Three ‘freak’ golf swings are winning on the PGA Tour

There are three freak moves on the PGA Tour these days that have been producing winning results.

Golf instructor Carl Lohren, 88, has seen all sorts of swings in his days coaching the likes of Deane Beman, Dave Hill, Marty Fleckman, Gary Hallberg, and more recently, helping Ryan Gerard to the PGA Tour, but he’s never seen success at the highest level of men’s professional golf with these three swings, which will all be on display this week at the first leg of the FedEx Cup playoffs at the FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis.

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“They are freaks. Ryan Fox’s left hand almost is hitting his ear at the top of the backswing,” Lohren said of the unique move of the recent British Open winner out of New Zealand.

Lohren referenced Ben Hogan’s famed book “Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf,” where a sheet of glass represents the backswing plane as a visual of the top of the swing with the left arm inclining at the exact angle of the plane.

As Hogan explained, the arm is supposed to brush against the glass pane.

“Fox’s hands are so far above that it’s a joke,” Lohren said. “He makes Jack Nicklaus at his most upright look flat. That’s the No. 1 freak out there right now. No one has ever swung the club as upright as he swings it. Yet he drops it under from up there and gets it in the slot coming in as good as anybody.” 

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The second freak move is Chris Gotterup, a three-time winner this season and ranked No. 7 in the Official World Golf Ranking.  

“He makes Lee Trevino look like he was square at his prime,” Lohren said. 

Lohren has watched in amazement at how Gotterup sets up to hit a full iron with his feet somewhere between 30 to 45 degrees open to the pin and he starts that ball right at the pin. 

“That’s impossible to do if you make a normal golf swing,” Lohren said. “In a normal golf swing, the right hip is the pivot point of the hip turn on the back swing.” 

But for Gotterup, his left hip is the pivot point.

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“If his hips were inside a barrel with a couple inches on each side of the barrel, his hip would bang the left side of the barrel. Some people call that a reverse pivot. Now he may move to the right a little bit before he does this but it’s a pretty insignificant amount that he does. So, you may not technically be able to call it a reverse pivot, but man, you’re stretching it if you don’t call it a reverse pivot, I’ll tell you that. That left tip turns forward so much that it allows his shoulders to turn so far that he can hit it out to the right. No one’s ever reverse pivoted like that that’s played good. That’s a ridiculous golf swing.”

Last but not least is Jackson Koivun, the 21-year-old phenom out of Auburn who won the 3M Open three weeks ago in just his third start as a pro.

“Both legs straighten and both feet and both legs move away from the ball sideways. No one’s ever done that. I’ve seen guys spin out, I’ve seen Bubba Watson’s left foot spin out and all that. I’ve never seen anybody straighten the legs and actually move both feet or both legs, whatever it is, back away from the ball like that, sideways, and hit it. I’ve never seen anybody do that.” 

What does Lohren find responsible for these three freak moves? 

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“I say the equipment they’re using and the ball they’re using and the size of the head of the driver they’re using allows them to do it,” he said. “If they tried to do that with a small persimmon head, you’d never find it when they missed it. You would never find the ball.”

Instead, these freak moves are producing freakish results and Fox’s British Open triumph might be the first of many majors from this triumvirate with swings the likes of which we’ve never seen in the winner’s circle before.

Adam Schupak is a senior writer for Golfweek, covering the PGA Tour.

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Three ‘freak’ golf swings are winning on the PGA Tour