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My name is Shauheen Nakhjavani, Co-founder of Nakhjavani Golf. I have been a golf coach for 10+ years, I’ve given over 25,000 lessons in-person & online, and I have worked with many professional players; including Kevin Chappell, Stephen Ames, Darren Clarke, Calum Hill, Yannik Paul, Eddie Pepperell, Jeremy Paul & many others!
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Are we ready for a little John Rom action? What uh are some obvious traits of John Rom that everybody can pinpoint in his golf swing? Short back swing. Where is his club pointing? Very laid off. Very across the line. Very laid off. What could you tell me about his grip looking at it from here? Because there’s an obvious tell here on his grip. What is the obvious tell from down the line? It’s very weak. It’s very weak. Why is it very weak? What What can you tell me about it? It’s very weak. You see a lot of the fingers. Look how much his left hand is wrapped towards the camera. You can’t see the fingers wrapped towards the camera. You don’t see any of the handle. So that tells you what that the hands got to be wrapped over significantly. When you see the fingers that wrap that far across the handle, that means his hand is not very on top of the club. Because obviously the more on top you would get it, the more those fingers would be on either underneath or on the other side. So you can already assume just looking at his hand’s position here that he’s in a very position. You can arguably say the same about the trail hand. Where’s his thumb right now? His thumb is obviously not facing the camera. It’s on the opposite side, which means that his hand has to be obviously a lot more over it, right? He sees a lot of knuckles from his visual on the right hand and sees very little of the left hand. So, we got a weaker grip and we remember some traits of John Rom. Now, the first question is, why does John Rom swing work and why doesn’t why wouldn’t it work or how wouldn’t it work is a better way to phrase it. Okay. So, what do you think of his takeaway? What are what are some obvious traits that we see here? Club head’s a little bit inside the hands. Is it significantly inside the hands? Not really. What can you tell me about his hand path? Is it working around him deeper? Is it working more upright? It’s not working deeper. Look how much disconnect there is between his lead arm and his chest. If the arm was working deeper, okay, if I’m making a back swing and I’m making a lot of turn and my hand path is working deeper, would you see a bigger disconnect here or less? You would see less, right? So, the more I turn my body, the more the hands work around me, the more my hands work around me, they obviously get deeper. You would see the more of a connection between the lead arm and the chest. When you see this big of a gapping between his arm and where his chest is placed and there’s this huge window here, it’s implying that the hands are traveling more up. Take a look. Let’s reset. Okay, let me put my hand down on where his hands are. And then let’s trace where his hands are going early. Is that hand path working inside or out? It’s working a lot more out, isn’t it? His hands are literally disconnecting and working a little bit more away from him. Is it because he doesn’t turn his lower body much? Is it because he doesn’t turn his lower body much? For sure, that’s a part of it. I mean, at the end of the day, your rotation is connected to you. So, the more I turn, the more my hands work in. If I do not turn as much, and he certainly doesn’t have a significant amount of hip turn early, the hands aren’t going to get pulled around them. The only way for him to get deeper here, if he’s not rotating his body that much, he’s got to shove his arms across his chest. Most golfers, especially high level players, aren’t going to do that. So, he has a bigger window here, which pushes his hand path a little bit more out. What can you tell me about the face angle? It’s okay. A touch open. Maybe the face is rolling maybe the toe of the club head a little bit on the open side even though his lead wrist is bowed. Why is his lead wrist bowed? Because of his grip makes a big part of that, right? If I grip the club very strong, I’ll be much more cupped going back if I don’t change it. If I grip it a lot weaker and in the palm of my hand, my wrist presets a lot flatter. So if I don’t do much to it and I turn, it’ll be a little bit more into a flex position. So certainly the weaker grip has a big influence on the wrist angle there. Maybe a subtle subtle amount of some forearm rotation. Not a significant amount, but there’s certainly a little bit of it. That’s partially why the club pulls in. Now, is he rotating his body much as he’s pulling his club back? Not really. Right. So, by the time he gets to the top of his back swing, you can’t even see the club head because it cuts out a little bit. Okay, let’s pull this back just a hair. Really, all you need to know about his face angle, it’s not that strong because obviously his grip is a lot weaker. The weaker grip is offsetting the face. But besides the weaker grip, John Ram’s obviously a super powerful player, but what can you tell me of this position here? Very bold. very bold lead wrist. The obvious stuff doesn’t have a lot of turn. When he doesn’t have a lot of turn, hands aren’t going to get very deep. Right, Joe? Give me the club for a second. So, if you get into a situation where you’re not turning your hips that well, if I put a straight line down on his hands, are these hands on the deeper side or less? Less. Less. What would be considered more on the deeper side? Behind the shoulder. maybe a little bit more in line with the heels of the feet, which would be out here, right? He doesn’t have a lot of hand depth. Does he play more of a stock fade or a stock draw? Stock fade. Why is it easier for him to play the stock fade? There’s two reasons why it’s easier for him to play a stock fade with his current pattern. Brandon, left is the only place his body can go. Well, for starters, we just spoke about one of them. He’s at the extremity of it. His hands aren’t very deep. When your hands aren’t very deep, by definition, that means coming down, they are likely to get more in front of his body. If your hands get more in front of you, is it easier to swing left on the ball or swing right on the ball? Left. Swing left. So, the more his hands stay in front of him or the less deep they get, the more that’s creating a fade bias to his pattern. So, the lack of hand depth that you’re seeing at the top of his back swing here, that’s actually going to make it a lot easier for him to play a fade versus playing a draw. Okay. Obviously, the lack of rotation of the body plays a big part in that. Now, his weaker grip does what to the face angle? Keeps it a little bit open. Yes, his wrist is bowed, but that wrist being bowed isn’t really helping him to close the face much because his grip is very weak. The two are kind of offsetting each other. So even though he’s got a ton of flexion on his lead wrist, that face isn’t very strong, right? That’s the key to understand here. So his club face gets weaker. If his club face gets weaker, that’s always going to create an a bigger ease to do what to the golf ball? Obviously to fade it, right? A lot of old school mythologies used to tell us that if your club face is stronger, it’s easier to swing left. The club face is weaker, it’s easier to flip it and swing right. I don’t necessarily believe that. He swings left aggressively with a face that’s not that strong and he plays a fade just fine. Right. Obviously, this is the key here for him. Now, with the shaft alignment that is as laid off as his gets, is his pattern likely to steepen on him or shallow out from here? Believe it or not, John Rom is an excellent golfer, right? He’s elite by by all categories. He’s a top five, top 10 player in the world. But what John Rom has in his golf swing is a shaft pitch that from here when he starts down, is that shaft getting more vertical or more shallow? So there is a subtle steepening effect that actually happens to the pitch of John Rom’s shaft coming down. People don’t really re recognize that, right? His club is very laid off. Obviously, if you again, this relates back to what we spoke about. If you remember last week, if you take a still image of his golf swing from here, the shaft looks plenty fine. It looks like it’s in a great spot. It is in a great spot. But what you don’t see is directionally this shaft is not laying down. It’s going that way. The more it goes that way, is it easier for him to play a fade or play a draw? Fade. Play a fade. So the shaft steepening also plays into his preference or certainly what we’ve recognized from his T- balls more of a fade bias, right? Very powerful position. Now what can you tell me about his swing length and why it’s important? This is a this is a very key point to this entire structure of his golf swing. If he was to go further, he wouldn’t be able to get back to that position at the bottom. If he goes further back, he wouldn’t be able to get back to that good position at the bottom. Does he have a physical limitation? Yes, he does. So, I believe he’s spoken about this in interviews that he has a limitation for sure. Now, let’s just take that out of the equation for a second and talk about the mechanics of the matchups. Okay. If his swing got longer at the top, but stayed at the same amount of being laid off, why wouldn’t it work anymore? Steven a lot more. he would steepen it a lot more. First of all, he’s steepening it for a lot longer and he would steepen it more than you’re seeing here. So, when you have a swing that’s very short, even though it gets very very laid off, yes, his shaft plane steepens in transition, but there’s not enough time for it to steepen to a point of consequence because his swing is so short, right? So, because his swing is very short, even though it steepens slightly from here, it’s not like the shaft ever gets out there. We just saw where it got to at the midpoint of his down swing in a pretty damn good position. And then even if it continues to steepen from there, it’s never going to get way outside the plane coming down because his swing is a lot shorter. There’s not enough time for it to steep into a point of consequence. So, a huge key point here for John Rom’s golf swing is that yes, he’s very laid off, but he literally needs the back swing to be this short or he’s kind of toast from here. If his back swing was a lot longer, but retain the same laidoff plane that he has, not only is it going to still continue steepening coming down, but now it’s steepening for a lot longer, which means it’s going to happen a lot more aggressively, which means coming down he might end up out here all of a sudden, unless his body does something maybe to try to prevent it from getting out there, but now he’s sacrificing the good pivot that he has in his golf swing in order to do that. We don’t want to be doing that. So, a key point of John Ram’s golf swing that a lot of people don’t recognize is the fact that although his shaft is very laid off and it steepens, the nature of his swing being so short is crucial for him. It’s so important for him to make that swing work. You take his exact same golf swing and literally double the swing length and the whole thing falls apart. Not ideal unless he lengthened the swing but also changed the club alignment at the top. It would require two changes for him if he wanted to lengthen his back swing to retain the function that he has. He’s powerful for a lot of reasons. He obviously uses the ground extremely well. He also does retain a lot of what people would consider lag for sure. Yes. And unwinds it aggressively at the ball. He’s also extremely strong which plays a big factor in this as well. The stronger you are, the more speed you can create. Right. So, look at this. Shaft steepens, but never really to a point of bother. As he’s coming down, look at where that club gets. You saw a picture of this. Everyone would think this is perfect, but how he gets there is obviously very unique. Now, here’s another point. Let’s invert it. Now, if the shaft plane stayed laid off and the swing was longer, we spoke about how it would steepen aggressively, right? What if we took the exact same golf swing he has and instead of touching the length, we got his hands deeper. What would happen to his golf swing from there? It would be a lot flatter for sure. Right. You took the exact same pattern. Don’t even worry about the length of the shaft plane. Don’t worry about where it’s pointed. We just took his hands and we got it a lot deeper. Well, number one, it would move his swing direction a mile to the right. he would draw the ball a lot more. Playing a fade now becomes a lot more difficult for him if his hands were deeper. Remember we spoke about he likes to play a fade. Part of that is the fact that his hands aren’t very deep. It’s easier to get the hands back in front of you if you took his hand path and you made them deeper. Well, it would be a lot easier for him to shallow the club. Sure. But does he really need to shallow the club much more than he does? No. Or does he need to get it shallower than it is coming down? He doesn’t. So, if you got his hands deeper, there’s a possibility he actually gets stuck swinging too far to the right. And keep in mind, his swing is not very long. If your hands are deeper, it would become a lot harder for those hands to get back in front of his body coming down. He doesn’t have enough time to reroute them far enough in front of him. So if his hands were back here and the swing length was the same, odds are he gets stuck with his arms coming down and he might struggle. So again, the necessities of his golf swing, yes, it helps him to play a fade, but also because his swing is very short, you don’t want to be that deep because if you’re any deeper, you’re going to get too flat and stuck coming down. So his lack of hand depth plays into his benefit two ways. It makes it easier to for his short swing to get the hands back in front, right? And it makes it easier for him to feed the ball, which is his preference. He’s got a unique move, right? Everybody knows he has a unique move, but really, is it that unique through the ball? Not really. If you literally took away John Ron’s back swing, there’s nothing unique about it. It’s the nature of like he’s so laid off, so short, and steepens the club a little bit in transition that oh my god, it’s crazy he hits the ball very far from such a short back swing. But really, if you look at him through the golf ball, there’s nothing unique about this. This is this is tour quality in so many different variables. It’s just his uh his his wrists and then how they off. Yeah, his his wrist is obviously very bowed, which maybe is less common, but at the same time, his grip is so weak, he has no choice to keep it that bowed to get control of the club face. If his wrist, look how bowed his wrist is, and his face is still not that strong. If his grip was slightly stronger and he was less laid off, what do we accomplish to say? Well, if his grip was stronger, for starters, his wrist couldn’t afford to be as bold as it is anymore. He was less bold. Yeah, it would get the club in a different position. the club would reroute differently. The aesthetics of it would look a lot different and the the path and launch numbers would be different, but it it would just be a different way to successfully hit the golf ball. This is where we love talking about matchups. Like he doesn’t have to do this, but he does it and it works, right? We want to talk about why does it work, but he doesn’t there’s no obligation for him to keep the grip that weak. There’s no obligation for him to keep the wrist that bode. He would just have to match it up differently at the top if his variables were different. But it’s not always necessary. This is obviously highly successful. When he comes through, he releases that right hand really quickly after impact. And you’re talking about like the way his hands are placed here versus how he releases the club. There’s a lot of release happening. Okay. So, two things. First of all, yes, there’s a lot of release happening, but how many drivers are there of the golf ball that don’t release the club this aggressively? You’re creating number one, you’re creating a lot of speed. So, the first thing you have to consider is one of the sources of speed is your hands, arms, and wrists. This is a huge source of power, right? You try to stand there and hit two golf balls. One where you can release your wrists as aggressively as possible, and one where you’re forced to keep the wrist angles passive like this. and just create speed this way. Who is do you likely think is going to hit the ball farther? There’s a point where you’re stalling and releasing too much that it creates timing issues for sure and we don’t want that. And in those situations, we want to slow down the release and create a little bit of a better movement of the body through the ball. But everything comes at a cost. golfers who are super passive on the hands and arms and have all body rotation and never release the club. You can only create so much speed doing that, right? It’s a lot easier to create speed with my hands and arms. So, part of why he swings the ball very fast is because he needs to do that. If he’s slowed down the release too much, he would sacrifice some speed to do it. Second of all, with his weaker grip, if he’s just holding on to that thing forever, that ball’s going to go a mile to the right. Also thirdly, you’re hitting a driver and you’re swinging it extremely fast who is holding on forever. We spoke about Hunter Mayan last time, but he’s like a unicorn. You know, there are very few golfers, drivers of the ball that look like this through impact. Most of them, you’re pushing off the ground, even though you’re turning, you’re creating a lot of speed through your hands and arms, there’s going to be some throw to those wrists at the bottom. I mean, that’s just the reality for most golfers, especially the longer ones. So, yes, he’s releasing the club a lot, but I mean, his hand path is still arcing left. It’s not like his arms are disconnected from him. So, that’s a key point there. There’ll be a big difference if he’s releasing the club a lot, right? There’s a big difference if I’m turning and releasing the club like this versus if I’m releasing the club like this. Like, if my hands and arms are disconnecting away from me that way, it would be way more problematic than what you’re seeing with how he’s doing it here. He’s still stabilizing it with a ton of rotation to a degree even though he is releasing his wrist. It’s not so much of a an aggressive forearm. It’s not so much of an an aggressive disconnected forearm roll. It’s just more of like, yeah, I’m releasing my wrist and creating a lot of speed doing that. Make sense? Next golfer.
