It was a thrilling weekend across the tours, full of grit, breakthroughs and standout play. On the PGA Tour, Ryan Fox outlasted the field in a four-hole playoff to win the RBC Canadian Open—proof that relentless effort can beat perfect technique. Jennifer Kupcho snapped a three-year drought with a birdie to win the LPGA’s ShopRite Classic at –15. Austin Smotherman claimed the Korn Ferry’s BMW Charity Pro-Am with a lights-out –25 finish, while Connor Syme finally broke through on the DP World Tour with a long-awaited win at the KLM Open. On the LIV stage, Joaquín Niemann fired a bogey-free 63 for his fourth win of the season, and Phil Mickelson delivered a vintage flop-shot birdie that reminded us all why Lefty is still magic.
This Week’s Improvement Pivot Point: Perfectly Imperfect.
Ryan Fox’s win is a reminder that swing aesthetics don’t matter nearly as much as understanding your capabilities, controlling your ball flight, and grinding it out under pressure. Scott breaks down Fox’s swing—why it works for him as a full-time player who’s learned to manage its nuances, but why it’s not one you’d want to replicate. The takeaway? Understand the root cause of your movement, and build a swing that works for you. That’s what it means to Own Your SSWING.
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Your Weekly Drive: The Friday Fix for Golf Movement & Mastery
good day golfers ever found yourself redirecting blame and making excuses after having an absolute shocker on a golf course i know that i have range was closed i was a little cold didn’t warm up i hit it in those three old divots then we have the podcast for you we focus on how to fundamentally own your swing strike it pure and consistently shoot in the 70s be it if you’re a weekend hack retired and playing daily a school phenom or a tour professional we present and discuss facts and physics pertaining to golf trying to keep our ego and opinion at bay we dispel myths such as keep your head down bend your knees or my all-time favorite game improvement irons so stop drinking that mythical kool-aid and have a sip of ours i think you’ll find it both inspiring and refreshing i’m scott young founder of swing pga professional and exour player welcome to pivot the path goodday golfers and welcome to pivot the path what a week in sport just passed and sport this morning us open week massive i am not playing i’ve got a lot of work to do on my game till next year and i just cannot wait for the us open it’s going to be absolutely superb so buckle in buckle up buttercup we’re going to have a great week of golf for me it’s been a wonderful week because my brother has been in town as we talked about last week and my mom flew in uh so we have bit of uh bit of young family love going on at home which is great and to my wonderful bride rosemary she is the glue that puts us all together thank you very much su anyway news from the fairways we didn’t have our f1 there off for a week so oscar pestri i reckon he’s going to win next week too he is just on fire french open as a tennis absolute lover and i am committed to go to the us open tennis this year i’ve been here 19 years never gone and i’m a tennis nut so i’m going this year rosemary and i are going to go and walk around so french open what happened well bugger me sabalanka and cocoa golf final sabalanka was up 4-1 and she’s just a beast of a tennis player there was one point where it was like 3040 uh against serve down coco golf uh hit a second serve sabalina walked in and just pounded this thing to oblivion and i thought “ah this is all over.” well no it wasn’t all over cocoa golf came back and won in three sets and although sabalanka didn’t seem to be emotionally on and my hat is off to any atp tour pro as a golf pro and tournament player i used to turn out and we had a week on week off uh or just on for four days these guys go for two and a half weeks in unbelievable climate so coco golf is the inspiration for never give up uh you know she’s just finding her feet in the whole world of tennis she was very nervous i thought in the in the speech which is funny because she just obliterated her tennis partner uh and yet she seemed more nervous talking to the crowd she just is a remarkable young lady so power to her winning in uh winning in three uh against a a formidable opponent sabalanka who obviously will come back and then the men’s alcarez also was two sets down thinking “oh s’s going to win this.” and young alcarez came back to win in five sets so whether you love your tennis uh like myself or you’re just a kind of an avid fan uh i hope you got the the french open if you don’t just back on a replay because it was it was terrific so why i love grand slam tennis and really it has wonderful parallels to our game of golf as a scratch player i’m going to hit five or six shots around where i uh you know prepare picture practice play i’m going to hit five shots around where i actually pull the trigger as perfectly as i presented it and pictured it and and wanted to feel it and that’s kind of where these grand slams especially this past week coco golf and and young alcarads oh they’re both young uh it’s where they exemplify our embodiment of what swing is which is you never give up right you never give up and you’re not going to play golf is about handling defeat so you know if you want to get get to know someone in business go play a round of golf with them or nine holes with them because it’s about owning your swing and so when alcarez and coco golf were down one set two sets uh in their grand slam they didn’t give up they were like “okay reset.” you’ve got to own your swing you’ve got to own the process to what you’re trying to do to to improve and to actually take ownership of one’s life and one’s golf game and that’s where i think golf resembles life and that’s why it’s such an amazing game because it res it illustrates who we are you will fail on a golf course but you can own your swing and own your journey and you can pivot pivot the path and then you can go on your merry way and actually just a little side note when justin enard came in to present the women’s trophy it reminded me how small tennis players were of 15 years ago compared to now i mean sabalanka looked like she could put her in her back pocket and then even golf was you know a good five six inches taller than her so tennis has changed as i believe and i’ve been saying this for a while now as golf will start to change you know guys on the pga tour will be 6’5 at at the minimum in my opinion the next 5 to 10 years because we can fit clubs for them i just built a set of clubs that were 5 in over standard length yeah it’s that’s insane uh anyway we digress so moving into golf news from the fairways cornferryy unbelievable this was so cool austin smotherman first time winner just a brilliant he’s got this kind of sidehanging 40 foot putt that he had to drain to win and just go ahead and drains it so that was just i always try and because we’re now you know after having james on the on the podcast and he reminded me how passionate these young players are this kid hold a 40footer to win which is what we all practice i’m going to hold this for the masters and he actually did it so mate power to you just superb scotsman connor smi won the uh won his first dp tour event 29 years of age uh obviously tough conditions 11 under uh love when a scotsman wins that’s pretty cool walking nean continues his merry way good leadup to the us open wins the live event 15 under uh he’s just he’s just going from strength to strength so on the lpga tour jennifer coopo had a bit of a three four year drought on the lpga tour she wins the shop right is a shortened event don’t know why it’s a shortened event anyway it’s only 54 holes and she gets on and has it done for the first time i think in three three and a half years so that was pretty cool which leads us to pga tour ryan fox the kiwi ripold age of 38 now this is kind of where it’s a bit weird they had the he won the pga tour event that wasn’t a pga sanctioned event or whatever it is the smaller pga tour event a couple of weeks ago after chipping in which was insane um but then kind of wins his first real pga tour event uh winning the canadian open and we’re going to parlay that as to our improvement pivot point where one is perfectly imperfect and how his golf swing emulates potentially not what we strive to do in here but he just won a pga tour event and won one four or five weeks ago but we thought we’d talk about it but shout out to ryan uh he holds a 16 yeah the 16footer hold it was like a side little burning left to right and it just snuck in the left edge to get in a playoff and then he wins he wins after the fourth fifth playoff hole burning the the 18th there to win his first full sanctioned pga tour event so ryan fox just awesome and he’s a journeyman he’s 38 years old but his technique is very interesting and so what we wanted to do was talk about it which we’ll get in into a little bit before we do uh on the greens for us i had the pleasure of playing nine holes with my brother at our local golf course which is uh long shore which is about 10 minutes from home and it’s on the water at westport and it’s absolutely exquisite and it’s very similar to long reef which is on the water back home in colaroy there and i shot one under played pretty well chipped and puttered really well so the work i’ve been doing on starting the ball online has made a huge difference and again if i be brutally honest which is what this podcast is about how i feel standing over the golf ball to me it looks like the ball’s going to go about a foot and a half left on about a 6 to 10footer so i know that that’s very different to how i played in in the last 15 20 years and i’ve re and this is not i’ve really worked hard to ensure that where i start the ball is how i want to start the ball on the target line and it feels very weird but i know my stroke’s good cuz i’ve been working on it for 18 months and now i feel like i’m starting the ball online and the only way i can feel it is if it feels weird and left which that’s bizarre so what we’re trying to do is really be objective with your golf game and so uh i’m really enjoying chipping and putting i’ve really worked hard on that the last 16 18 months so i’m super pumped i’m playing twice this coming week which is unheard of for me uh which is bizarre but anyway uh and i’m playing once with my brother and rob khan a dear mate i’ve known since we were what nine uh so three aussies are hitting ferry point on wednesday and it’s bucketing down all week apart from wednesday bit of a heavenly moment and then i’m playing again on friday with dr mattie masel and one of our dear uh members in here and we’re going up to west point where this particular uh member’s daughter is actually currently enrolled the army army west point and i can’t wait to play it because i’ve been wanting to play that for 10 or 15 years apparently it’s exquisite it’s robert trent jones and being a military family we love that so let’s pivot a little bit so i got to work on this week a couple of things my right knee is still bung holio because i got to get a new one and i’m not going to get a new one so i’ve just got to work on just getting into that right glute with the longer stuff wedges is fine because i can trap it a little bit but if i just don’t load that right glute with my driver and three would i get a little steep and she balloons out to the right which hit a couple of shots in the us open like that so this week i’m going to hit some balls actually probably today i’ve got about a 15 hour day in here today i’m going to hit some balls today a little bit and i built my brother a brand new set of clubs so he’s played for 23 years we measured his clubs and they’re an inch and a quarter too short so my dear brother’s been playing with golf clubs that are an inch too short so i’ve just finished them he played with them on uh on friday and he loved them so i’ve got to finish the set so that’s kind of cool and uh i’ve got some work to do so we’ll pivot and let’s get into improvement pivot point and we thought this was cool we wanted to talk about ryan foxy fox the kiwi uh 38 years of old age so he’s a journeyman he’s just won his first tour event uh last week and then the the one before which wasn’t full sanctioned but is what it is what we’re trying to do here is just explain people’s golf swings and so we wanted to talk ryan fox because it’s a really interesting move and we wanted to highlight it in an amazing way because the guy hits it he’s got like 125 club head speed which is insane but what i wanted to do was explain how i’m noticing the trends in the golf industry and this is really important the commentators as we are all commentators who really get negative and indeed some of the commentators on the golf channel they only look at one data point and i think the beauty of swing is that we’re one of the very very few platforms that looks at the entire vertical integration of a golf swing and so i wanted to to talk about what i see in ryan fox it’s certainly i would never teach his move and i wanted to explain saying why from a lower back pain management point of view he must be country strong foxy i’ve never met him he’s he seems a delightful guy um but he’s very country strong and i’m going to say that because he’s his lower back gets a lot of side bend through impact and his torso side bend and one would argue that’s not going to be great on his right hand facet joints he hits it like a an absolute cannon but there’s an upside and a downside to that so we thought we’d get into it and let’s talk about ryan fox pga tour winner twice in four or five weeks ryan fox foxy fox new zealander love to see a new zealander start to play some good golf sir bob charles and we had michael campbell we had um danny lee who is a young young phenom unfortunately he went to live and so we don’t see much of danny lee anymore just i don’t think he’s playing enough goals so it’s great that uh ryan had a win for his flying his kiwi flag and we’ll be interested in this year’s us open obviously he was leading in the pga for for some time let’s talk about his technique why improvement pivot point is because the golf community jump on whoever’s doing well on the pga tour being the market leader i thought we’d discuss it how we see it and i’ve just got his i’ve got his stats here so he’s he’s hitting up on driver about 4° he’s coming outside in i found it hard i didn’t go down the complete rabbit hole and trying to find his stats i found it very difficult to find a side on view of his iron play but i could find a lot of his driver and so what i wanted to do is just explain how he swings a golf club why not to emulate it because it’s horrific for your lower back but he gets it done you know and he wins and so our job is just to say “hey here’s a factual account of ryan’s golf swing.” so what do we know we know that the lower spine rotates very minimally and we’re going to hurt if we rotate through the lower spine so i’ve i live in what we call lumbar lordosis my lower back is always in is in that tilt so i’ve always got to go chest to ball tuck tailbone right okay so what do we know so i’ve actually just gone down the rabbit hole here i’ve got his little stats ryan fox is hitting up three three and a half four degrees with with his driver and he’s creating about 125 130 mph of ball speed but how does he achieve that well it’s a swing that i wouldn’t suggest you follow for numerous reasons there’s a lot of moving parts and what the golf industry don’t talk about is how mentally strong this guy must be he chipped in to win his first ever pga tour event you know four or five uh three or four weeks ago and don’t forget he cups his left wrist at a dress which means the face should be open he then closes the face at a dress which means the ball should go left but so far he’s gone cupped right so when he cups his left wrist the ball should go right when he toes it in the ball should go left and then when he picks the club up what what ryan does i’m a guy who lives in what we call lumbar lordosis so i’ve always got to find neutral bucket of water neutral ryan drops his height about a foot as he’s hitting so as he swings the club back because his left grip is so strong he whips the club round and delofted at the top of his golf swing both both of his wrists are vertical which is always the club face is open but he closes it so if i grip the club how i grip it and i get both my wrists in a vertical position my club face you’ll see is pointing over my head he’s he’s got some very funky moves so strong left he grips it like a hammer he then delofts the club and whips it inside now because he’s using a lot of lower back you’ll see that my little microphone here doesn’t move and then ryan picks the club up to be totally shut his wrists are vertical his club is above shoulders and then he throws over the top but as he throws over the top he should be hitting down and steep on the golf ball but he then drops his height about a foot he leans way back and he’s hitting up on driver four degrees and he’s also tilting back through impact so his lower spine is getting crunched as his head drops and tilts and he comes from underneath and flips it and so the problem we’ve got there’s a ton of moving parts what we like in the golf swing is that the spine stays very neutral whether it’s from side view or whether it’s from down the line view the thoracic spine rotates my head doesn’t move my pelvis and torso move together my pelvis posteriorly tilts you’ll notice that my head hardly moves so what we want to do is talk about motion in a manner in which is positive the guy’s a legend but what people don’t talk about is how strong he mentally is what people don’t talk about is if his grip is super strong and he’s hooding everything on the way back for him to chip in with pretty questionable technique suggest that he’s mentally an absolute beast of a guy but also at 38 to win your first pg tour event suggests that his technique means he’s very inconsistent anyone who is moving backwards remember he is exactly the same as kyle burkshire the long drive champ at impact his torso because his left leg is hyperextending in extension that forces his weight back as his left leg straightens his side bend of his torso is extreme his lower back is getting absolutely punished and then he’s hitting up from here now the problem with this position strong left grip hooded club face his club face should send the ball way left but his torso spinning open and he’s cutting across the ball so he hits mainly cuts so anytime the breeze is howling left to right he’s going to struggle unfortunately so british open’s going to be tough anytime he’s got to really shape one right to left it’s going to be very hard to control because like kyle as he hyperextends he’s really using that club which is miles to the right and then he whips it closed and so there’s just a lot of face change which is why he’s inconsistent but it’s perfectly imperfect right we’re not ever gonna say anything’s wrong in here we use justin thomas a lot justin thomas goes from a weaker grip ryan fox is strong a weaker grip justin thomas fans it open ryan fox is crazy strong hoods it straightens tilts hangs back and flips it and you just won two events in four weeks so all we try to do is comment when you’re watching someone like ryan foxy fox take it for what it is give the guy some credit that he must be mentally so strong if you’re chipping in for your first win on us soil in front of 40,000 people it’s more about your mental than your technique and what we want to do is be very different there’s not a platform i don’t think out there that actually talks about things like hey he’s country strong from new zealand he’s mentally just a beast he’s nearly 40 years of age and just had his first win so that suggests that his technique is going to be producing a very inconsistent tournament result but he still won and it’s awesome and we salute that but try not to copy this deoft left leg straightens therefore his left hip is higher at impact than his right therefore his right collapses his shoulders high his angle of shoulder through impact is about 70° and you can tell that my right side is going to my facet joints are going to get compressed you know it’s just not great for the human body unless you got a big old butt to take pressure away from your lower back which he does so what we try to do let’s bring it full circle we would imagine that his driving stats are obviously very good but his iron play is not going to be consistent my sternum’s where the club hits the ground left leg straightens right leg collaps now my sternum’s going to be way behind the ball and i’m going to hit hit under it with big flat hooks so remember there’s no right way hopefully what we do better is just be very factual on the physics and math which is how we approach the game we don’t label things right and wrong we just say here’s the cause and effect upside ryan fox rips driver 330 without even blinking downside of ryan fox he will hit behind the ball a little bit and hit flat hooks if the breeze is howling left to right he’s going to struggle to control a draw because his face is changing a lot when it’s left to right breeze justin thomas is going to struggle to to shape that ball right to left because his face is opening it’s not wrong all we try to do is label things correctly so you can absolutely own your golf swing beauty golfers newsletter drops on friday thanks so much for being part of our journey we’re always going to keep it high and tight on facts and figures and try not to label things right and wrong just label them as physics math and how you can own your swing we’ll see you next week and have a great game of golf us open enjoy it [Music]
