Sergio Garcia Swing Sequence

Golf Monthly Top 25 Coach Barney Puttick takes look at the Sergio Garcia swing sequence in slow motion.

Although there are a number of unique elements in the Sergio Garcia swing sequence, it is his set-up position that stands out the most. You can see his hips nicely below his shoulders, and the right shoulder is set below the left – it’s almost like a perfect computer generated model. The takeaway is very strong, with the club clearly outside the hands. Sergio produces an incredible shoulder turn at the top of the swing. A classic swing features around 90° of turn, but Sergio manages around 110° – which is testament to the flexibility of his body.

But Sergio’s change of direction is the big talking point in his swing. Most players, when they change direction, will shallow out a fraction so that the downswing plane is flatter than the backswing, but the only other player I can think of who made a movement this extreme was the great Ben Hogan. You wouldn’t teach that movement to the average player, but his father Victor, who has been his main instructor throughout his career, was wise enough to realise Sergio could handle this movement. The fact that he has been a top 20 player in the world for well over a decade proves that his father was correct. Regardless of what happens on the way back and on the way down, when you see the club come into the all-important impact area, he is perfectly on plane. The reason Sergio can produce such an unbelievably strong flight from this position is because he is so supple.

One of the keys that Sergio focuses on, and something that a lot of golfers could benefit from, is keeping his level through the swing. With all of that lag, Sergio could have a tendency to drop into the ball slightly, struggling to square the clubface through impact. You can see here how he manages to remain level from his set-up position right through to impact.

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Another thing I love about the Sergio Garcia swing sequence is how the power he produces catapults him through to a very strong finish position, where he once again demonstrates his suppleness with an amazing shoulder turn.