Analyzing the PAUSE GUY on Tour: Hideki Matsuyama

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Back 930 seals the deal for Hideki at Riviera he had a few injuries in the last year is Hideki mat Yama back let’s break his swing Down hii Matsuyama is back in the winter Circle the first time since 2022 I know he’s been dealing with some back injuries of recent and most notably he is the king the pause so historically he’s had a little bit of a pause move at the top of his swing I think that works

Great for some players myself I implemented a pause at one point in my uh swing journey and it really helped me get awareness of how not to pull on the shaft so I I I took some things from Hideki swing and and it really helped me

Out I think if we look at this setup we see a lot of commonalities from hi Dei to the last four out of five PJ tour winners now I did not get a chance to do Nick Taylor swing last week but one of the things that we’ve pretty much seen

From all these players is their lead elbow is pointed at the Target okay which is something I prefer to see so that elbow points at the Target and then he really has that right elbow tucked back at that right rib cage so U out of

All the guys we’ve looked at so far I would say he definitely has the most with that right elbow so terms of it being externally rotated grip following the trend of weak leftand grips okay so you can see that logo on his glove points at the Target I would definitely

Classify that as a weak left-and grip and then the V points up inside his right shoulder so I would say overall it’s a pretty weak attachment now that’s always interesting right because when I coach these elbow alignments into players a lot of times they get worried

Their grip is going to get too strong so you can see that Hideki does a great job of managing that grip from getting too far on the stronger side of the spectrum so I I like that a lot really wide base okay much like wendam Clark difference

That we’re seeing with his setup is he doesn’t have as much foot flare okay so I would say his feet are a little bit more neutral and remember the camera is not exactly Square here I think if the camera was perfectly Square I think his Trail foot or right foot would look even

Straighter so it looked like it have less flare that reminds me of a Brooks kka setup so someone who sets up wider base uh feet a little bit more square and typically what we see from players like that is they have a little bit more lateral motion built into to their swing

So obviously it’s not a bad thing it’s just got to match up down in line view I think is pretty good okay so we draw a line from the balls of the feet up runs along his knees and then that hits right under his armpit so he’s nice and

Balanced he has space between his hands and his is pelvis really important for rotation and then you guys know I love to check the humorous so if I draw a line down shoulder to Elbow you can see his uh humorous hangs on this side of

That 90° line when we look at uh his pelvis and his spine obviously he’s got a vest on so it’s it’s hard to to look at it exactly perfect but maybe just a little arch in there okay so maybe just a little arch in that lower part of his

Back it’s not bad if I draw line from the tailbone up you could kind of see uh there’s a little daylight in there and especially anytime we start to hear about back issues I think you always want to look at the setup position and don’t get me wrong players know how to

Get in and out of positions and move from from different places but TPI talks about you know one of the easiest ways to alleviate back pain is to make sure that your pelvis is in the right condition at a dress so I think that’s a

Good kind of Baseline to work off of all right so we we have some lines up on his pelvis and his head to get an idea of how he’s moving first off starting with the face on view one of the things we see is he has a lot of as we mentioned

Lateral motion into his takeaway okay so he he moves laterally much more than Windam Clark I do like how wide his takeaway is so nice one piece takeaway he goes up you can see he’s maintaining a lot of width and then as we get to the

Top of the Swing one of the thing that you start to see is you start to see not a lot of rotation in his pelvis okay so if we look at his pelvis there’s not much rotation it even looks like that right leg is holding a little bit of

Flex at the top of his swing so when we see that happen the upper body will typically start to run out of range of motion and because of that we now see the upper body extend ever so slightly so not saying that’s the issue of his

Back pain but um I would say that is definitely going to put more stress on his spine than not also notice that he pretty much just goes down in the back swing okay so remember with Windham Clark Windham went up before he went down because he went up and allowed his

Trail leg to extend a little bit which helps the pelvis rotate and we aren’t seeing as much of that from Hideki rolling the down the line view okay focusing in on that right leg one of the things you’ll see okay is he starts with a certain amount of flex and it almost

Appears that he he increases that Flex to the top okay so it almost looks like he’s increasing that Flex or even sitting down into that right hit so we really can’t see any daylight between his legs and typically the byproduct of that when we see that is the hands are

Going to start to work more up okay so you can kind of see see right about P3 those hands start to shoot straight up okay as they start to work up I want you to watch what happens to the club it almost appears that it gets a little bit

Laid off right through there so you could you could kind of see just a little bit of that head peeking out behind those hands but if I just go slow you can see it’s it’s definitely moving in the direction of being laid off at the top so there there’s a correlation

In the swing anytime time the hands work up the shaft is typically going to lay back and then the opposite is true if the hands are working more around the body okay and getting deeper the shaft will typically work more across so once again and and actually once he gets to

The top of Swing you can see he he does create a little bit of light between those legs but it almost looks more of a result of of the transition it looks like he’s already kind of sitting into that which is ultimately what’s creating that daylight so so if we go back to

Addess and we check his grip obviously we mentioned it is a weaker grip and what I want to see is I want to see how he manage that into the back swing okay so at P2 uh checking his face it’s on a little bit of an angle matching his

Spine angle um that gives us a sign that his face is square to the arc ke he swinging back on we even see a little bit of bow okay so you start to see this lead wrist slightly bowed at P2 in my and that’s what’s helping get that face

Square um if we move him to the top his lead wrist is flat okay so if you’re going to be a golfer that has a lot of lower body rotation and you do have a weak grip at a dress we have to make sure that that lead wrist is flat or

Even slightly bowed like a Dustin Johnson to ensure that the face is going to be visible or Square in the downswing okay that’s that’s really really important going back to this laid off position okay so as we mentioned uh not a lot of body rotation in the back swing

More lateral and one of the downsides to that is is we do see this club get laid off now why we don’t like to see that in most cases is typically that shaft is going to tip out very late okay so right around P6 you can see that sweet spot

Working out ever so slightly okay so Club is is pretty much in line maybe even outside the hands at at that position and that is purely the result of that shaft being laid off at the top okay so understand how that relationship goes together now obviously Hideki has

Been the king of the paws okay and there was a point in my career where I implemented a Hideki pause and one of the things it really helped me with was it helped me with understanding how to keep my lead arm up across my chest okay so you can see the angles that

Relationship creates and by trying to keep my lead arm up across the chest what it allowed me to do from a sequencing standpoint was it allowed me to understand how to rotate my body and get it out of the way before the arms okay we know the downswing starts with

The the lower body rotating and at the time of my golf career I had no awareness of how to do that so implementing this pause taught me how to get that in there now one of the downsides or byproducts of that lead arm staying up across the chest is typically

We’ll see the wrist angles uh get thrown out a little bit earlier okay so you can see uh ever so slightly through the transition uh the radius to the arc is actually getting a little wider very early okay so that when we slow him down

To P5 he does not have very sharp wrist angles this is the opposite of a Windom Clark okay so his wrist angles would have been much more like this hi deis are much wider okay uh downsides of this not ideal for Speed purposes but it does

Help get the shaft back into a straight line by impact okay so you can see how nicely hi Dei aligns that lead shaft at impact it’s it’s a way to square the face up in the process of doing that he has a really good impact position lower

Body is open bent right elbow you know I like to see that and then obviously we see a little bit of Bend in the spine okay right lateral Bend so also something I like to see now if we go back to the top of the Swing obviously we mentioned Hideki has more lateral

Motion in there uh very late in his back swing he’s going to create a lateral push away from the target which is going to help reenter his pelvis and get him back to his lead side if we draw a line down from his lead hip to his lead heel

One of the things you’ll see is you’ll see a lot of rotation okay so we’re not getting much lateral motion uh it’s mainly the left hip staying inside the left heel now from all the PJ tour winners that we’ve analyzed this year um I would say the only one that kind of

Violated that principle was Matthew pavon where he had more lateral built in h to his motion but as you can see pretty much just rotation and then obviously the point where he starts to push off the ground so I think that’s really important to being able to

Control uh where the hands exit so you can see um a a a pretty stable release paired with an exit of the hands through this uh left shoulder okay so you can see the the hands exiting out through there so that’s a nice relationship okay

So I would say based off that uh he does a great job job neutralizing his swing Direction and I would attribute that a lot of that to that early rotation that we saw from the top of the Swing okay so as he goes up and then creates that

Lower body rotation that’s going to give him clearance for the arms to then work around the body so overall very excited to see Hideki back in the winner circle I think uh there’s a lot of things we could learn from his swing obviously some differences here right a little bit

Different than Windam Clark I think that’s exactly why we are doing this is to to show and point out how people are having success playing the game different ways