Golf Swing "Flaw" Shared by Speith and Palmer

Jordan Speith just won the British Open to give him three Major championships plus winning the 2015 Fed Ex Cup. He is 23 years old. Speith's career is interesting because he has so quickly risen into the ranks of Golf's great players, comparable to Tiger Woods great career at this point, But what is even more interesting is that Jordan's golf swing has a swing flaw, called the chicken wing. What is even more interesting is that he shares that "swing flaw" with Arnold Palmer.

In the two images above, Arnold Palmer and Jordan Speith's swings are captured at the moment of impact. Both players have a very slight bend or bow in the left arm. Conventional golf instruction (here) holds that the left arm should form a straight line with the club at impact. Ignoring why golf instructors call the chicken wing a flaw, Palmer and Speith had very good reasons for what they were and are doing.

I followed Palmer in a exhibition match he played in the 1960s at Brown Deer Municipal Golf Course in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (my story is here as is a great video of Palmer's golf swing). My impression of Palmer's play was that he was very accurate, always hitting his drives down the middle, always very accurate with his irons. At the time, I had no idea why Palmer was such an accurate player. To a young high school-age kid, he was just "the King".

A few years ago, I found Plamer's instructional book Play Great Golf: Mastering the Fundamentals of Your Game in a dusty antique shop, bought it and read his first chapter ("The Five Fundamentals") very carefully. His fifth fundamental, accelerate through the ball, especially caught my attention and had a big impact on my game.

However, it was not until I viewed the video above on Jordan Speech's swing and recalled the first image above from Palmer's book (page 35) that I put it all together. Both Speith and Palmer used the "chicken wing" to hold the face square at impact, greatly improving their accuracy (the video explains very clearly the negative consequences of rotating the hands open on the backswing and closed on the follow through). I cannot do a better job of explaining this than is done in the video, but I can say that adding the "chicken wing" to Palmer's "acceleration" fundamental has greatly improved my accuracy and distance control.

EXERCISES

If you have been convinced by this discussion of two great golf swings (remember that Palmer's swing was also criticized by golf professionals of his day here), the next question is how to learn the chicken wing. Interestingly enough, this was easy for me because I was trained by Howie Atten, a local teaching pro outside Milwaukee (his Edgewater golf course in Grafton, WI is described on page 18 of this article) to use the chicken wing when hitting all my partial wedges (quarter- and half-swing).

Also, surprisingly enough, this is how Jordan Speith hits his wedges (images above and video here). My suggestion is to begin learning the chicken wing with pitching and chipping. Set up with the left arm bowed outward away from the body. Take the club back by first moving the clubs with your wrists (for very short chips, this is all you have to do) and the swing forward holding the angle of your wrists, maintaining the bow in your left arm while hitting down on the ball and through. You are concentrating on maintaining the club face square (as described in the video above) back and accelerate through impact smoothly.

The chicken-wing chip is very similar to Phil Mickelson's hinge-and-hold method (here) and Berhard Langer's chipping technique (here). It should also be noted that in Palmer's Five Fundamentals he comments (in the section on the grip, page 23):

To score well on the golf course, however, you have to be precise, both in the distance and the direction you hit the ball. You have to make contact squarely on the club face every time to get it airborne on a desired trajectory. Because so much more precision is required in golf, there is little room for error in the wrists. Remember, the correct grip controls the wrists. It prevents them from making excess movement, which ruins ball control.

In a future post, I will discuss the grip. If you are having trouble working the chicken wing into your full swing, it is probably your grip that is the problem. For the time being, concentrate on pitching and chipping.