When I’m home with my coach, Randy Smith, at Royal Oaks in Dallas, we have one joke we’ve kept going ever since I turned pro in 2018. “Hit it like a robot,” he’ll say. I’ll respond, “Just like a robot.” Then I’ll do what I’ve always done – make the ball curve and change trajectory to match what I see in my mind. Tour golf is supposed to be about making the same swing time after time to produce a consistent ball flight, right? Well, that’s not the way I play. I’m not a robot – I shape shots. When the Texas Amateur was at Royal Oaks in 2010, I made it into the field as a 14-year-old. I was so small, I had to hit driver into the 205-yard 16th. It killed me to use a driver on a par 3, but I still carved a cut in there to 20 feet.
I’m 6-foot-3, 200 pounds (191cm, 91kg) now and can play the power game, but I’d still rather create shots than just swing away. An example: the shot I want to see is a tight cut off the left edge of the fairway. But for a while, I was getting my left wrist cupped, the face open and the club going across the target line at the top. That made me hit the ball way right.
To correct the problem, I tried to feel more like Dustin Johnson feels at the top, with my lead wrist bowed. In reality, it was closer to flat, but that feel did so many good things, like keeping my hands from getting too deep behind my body. You can see here that they’re not behind me. They’re far over my head – and I’ve got the club in a stable, supported position. That gives me room – and time – to go through the ball in balance.
Another feel that helps me is to let my left arm soften and bend at the top. You hear that fully extending the arms as you go back is a key to hitting it far. But tight, straightened arms tend to lock you up and slow you down – and keep you concentrating too much on your body motion, and not enough on what the clubface is doing. When you can connect what the clubface is doing with what you see in the shot, you’ll find that your body and swing will start to adjust to make that happen. For me, that’s the route to being comfortable on a day like Sunday at the PGA Championship, when I was in the final pairing with Dustin. Or on the back nine during the second round of the Northern Trust two weeks later, where I birdied the last hole to shoot 59.
I picked my shot the same way I do in the games I play with the members at Royal Oaks on my off weeks. See it. Feel it. Do it.
