18 Minutes of FULL SWING WISDOM from Stewart Cink

Stewart Cink shares tips on becoming a better ballstriker in golf, sharing how to keep your posture in the golf swing, how to flight iron shots, how to become a more accurate driver of the ball and more.

Steuart Sink, good seeing you, my friend. Good to be here. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Major champion for sure. How often do you think about 09 turnberry? Uh, if I’m awake, I’m kind of thinking about it, I would imagine. But this is your full swing special. So, we’re going to make our way through the entire bag. We’re going to start with wedges, making our way all the way up to the driver. So, let’s start with the wedges. You’re fixing to get ready to to start your round. You’re coming out on the practice tee to get loose. Walk us through what you do to start your round off your warm-up session with your wedges. Okay. Well, um, once I’ve already done my little, uh, putting block practice and my chipping block practice, I come here third and, um, because chipping helps you kind of warm up the body and the mind to get you somewhat loose. I don’t have to start with little shots. I’m ready to go, you know, 80 or 90 yard shots with the lob wedge, but I always start with the shortest club in my bag. Okay? Always do. And I recommend that to everybody out there to do the same thing. You start with the shortest club in your bag because really what you’re doing when you get on the range the first time of the day, you’re really trying to figure out where the ground is. You know, that’s all about contact and entering the turf in the right way. So, you’re just starting to try to make solid contact. you’re not too concerned yet with where the ball’s going necessarily, but if if I was out on the range getting loose, I would hit a couple of wedges and slowly move up once I’m comfortable. And usually I hit four or five with each wedge and then move up to the nine iron, 7 iron, 5 iron, and so on. So, you go through all of your wedges before you get to your shorter irons just to once again try to find the ground. Just get your body warmed up. Actually, don’t really worry about yardage. You’re getting your body adjusted to the posture for the day, what the turf feels like. You’re conscious of your swing thoughts, what you’re trying to accomplish in your swing. You’re not completely consumed by them yet. You’re just trying to make good rhythmic swings and make solid contact. And uh you know, it’s not that hard to get in the right frame of mind if you approach things the right way on the range. All right, so we’re going to put you to the test. You’ve only made one swing, but as a major champion, we don’t give you many chances. So, I’ve got my Bushnell hybrid here. We’re going to play a little game. We’re going to see how well you can judge your distance. We’ve got three targets out here. The blue flag there, Stewart, is 88 yards according to the Bushnell hybrid. So, obviously different totally different mechanics here. More of a full swing. What is that? A 60° 60°ree. Okay. My top end with this, if I was warmed up, is about 100 yards. Okay. It’s warm out here today. We’re uh right in downtown Atlanta, summer day. Uh, I could probably go 100, maybe a little even more than that today. All right, so 88 yards, 3/4 60. Yeah, I feel like there’s a little hurt in my face right now just looking at the flag. So, I’m going to try to play this like a low 90 shot. Okay. Might need to get down. That’s not too bad. Well, it carried a little long, but Well, you talked yourself into the wind in. I don’t think there’s enough up there to worry about. That’s true. All right. So, 77 yards to the white flag. So, a little bit less than the one before, but still full full swing mode. Not short, not short game, short swing mode. Yeah. So, same thing. Now, here on this one, because the pin’s in the front of the green and there’s water short, you you definitely want to carry it to the hole. So, uh, because it’s not a full shot, I would get a low trajectory out of my small shot here. So, I’m gonna open the face up just a hair. Okay. That way, I can swing a little more aggressively. The ball’s going to come out a little higher, and I can put more spin on it and stop it near that hole with spin instead of trying to carry just over that hazard. Oh, Stewart, you’re going to like that one. Well, we’re just getting started. We’re starting with the short clubs and we’re going to move away up to the longer clubs. Up next, we’re going to get into the mid iron, 7 iron, 6 irons, and then get to the driver. So, don’t go anywhere. Golf Channel Academy will return after this. We’re back here on Golf Channel Academy, the Steuart Sync full swing special. And Stuart, you don’t play on five RDER cups and four President’s Cups teams without being a solid ball striker. So, let’s get into your golf swing specifically. This we have a seven iron here. So, as you address the ball, talk a little bit about your grip, ball position, so forth. Just on a stock 7 shot, no wind. Okay. Perfect number. I have little things that I can tell about where the grip ought to be. I like it to be it it feels like it’s a little strong to me, but it’s really kind of a neutral grip by today’s standards. That’s helped me to keep my club face square. And when my club face is square at the top of the swing, anybody when their club face is square, you don’t have to make adjustments coming down to the ball. You just sequence your power from the ground up, rotate, and release it. And uh it’s going to result in a lot of straight shots. All right, let’s see it. Seven iron. Okay, I get in with the grip like this, and I orient uh the club face to the target first, and then I get the rest of my body lined up according to the club face, kind of like so. Big thing for me too, a good tilt, not a hunched back, but a good posture tilt. That helps me to uh stay out over the ball and to rotate early. And uh check that grip. Make sure that the club face is going to remain square. The way you’re staring at it, must have gone pretty straight. I like watching those. Those are those are fun to watch. All right, show us another one. From this angle, you know, I really can’t see ball position, but it your ball position doesn’t fluctuate much. Not a lot from club to club. I I try to swing about the same on all my clubs. Yeah. All the way through the driver. I have the same swing keys. That is the early rotation of my hips, especially my left hip and leg. And uh getting out over the ball and down as opposed to raising up in my posture. Those two things I do on every shot. The only difference in the ball position is that with a seven iron like I have in my hand, I want to catch the ball first on a slightly descending angle. So therefore, the ball’s back just a hair. Club’s on an arc, right? Like that. So if you want to catch it on the down swing, you got to put the ball back here. If you want to catch it on the upswing, you got to put the ball up here. Yeah. And that’s really the only thing that changes for me. I mean, I might move the ball that much in my uh setup from short irons to driver. I just don’t like changing that much. 183 yard seven iron for Steuart sink. I’m going to keep watching it. I like it. All right, Stuart, show us one more. And I think that’s a good point that you made about keeping your head over the ball, keeping your chest down going through, which I think a lot of amateurs fight that. It keeps the club wider. It goes actually higher plane. Meaning if if that’s underneath the plane and that’s a higher plane, it actually keeps the club out a little higher for me, which is a good thing. I can’t do too much of that. And it keeps the club getting out wider on the down swing. I’m not as crowded and gives it more room. There’s no re there’s more room. There’s no reason for the club face to be manipulated through impact and you get a lot more straight shots. Okay, we love straight shots. We love predictability and that works in all kind of conditions. So, let me see if I can really exaggerate the head now. So, um I’m looking at the golf ball. I’m going to try to see an extra dimple on the outside on the down swing. That’s just kind of the way I think about it. See if I can do that. And the ball usually starts a little bit left when I do that. There it is. Started left and it’s if anything curving back to the right of here. All right, Stuart. Great stuff. You haven’t missed a shot since we’ve been here, which no surprise there. I’m getting them all out. So, we’re going to keep the pressure on you. Back in ’09, when you won the open at Turnberry, Barry, you had to keep the ball down. So, in this next segment, we’re going to keep the same club in your hand, but we want to talk to you about flighting any type of mid iron, low iron to keep it under the wind. And that’s what we’re going to wait for. So, when we come back on Golf Channel Academy, he’s going to show us how to keep the ball down. back here on Golf Channel Academy and Stuart 2009 Turnberry uh when you won the open. Mhm. Conditions were tough. It was very windy. Yeah. You had to keep the ball down. Talk a little bit about what you try to do to flight the ball down and how big an asset that is to have for control. I would just take the ball back in my stance a little bit. And because I’m now going to catch it a little bit more on the down, it’s going to go lower, but also a little bit more on the into out because of the curvature of the arc, it should draw. Okay. Okay. So, back in the stance and I’m going to play for just a little bit of a draw here. Other than that, I’m going to do the same thing. I’m going to rotate really early and I’m going to try to see the outside dimple of that ball. Let’s see if we can get a low shot. We got all of it right except it did start a little left. But if you’re hitting in really significant wind, that probably is not going to hurt you too bad. That amount of curve and that miss to the left. But these days, I really think that solid contact trumps trajectory unless you’re just like hitting it to the moon. Stability is important for for good contact, you know. Um, I feel like I’m very stable. I’m, you know, if you think about a box, a phone booth, I feel like I’m I’m inside the box. None of that. None of that. I’m I’m I’m right there, you know. Stay centered. Stay centered. I’m I’m rotating around a core. And um when I rotate around a core and I don’t move laterally very of very much, I just feel like I’m going to make solid contact. Okay. So, let’s let’s change this up a little bit then. Wind’s not straight in your face. It’s right to left a good 25 or 30 miles an hour. Okay. Do you change anything there in your setup with a hard crosswind? Again, I think solid contact still is the winner. But if the wind is coming hard off the right and the pin is on the right side, so you’re going to really try to hold it and keep it from curving. I go back to just doing more of the early rotary and more of the seeing the dimples in the chest and head down. It’s just going to promote my ball holding up against the right to left wind. And I just know that from years and years of working on this that the more I do of that I I just can’t overdo it. So I would try to hit a shot that looks like this. [Music] See that curving right that would hold into a wind. That was a little baby fade. That faded 10 yards. That’s the kind of shot you need if you have to hit a hole. Now, if the wind was blowing the other way, left to right, that’s a shot that I’m not quite as comfortable hitting. I can do it if I need to. It’s just some something I have to manufacture. And I would actually just, this is a tip I learned from the Nicholas book. Just start with a closed club face. So, even simpler than that, I’m going to do everything else the same. I’m going to aim a little right. I’m going to point the club face at the target where I want the ball to finish. Everything else is the same. And there it goes. That’s been one of my hallmarks to uh be able to hit the ball. Stay in the Stay in the Booth. Stay in the foam. Yeah. You know, the old Tommy ones, the or the skinny ones or Yeah. I like it. I like it. We’re not done yet because we’ve got to get to the end of the bag. The longest club in the bag. The head covers coming off. He’s going to show you how to hit more fairways. Back here on Golf Channel Academy with Stuart Sink. Full swing special. Stuart, we’ve made it all the way through the bag. The head cover has come off. So, let’s talk about the driver. Yeah. I feel like, you know, over the years, you’ve wanted some really tight golf courses. Firestone, Hilton Head, places where you had to find the fairway. So, talk us through the mechanics of your golf swing, things that you think about to hit to find fairways with the biggest stick in the back. Oh, when when I’m swinging well, I feel like I’m I’m a lot more rotary than I am lateral movement, especially with my lower body. Big key for me is early rotation from the top of my swing where I go ahead and start using the ground and get it ro rotation this way where my left leg is a good post early. The other part of what I try to do and I can’t do too much of is the opposite of the stand up. I try to really feel like I’m going out and down with my head like out over the ball. So, in my mind, I’m actually envisioning seeing an extra dimple on the outside of the ball on the down swing because it keeps me out and it keeps me from doing this. So, let’s try one here. I’ll go um with really early rotary and then I’ll try to look and see that extra dimple on the outside of the ball in the down swing. Now, that’s uh That’s going to play on most courses. All right, I want to see another one. That was from this angle. I could see what you were talking about how you were staying down over it longer. But that that’s one of those the two things I’m talking about are two things I cannot do too much of. Okay. So I I get on a tea where I feel pressure, I feel nervousness, I feel like, you know, sometimes your ego just wants those results really bad. And of course, you know, it’s natural to want them. So ball position pretty standard. Yeah. I mean, a little forward. I mean, what we’ve learned from the launch monitor in the launch monitor era is that, you know, it helps to kind of attack the ball on the way up a little bit. You can gain club head speed and ball speed that way. And so, I I subscribe to that and I try to move the ball position up a hair with my driver, but um not not an extreme amount. I would much rather catch it, you know, on a little bit lower ball flight and have it in the fairway. Right. As long as I’ve known you, you’ve always I’ve always admired the way that your tempo has really maintained the same throughout all these years. I do think it’s interesting how you said that a squeeze cut is your go-to shot, but it’s not something that you necessarily visualize when you’re on the first te of the RDER Cup and you have to find that first fairway. It’s more about what things in your swing that you that you can’t overdo than it is about really trying to hit the shot. That’s the key. Actually, um, the first time I played in the Ryder Cup, I had that very same scenario facing me, how to how to deal with the first T- shot. I was playing with Jim Furick, an alternate shot, and I thought I came up with a really great solution. Right before we went to the first TE, I switched it and I had I didn’t have to hit the first T- shot. I let him hit it and he hit the fairway. So, I hit the second shot here. Show us one more. That’s So, um, going back to what you said about like a cut, a squeeze cut is the kind of shot that I’ve envisioned. Um, you know, it’s kind of like a what came first, chicken or the egg kind of situation. For me, if if I rotate early like I want to, can’t do too much of it, and I get out over the ball and down on the down swing, again, can’t do too much of it, that puts the club kind of on a out to end plane just a hair, so the ball has a little cut on it. Yeah, I’m not trying to produce a cut. I’m trying to do what I know I can’t do too much of. And if I do it right, it produces a cut. You understand what I mean? There’s a distinction. If you do what you’re trying to do, it will produce that shot. That’s the key. Yeah, that’s the key. All right. So, you tell me. What are we doing with this shot? I think it’s going to early rotary. I think it’s going to fade about a yard and a half. All right. Important. Now, I’m going to try to go down with my head and see an extra dimple on the outside of the ball and rotate real early. I That’s about as good as I can hit four straight drivers. Yeah, I’d be happy with those. Well, based on how you hit them right there. Well, I wish I hit them all like that. Any issues, but it’s it’s fun to hit good drives. Thanks, man. As always, a lot of fun. Appreciate all the input and I know over the years all the drivers that you’ve had to hit find fairways either RDER Cup, President’s Cup, or leading a major championship, that club has uh played a big part in that. Yeah, it has. But thanks for having us. Sure