I wasn’t aware of this development until The Welshman sent me a message about it yesterday, but my response to him was, “it was only a matter of time, the way he twists his lower back…”
That development was a long-expected one for me, because even while Rory McIlroy has at times embraced the notion of not nailing his leading foot down on the back pivot, he has always insisted on twisting his lower back like a pretzel, and that was never going to end well, unfortunately.
Even Rory McIlroy, one of the best players on the planet, has to manipulate his down swing because of how the Modern Golf Swing has lost its natural leverage, which is not a problem with the Classic Golf Swing.
My issues with the golf swing never had anything to do with leverage, because I have almost always swung with a Classic Golf Swing motion.
No two people will ever look exactly alike swinging a golf swing, unless they are identical twins, I imagine.
However, I just decided on a whim to compare my 2015 driver setup from May of that year to Jack Nicklaus’ 1963 setup and to one of Rory McIlroy’s from the last couple of years, and the similarities are striking, especially since I had never tried to emulate either of them in my swinging.
I had commented a while back and mentioned again that in addition to the internet being a problem with Modern Golf, the lack of knowledge of kinesiology among the pundits, the former and current players was also a problem.
As you know from my posting yesterday, I was rooting for Rory McIlroy to win the Masters and complete his career Grand Slam porfolio.
Mission accomplished, and I’ll tell you why I have always rooted for Rory – he was the first pro golfer whose swing I posted on YouTube way back in 2009 when I was very early into my golf swing research.
It’s very likely that the winner today will come from the last grouping with Rory McIlroy and Bryson DeChambeau topping the leaderboard.
I would say that I’ve posted about this duo more than any other active golfers besides Tiger Woods in recent years, so it’s a WAX Golf special, this last group.
I ran across this particular YouTube clip today purporting to show the “science of Rory McIlroy’s Perfect Swing,” and I’d ask you all to point out the actual science for me.
I’ve already pointed out to you my suspicion as to what ails Rory in his horrific driving accuracy from the tee, and I’m sorry – if a golf swing was even in the neighborhood of being perfect, he wouldn’t be 102nd in driving accuracy (60.29%) and 134th in G.I.R. (65.70%) in his 2024 season stats.
First off, let me say that the last two or three weeks have been amazing with regards to my swing research, notably the Jack Nicklaus-inspired setup and swing action.
The funny thing is you often don’t notice what other golfers are doing with their swings or setups until you have actually done or worked on similar things, and with Rory McIlroy, I noticed something at a glance looking at his setup and swing from this year’s Dubai Invitational event.
Having had a depressing look at the current state of affairs in today’s pro game with driving accuracy, I was actually a little but not very surprised that Rory McIlroy came in 157th on the Tour, because I didn’t know this until I had looked at his driver swing.
When I saw what he was doing, I thought to myself, “he can’t be hitting that many fairways with this move,” and proved myself right when I went looking for the just-completed season’s driving stats.
If you want to know why Rory McIlroy is such a long driver of the ball but also a very woeful one accuracy-wise, then you only have to look at what he’s doing with his pivot.
Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with his setup – I’ve commented on it before and how it supports my hypothesis on the address position – it’s when he gets moving that the issues begin.
WAX Golf 