I think many people watch McIlroy's swing and want to copy his movements, but in reality, most people are focusing on the wrong parts.

Just trying to imitate the downswing or impact position alone won't really work well.

Why? Because McIlroy's greatness lies not so much in the final fast movements, but in the initial part of his takeaway.

Today, I want to talk about what you should really look at if you want to use McIlroy as a reference.

This time, I'd like to talk about McIlroy.

I'm thinking about what aspects of McIlroy to discuss, but mainly, I want to look at it from the perspective of what parts would be really helpful for you all to watch.

Rather than the typical pro analysis of McIlroy's swing explaining what he's doing, I'm thinking more about what you all see when you watch McIlroy and think, "Ah, I want to swing like that."

I want to talk from the perspective of what to look at that would be truly effective. McIlroy himself might say, "That's not it," and that's understandable, but I still want to consider what I think makes McIlroy amazing.

Well, McIlroy is similar to Tiger Woods in some ways. Since he was little, he was featured in British media as a child prodigy. He was made to put balls into a drum-type washing machine and things like that. He smoothly progressed as a golfing prodigy and became hugely successful. But just being a genius doesn't guarantee success. I think there are two paths for geniuses. One type of genius does whatever they want, somehow making it work, just doing things their own way.

They have moments where they somehow beat adults just by swinging a certain way, and they progress smoothly. The other type faces harsh realities during the process. They realize that without doing things properly, without mastering the fundamentals, they can't reach the top. So from a certain point, they undergo serious refinement. I think there are these two types.

And McIlroy is more of the latter type, the one with proper refinement.

So where does this show? A common problem for many people is that at first, they just try to copy what they see.

Trying to copy, especially if you start as a kid... the club is long and heavy, right?

When figuring out how to use this tool to hit a good shot, it's tempting to just lift it and move the clubhead.

I think this is common for everyone.

I think it's something everyone inevitably does.

The heaviest part is at the end, so you move that first.

And then you use the kinetic energy generated from that to move your body, which feels easier.

So if you just do whatever, you'll definitely end up with this form.

Right.

And some geniuses develop this way, with an early cocking style, like this and that, and some become good that way.

Like John Daly or Bubba Watson, that type.

Some develop that way, but usually, this method hits a wall. Or if they meet an excellent teaching pro along the way, they're told they can't continue like that.

So what kind of refinement comes after that? It's what McIlroy is doing now: taking the club back with a body feel.

Taking it back with a body feel means not overusing the hands and arms, but having the takeaway driven by body rotation.

Broadly speaking, it's a flow where the takeaway is done with the body, not the arms.

This is something you can't do without a period of refinement.

As I said earlier, as a kid, if you just do whatever, you'll just lift it and hit it with a sort of chopping motion.

To make it go up with minimal use of the wrists and arms and to catch the ball with body rotation... that's probably something...

...he must have worked on at some point in his development.

And now it's become a habit, completely ingrained.

And McIlroy's body is very flexible, right?

He's so flexible that when he turns, you can see his right shoulder blade from the front, that's how much he rotates.

And what I want you to think about is, when you turn that much, if you use even a little bit of the clubhead or hands, the shaft will come inside the line.

When your body is flexible and your chest and shoulders turn so freely, the clubhead will come to this side even without forcing the rotation much.

But that's not happening with him, right?

So people often talk about shaft crossing or layoff, but for someone whose body rotates incredibly well, even with a layoff, the clubhead will almost, or even slightly, cross the target line.

Right.

So if you misread this, you might think, "McIlroy's shaft is coming a bit inside the target line, maybe it's shaft crossing?" But I see it as having a layoff tendency, and because his chest rotates so much, it doesn't appear that way.

That shows just how much he has mastered a swing where he doesn't overuse his arms relative to his body.

And then, well, there's often talk about whether it's an outside or inside swing path, but more important than that is how he really uses his body effectively. His body is extremely flexible, he achieves good separation between his upper and lower body, and the ball just flies incredibly far, right?

Well, about hitting it far... There was a time when Tiger Woods got really big physically, and Rory probably thought, "I need to get bigger too," and he did get pretty muscular for a while. But even when he did that, because his body is so flexible, it didn't have much of a negative impact. But looking at his body now, it seems a bit more toned and leaner, doesn't it?

So, through experience, he's probably learned the right amount of muscle mass needed and that getting too big isn't good.

Now, how should you all learn from this?

Does that mean you should go to the gym and lift weights like crazy? Well, not necessarily.

For weight training to be effective for a player, it often works better for those who are naturally very flexible and loose to begin with.

So, if someone who isn't very flexible, whose shoulders don't rotate well or has a limited range of motion, starts weight training, it tends to further restrict their movement.

Therefore, weight training can be effective for someone who is extremely loose and whippy, to build some muscle and add a bit of restriction to their movement.

Well, either way, even for those players, as they age, their movement naturally becomes more restricted, so they don't really need to go that far.

For example... what was it...

For example, Adam Scott used to have a body that was really loose and whippy, very lanky.

By building muscle and solidifying his frame, he kind of got just the right amount of restriction, like his levers were shortened, but this generally doesn't apply to the average person.

If you have too much looseness and your body moves all over the place, your motion can become quite sloppy. White players often intentionally try to make their swings more compact, but that kind of thing doesn't really apply to Japanese players or you amateur players.

So, if there's something to learn from, well, to go back to the point, it's the movement centered around using the body.

The takeaway.

The takeaway.

I want you to learn from the takeaway.

I'm sorry this sounds like a boring point, but I really want you to learn from the takeaway.

The takeaway.

That means the clubface orientation doesn't change much, and there's minimal use of the wrists and elbows. It's a takeaway driven by the core, by those inner muscles.

This is tough, so you might not want to do it, but you can't avoid starting from here.

Actually, it gets even more mundane if we talk about the precision of the address position and what follows from there.

That wouldn't make for a very good video, so talking about the motion, it's the takeaway.

The takeaway.

I want you to learn from the takeaway.

Well, when you see Rory doing practice swings like this, you all inevitably focus on the downswing motion. People often say, "You really need to have the impact zone right," or call it the "business zone," thinking if you just get this part right, you're good. So they try to mimic the top players' movements around here.

But when I reference a swing, I really want you to learn from the very beginning of the takeaway.

Why? Well, I could go on forever, but it's like reading only the climax of a novel—it's pointless.

Just reading the important parts is useless. From the beginning, there are all these setups, and the impact is where those setups pay off.

For this moment, there's this meticulous...

...beginning and development.

So, this movement affects that one, the movement from here to here affects this one, and the movement from here all the way to here affects that one. It all progressively influences the later stages.

Therefore, if at the very start you casually go into a different motion, or the face opens, or you create momentum from the clubhead first, well, then no matter what you try to mimic after that, it won't mean much.

So, I really want you all to mimic Rory's takeaway, from here to here.

And because you can execute that takeaway, the subsequent movements will naturally fall into place. I think a lot of you want a swing like Rory's, and that's how you do it.

As I said before, Rory is a player with an extremely flexible body and very mobile shoulder blades.

Having mobile shoulder blades means his right shoulder moves very well.

Now, what often gets neglected is that if you move your arms and the clubhead a lot like this, your right shoulder doesn't actually move.

右の肩っていうのは自分から見えにくいので、動いてると勘違いしていることが多いんですね。

逆にこう左の肩って見えるので、あ、ちゃんと顎の下に入ってるなっていうのがわかりやすいんだけれども、右の肩、左の肩が顎の下に入っていたら、右の肩は首の付け根の後ろ側に回ってなきゃいけないわけですよ。

Once you can do that and properly pull back with your body, that's when you can truly imitate it.

So, I want you to imitate this part as well.

The right shoulder fully rotating back means the shoulder blade moves significantly towards the spine, right?

The right shoulder towards the spine.

The shoulder blade moves towards the spine.

And, the right shoulder moves significantly towards the back of the base of the neck.

When that happens, the right shoulder blade becomes visible to a front-facing camera.

I think it's quite difficult for the average person to get to this point, but I believe it's very important to consciously move that right shoulder blade.

Now, people often debate whether McIlroy has an outside-in or inside-out swing, but if anything, his is a rare, neutral swing.

Even his left wrist at the top of the backswing, well, it's not cupped, right?

Well, it's not flat either, it's slightly bowed.

It's bowed.

Even though it's bowed, he still catches the ball perfectly.

So, how should we think about this? If a player like McIlroy had a flat wrist or a cupped left wrist, he'd probably...

...catch it too much.

Therefore, we can say that state of his left wrist is just right for controlling the ball.

So, to summarize, what I first want you to emulate is...

...the takeaway. The takeaway.

Mm-hmm, a takeaway where you properly pull back with your body's sensation.

And, because the club travels along that extension line, your body rotates more than you all might think, and the arms settle in a fairly low position, not a high one.

The more a person turns their chest and body during the takeaway, the more likely their arms are to settle low, but you can see it's absolutely not a swing that comes down steeply from above, right?

So, it's a rotation-based, rotation-based swing.

And with that speed, he can hit it cleanly, 'spang!', sending out a ball that flies far and doesn't curve.

So, the prerequisite for a beautiful swing is that the chest rotates fully.

Specifically, the right chest, the right shoulder blade moves properly, the right chest opens up, the right shoulder blade on the back moves towards the spine, and the right shoulder rotates further back than the right hip.

It's shallow.

If you rotate your chest that much, the shaft would actually come too far inside, so to prevent that, the shaft is controlled to avoid excessive cocking.

Therefore, the amount of wrist cock is very minimal.

Minimal.

まあ少ないと見えないかもしれませんよね。

よくこう正面から見てね、こうなんかねすごいコックが溜まってるっていうふうに見えるのは実はですね、あのそんなにこうアップライトなスイングじゃないよって言いましたよね。

フラットなスイングな人が普通にスイングするとですね、溜まっているように正面のカメラから見えてしまうので、そういう誤解が大きいのがありそうです。

ですから、あんまり手首の運動量は多くないスイングだということは言えますよね。

なので、まあテイクバックを見習ってほしいっていう流れからすると、なるべくレイトコックをしていくってことですよね。

まあコックって話はあんまりあの僕はしたくはないんだけれども、まあコックっていうことがあるとしたら、なるべくコックを遅らせられるようなテイクバックで、ですからまあコックも腕の腕を使う一部の動きですから、まあ体をしっかり使って。

て腕をあまり使わないテイクバックをしていこうよってことなんです。

この出しが作れればインパクトゾーンという一番大事なところで非常にいい影響で伏線を回収してくれるわけです。

だからここだけできてればいいですよってことではないんですよね。

ですからそこをね、ご自身のゴルフに活かすならそこを考えていただきたいんですよ。

どうしてもですね、枝葉の部分下ろすときの下ろし方であったり、下ろすときの軌道であったりってことに目がいってしまうんですが、皆さんのゴルフの向上のためには、もう、もうテイクバックです、テイクバック。

I actually place more importance on the takeaway than the downswing.

And the reason is, once you start moving, it's just a chain reaction of reflexes from that movement.

Otherwise, you end up having too many things to think about.

If you start wondering what to do after doing this, and then what to do after that, it just gets way too complicated.

So, if you can get the initial move right, you can pretty much just ride that flow.

Yeah, exactly.

I really want everyone to aim for a swing where, if you can just smoothly, smoothly, smoothly execute the takeaway with your body, everything else just falls into place like a chain reaction.

So, I hope you can watch player Rory McIlroy and use him as a reference for these points.

This time, using Rory McIlroy as an example, we talked about how what you should learn isn't the flashy movements later in the swing, but the quality of the takeaway.

If you're unsure whether your own takeaway is correct, want to better organize the feeling of pulling with your body, or want to master that body-driven, inside swing, please receive the free bonus via the LINE link in the description.

When the initial move is in order, the subsequent movements change quite significantly.

If you're interested, please get it from the description.