Two weeks after going wire-to-wire to win Open Championship, talented prodigy comes from behind to win WGC-Bridgestone
Aug. 5, 2014 – As he displayed three weeks ago at the Open Championship, Rory McIlroy can win wire-to-wire. And as he displayed at last week’s WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, the 25-year-old Northern Ireland native can track down competitors from behind.
And it’s not hard to figure out why McIlroy is a winner for all styl es. It’s a contest as to which action provokes the most reaction from golf fans: the sound McIlroy makes when he perfectly compresses the ball at impact or the ridiculous length the 5-foot-9, 165-pound McIlroy generates when he strikes a golf ball. Both were on display in living, dramatic color last weekend at Firestone Country Club, where McIlroy put on a ball-strikingand putting display that left not only fans in awe, but his fellow competitors, who were left in awe after McIlroy claimed his second title in three weeks.
Not everyone can generate the power McIlroy displayed in averaging nearly 335 yards off the tee at Firestone, but in Golf Magazine’s newest instruction book – PLAY LIKE A PRO (Time Home Entertainment Inc., 2013; $29.95, Hardcover), the average player can see in living color the downswing basics McIlroy uses to generate that power.
That’s the beauty of PLAY LIKE A PRO. In it, Golf Magazine’s Top 100 Teachers – the nation’s most elite group of golf instructors – analyze the techniques and moves of the game’s elite and make them accessible to the average player.
McIlroy is one of the featured PGA Tour pros analyzed in PLAY LIKE A PRO. His chapter focuses on impact and how someone with a modest build like McIlroy can produce anything-but-modest distance.
“That sound you hear when a whip is cracked is caused by the incredible speed of the whip’s end as it unleashes all of its built-up energy. This phenomenon is very similar to the way Rory McIlroy unleashes the power of his swing into the ball,” writes CBS Golf Analyst and Golf Magazine Top 100 Teacher Peter Kostis of the Kostis-McCord Learning Center in Scottsdale, Ariz.
“If you’ve noticed, Rory isn’t a huge guy, but he winds up his body on the way back and then swings in sequence on the way down with his hips rotating at full blast, and then – just like the handle of a bullwhip – stopping for a split second just before impact. This move unloads all of the power he has built up in his arms and hands to the clubhead and, ultimately, the ball.”
En route to his come-from-behind, two-shot victory, McIlroy led the field in driving distance at 334.8 yards – the longest average by a player this season. He hit 82 percent of his drives more than 300 yards, including a stretch of 19 consecutive, and in the third round, all 14 of his drives cleared the 300-yard barrier. When he missed one of Firestone’s notoriously narrow fairways, his ability to generate power and maximize impact allowed McIlroy to usually overcome whatever obstacle he found himself in when he didn’t find the fairway or the green.
Yet McIlroy didn’t miss many. He was 12th in the field in driving accuracy at 60.7 percent. His combination of distance (ranked No. 1) and accuracy (12th) made him the Total Driving leader with a total of 13. The next best in the field was Bubba Watson at 24.
Want more proof of McIlroy’s ball-striking command? He led the field in greens-in-regulation at nearly 80 percent (79.17),
“When Rory gets into a rhythm he’s phenomenal,” said 2013 Masters Champion Adam Scott, who can also be found in PLAY LIKE A PRO illustrating and discussing the full swing. “He doesn’t have weaknesses and he has more strengths than almost anyone else.”
Here’s one of those strengths, as described by David DeNunzio, Golf Magazine’s Managing Editor–Instruction and the editor of PLAY LIKE A PRO, “Here’s all you need to know about Rory McIlroy’s freakish power. He has faster hips than any golfer ever studied and about twice as fast as the average weekend player. This allows him to generate more power pound-for-pound than any golfer on Tour.”
McIlroy’s victory at the WGC-Bridgestone came on the heels of his Open Championship win, where he averaged more than 324 yards off the tee. He is the 13 player to win a WGC event and a major, but where McIlroy is, the air is more rarefied. He and Tiger Woods are the only two players to win a WGC event and a major in consecutive starts.
Rarefied air the average golfer can’t approach, to be sure. But the beauty of PLAY LIKE A PRO is the ability of Top 100 Teachers like Kostis, Chris Como (Gleneagles CC in Plano, Texas), T.J. Tomas (Tomasi Golf, Port St. Lucie, Fla.) and Brian Manzella (English Turn Golf and Country Club, New Orleans) to break down McIlroy’s ability to maximize impact for the everyday golfer.
The four analyze McIlroy’s moves and provide practice drills that show how to “crack that whip,” make a stronger impact with the right pivot, how to fire at the right target by releasing the hips at the right time and getting the downswing sequence right.
“Great players such as Rory McIlroy release their hips on their downswing by firing them to the right of the target and then halting this action until momentum drags the hips to the left of the target,” Tomasi writes.
Pictures of McIlroy’s swing, Tomasi’s tips on firing the hips at the right time and Manzella’s lessons on proper downswing sequence are ready to scan to video.
GOLF MAGAZINE: PLAY LIKE A PRO
By GOLF Magazine’s Top 100 Teachers
Edited and Introduction by David DeNunzio, Managing Editor-Instruction, Golf Magazine
Publisher: Time Home Entertainment Inc.
Publication date: October 22, 2013
$29.95, Hardcover, ISBN: 978-1-60320-239-8
About the Authors:
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