a "free" turn and Day is more restrictive so the hands load more vertically.

[natureboy]

2 hours ago, mvmac said:

The camera isn't filming them at the same angle, I think it's because how Rory is aligned compared to Day. A slight difference can change how ball position looks. Here's a better angle.

The point of the thread is compare the differences between Day & McIlroy. Which makes more sense to compare Day's ball position to a shot of Rory a year ago from a very likely camera angle or one where we know they were using the same camera setup? 

Parallax is definitely an issue in comparing swings from different (particularly extremely oblique) camera setups, but here we can actually estimate it. As my previous picture showed the background shifted minimally between McIlroy & Day. Based on maybe a 10 foot shift on the opposite side of the 714 foot wide river that's at most a 1 degree camera shift. That practically identical camera setup is not going to change the relative difference in the ball positions between the two players given their distance to the ball versus the distance to the trees on the opposite bank.

Also, if you look at the shadows down by their feet, they both have the lead foot slightly closer to the camera (slightly closed stance). I'd say their stance alignment is similar enough to indicate a difference in the relative ball position.

I can find loads of pictures that show apparent forward and back driver ball positions for Rory. Plenty that I would bet are influenced significantly by camera angle. But do you think it's also possible that along with camera angle changes he might be shifting his ball position depending on the shot shape he wants? What would a forward ball position promote all else being equal? Do you think he had reason to maybe guard against a hook on the 14th at Austin Country Club? Below are some example face on shots to show a range of apparent Rory ball positions from FO views:

 

@nevets88 Another diff I see is that at impact Rors has a hair more trail arm (less fully extended) than Day.

Edited March 29, 2016 by natureboy

[nevets88]

6 hours ago, natureboy said:

@nevets88 Another diff I see is that at impact Rors has a hair more trail arm (less fully extended) than Day.

Yes, it's definitely more bent than Day's is.

I never realized this. They're both similar height and weight. At least according to Google. For some reason, I thought Day was taller.

[bmartin461]

14 minutes ago, nevets88 said:

For some reason, I thought Day was taller.

Well, Day is taller, by 3 inches.  I'm surprised by his weight, he looks like he weighs more than 165.

[nevets88]

2 minutes ago, bmartin461 said:

Well, Day is taller, by 3 inches.  I'm surprised by his weight, he looks like he weighs more than 165.

Yeah, you can't go by Google or anything listed for the most part. Weight fluctuates, listings are old, inaccurate. I thought Day was 6' 2". 

[bmartin461]

Just now, nevets88 said:

Yeah, you can't go by Google or anything listed for the most part. Weight fluctuates.

Agreed, according to PGA.com, he weighs 195, that seems more like it.

http://www.pgatour.com/players/player.28089.html

 

[natureboy]

1 hour ago, nevets88 said:

Yes, it's definitely more bent than Day's is.

I never realized this. They're both similar height and weight. At least according to Google. For some reason, I thought Day was taller.

I dunno. If he's 5'9" and that solid Rory's got to be closer to 170. I was 5'7" and 174 when I was my most fit / muscular but still not particularly big.

@bmartin461's number for Day seems more likely.

Maybe these are often 'media figures' that may be a little bent from reality to 'sound good'.

Edited March 29, 2016 by natureboy

[natureboy]

7 hours ago, natureboy said:

The point of the thread is compare the differences between Day & McIlroy. Which makes more sense to compare Day's ball position to a shot of Rory a year ago from a very likely different camera angle or one where we know they were using the same camera setup? 

@mvmac edit to my earlier reply.

Edited March 29, 2016 by natureboy