Champions Tour Vertical Swingers

Tom Watson and Fred Couples played some awesome golf Sunday in the closing round of the Mitsubishi Electric Championship in Hawaii.‚  It came down to the final putt on the 18th hole, with Watson sinking a 5 footer to beat Couples by one shot.‚  Watson actually birdied the last two holes to shoot 22 under.‚  What is really impressive about this 22 under score is that this was a 3 round tournament.‚  Watson shot 63-65-66 = 194, which averages out to better than 7 under per round.

I went to www.PGA Tour.com and checked out the Hualalai Resort Golf Club course and the course was no pitch and putt.‚  The course measured out, according to the listing on the site, with nines of 3556 and 3467 to max out at 7023 yards.‚  Pretty long course for seniors, especially for Watson who, at 60 years old competing with younger guys, like first-time, just turned 50, Fred Couples.‚  Hale Irwin, who finished 5th at 14 under is now 65 and is really hanging well with the 50 to 55 year-old youngsters.

One thing I must point out about the PGA and Champions Tours is that although 7023 is really long for seniors, it plays much shorter than what most golf courses play.‚  Why?‚  Because one of the standards that the PGA Tour requires for course setup is that they play hard and fast.‚  That is, watering is restricted on the fairways a week or so before the tournament to get the fairways hard.‚  These hard fairways are cut a lot shorter than every day courses we all play. That allows an extra long amount of roll out on drives which makes the course play shorter.‚  The main reason the water is reduced is that the players and officials despise soft fairways for two reasons.

The first is MUD.‚  We all know that if you have mud on your ball, not even God knows how it will fly.‚  The second is that the USGA and PGA Tour officials hate with a passion having to let players, when conditions are wet, put their hands on the ball in the fairway.‚  They call this Lift, Clean and Place.‚  The player gets to clean and place his ball and so everyone on those days gets nothing but pure lies when they hit the fairway.‚  Usually, those days are low scoring days as the pure lies, together with soft greens, allow the players to go for the flags and hit it closer than normal.

For all us who use the PPGS, which is a limited turn, ‚¾ backswing to a vertical square to the target finish, watching the Champions Tour, you'€™ll see a lot vertical swings at their best.‚  The vast majority of the Champions Tour, all players over 50 and having played for way over 3o years, are vertical swingers.‚  When they took up the game the swing in vogue being taught was about high hands at the top of the backswing and a square to the target finish.

Very few Champions Tour players have changed to the rotational swing that came in vogue starting in the early 90'€™s.‚  The irony is a few of them who have son'€™s playing professional golf that I have seen, the son does not swing vertical like the father.‚  One exception is Kevin Stadler.‚  He is as vertical as his Dad, Craig Stadler, The Walrus both in the back swing and the finish.‚  Kevin'€™s deviation is his backswing is parallel or longer as compared to his dad, who is perfect ‚¾ and vertical to 12:00 o'€™clock.

Tom Watson is a perfect example of pure vertical back swing and finish.‚  Yes, Watson goes to parallel and even a littler past it with the driver, but he is pure vertical.‚  At the top of the back swing his shaft is over the center of his right/back shoulder as it should be in a PPGS.‚ ‚  Watson'€™s finish position is pure PPGS.‚  His arms fold up and his hands and shaft finish over the center of his left front shoulder.‚  His torso is square to the target and he recoils and relaxes pulling his arms and club down and in front of him into a perfectly balanced finish.

The thing that rang my bell in the telecast is when they did a side by side analysis of Tom'€™s driver swing of the early 80s against one today.‚  The backswings were almost identical except the 80s swing had a little more, barely noticeable, front foot lift and knee turned inward.‚  The finish had a real big difference that both announcers pointed out and made strong comments about.

Young Tom Watson in the 80s swing had a real big reverse C.‚  The announcers drew a line from his head to his legs and the line looked like this ), with a little more curve.‚  Today'€™s Tom Watson, when they drew a line down his back, looked almost straight, just like the PPGS T '€“ Finish and square to the target.‚  Both announcers'€™ comments were in high praise of Tom'€™s new finish, saying it was much better for his back.‚  The announcers then mentioned that Michael Allen, who won the PGA Seniors Championship last fall in his first event on the Champions Tour had made a swing change over the winter.‚  They said he worked hard on flattening out his swing, which is going to a rotational swing.‚  He finished 3rd, so his new swing worked well.‚  I guess we'€™ll just watch and see how it keeps performing and how his back holds up.

I recently wrote about Jack Nicklaus and his 70th birthday show on The Golf Channel, after which they showed his 1986 Maters win.‚  I commented that it was great to see all the vertical swingers as we mostly only see now on the Champions Tour.‚  We don'€™t see many vertical swings on the PGA Tour, as these younger players have grown up in the rotational swing age of instruction.‚  And as all of us who follow the PGA Tour, Nationwide and LPGA Tours know, this New Age group of professional golfers, as well as junior golfers, are experiencing much higher degrees of back, shoulder and other physical problems than ever before.

So, if you want to see vertical swings at their best, the Champions Tour players are the ones to watch.‚  You will see more vertical backswings, and ‚¾ at that, as well as vertical T '€“ Finishes square to the target.‚  Great swings to watch to reinforce the PPGS image into your mind'€™s eye.

The Surge!