- 5 hours ago
Joe Ferguson is joined by two-time DP World Tour Winner Robert Rock, a player widely regarded as having one of the best swings on tour, to break down the golf swing into different parts to help you hit the ball longer and straighter, more consistently!
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00:00Building the perfect golf swing can be quite an overwhelming task, but I think I've got
00:04someone with me who might be well qualified to help you. I've got Mr Robert Rock. Thanks
00:09for joining us Rob. Pleasure. So Rob is well known not only for his successes on the European
00:14Tour, but also for having arguably the most aesthetically pleasing golf swing. What do
00:18you think about that? It's nice of you. Thank you. It's alright. It only took about five
00:22years to build. Well that was going to be my question. Is that something you just get
00:25naturally or is that something you've had to work really hard on? No, hardly any of it was
00:29natural to be honest. My first efforts got me to a certain point, but I knew they weren't
00:33good enough and it didn't feel like the sort of swing I wanted to be able to make. So I
00:37set
00:37about trying to change it and it's a tough old process. Would have been a lot easier with modern
00:42technology. I'll give you that. I'm saying a bit old there, but I enjoyed the process. It was something
00:47that has served me well and maybe create a little bit of a coaching career at the end of it.
00:53Correct.
00:53With all the efforts. So yeah, it's been good. Thank you. Yeah, it seemed to have done all right.
00:57So what we're going to do today is we're going to break down the golf swing into three main parts.
01:00I want to talk about setup, I want to talk about the backswing and I want to talk about the
01:04downswing.
01:04Shall we just get on with it? Yes, get on with it. Go for it. Good man.
01:11What Rob says setup. I hear so many coaches saying it's really difficult to recover from bad setup
01:17positions. How do you go about getting yourself in the right setup position and what can we learn from
01:21that? Yeah, we're all slightly different and we will look slightly different in the setup,
01:26but there's key things that are a must, right? So your grip absolutely has to be sound and within the
01:33boundaries of what it's to be achievable of hitting solid shots reliably and delivering
01:40the club facing within a degree or so of what we're trying to do at high speeds.
01:45So that only allows a little subtle tolerances in how you build the grip. They can be slightly
01:51stronger, very, very fractionally weaker in some cases, but generally a pretty sound neutral grip
01:57is a must before you do anything else. So I notice on that you've got an Align grip from Golf
02:02Pride,
02:02very prominent ridge down the back. So what's your feeling on that? I guess that gets your fingers in
02:07the right place in a consistent manner? Yeah, exactly. I mean, I've always used a
02:12a ridge down the back of a Golf Pride grip in various forms that they've done, but this is more
02:16pronounced now with a firmer material down this ridge to make it more obvious basically, right? So
02:24rather than a round grip where you kind of have to check your clubface, build your grip around the
02:29clubface, kind of looking at everything all at the same time, this is there to fit into that little
02:36little ridge in your knuckles in the right hand and I feel the clubface now through that.
02:44And I'm assuming that's not just a setup, you can get better clubface awareness throughout the swing.
02:47That's referenced throughout. So once you've built a solid grip and you've got the right
02:51pressure points in the grip on mostly I feel in the right hand, but you will get different people may
02:57feel it through the left as well. But I feel it certainly in the right hand and in the forefinger
03:02and in these middle two, that tells me where this clubface is basically at this position,
03:07sticking straight up, right? Now through, I hit a lot of balls and I've hit a lot of balls in
03:1220
03:12years. With a round grip, I might be, I would still probably be able to just about feel it, but
03:17it is much easier with this, right? So I can use this, it kind of gives you a, we're not
03:22allowed
03:22a flat side on a proper grip. But this is as close to a cheat code as you can get,
03:27right? Yeah,
03:27because you've got this edge that gives me a feeling of matching the square side to the grip,
03:34to the clubface, right? So that has to be part of my grip forming procedure.
03:40So talk me through about how you put your hands on the club then. Do you have any reference points
03:43for your fingers, your palm? Yeah, I would always build my grip, not over the ball for a start, right?
03:49So that has to be in the area where you're pulling the club out of the bag and you're picturing
03:52your shot
03:53and the grip goes on at this point. Now you may have to do loads of work at home to
03:57get to
03:58the place where you can just feel the grip and look at your hands and know what a perfect grip
04:03is supposed to look like, right? Because that's, it's a bit more than just having a couple of can,
04:08a couple of knuckles. You've got to get the view of your hands and what things you can use as
04:13checkpoints
04:13and whether a lot's spoken about the overlapping and interlocking, but for me that doesn't contribute anything.
04:23We see Scheffler in this position a lot, club up in front of him, just diligently checking positions on the
04:28grip.
04:28Because you need that range of motion upwards with your wrists, right? So it's not just we're locking it down
04:35in this position
04:35and then you're not moving. We've got to have a range of motion throughout the swing. So
04:41doing it up here kind of does a couple of things at once, right? You get that
04:46ability to slide the butt end of the club more into the fingers of your left hand at this point
04:52because we've got it's kind of vertical feeling club shaft and you've kind of got the weight of it
04:58at the same time and you can look at how your right hand is covering the left. Now one of
05:03the key parts
05:03I believe is that the right hand should sit quite high up on the left and really close together.
05:09So you don't want your grip spread out and occupying all of this grip. Based on what? If they're too
05:14far
05:14apart they're working opposing rather than together? Yeah, they're working opposing. You've kind of got
05:19the option to use or one can influence over the other depending on which is getting more involved.
05:27You want one connection point to the club. So if you've got it separate, like where do you have the
05:33where's the leverage point, right? So if you've got them both together using them as a fixed unit
05:39with the right hand sitting very much on the side of the grip and on the side of the left
05:45hand. So
05:45if they're this one's driving forward and this one's pushing squarely in behind it
05:50then you're not going to get much twist in the clubface. If I've got this one sitting low it's very
05:55very easy. I mean extreme there but it's very easy to send that through on its own without this one
06:01wanting to know what to do. So it's almost a similar principle to like the prayer grip in
06:05putting. When you move hands dead level to each other it's very difficult to have one influence
06:08to the closer you're getting them. Exactly, you're kind of training them to work together. So if you're
06:12right-handed most people's left hand is a little bit less educated on what to do. So I like to
06:19see no
06:20gaps in the grip at all. So even when I'm looking from this side I don't like to see that
06:24little bit
06:25in there right and I don't you don't want any gaps appearing during the swing either. The grip
06:31can tell you whether you're moving your body properly as we get into further parts of the
06:35backswing. Get to that, calm down Rob. So but the key part of this grip and is why I've always
06:40used a
06:42a grip of this type is I can feel that right because what I want to be able to do
06:46is set this
06:49early so I can forget about that and know that I'm going to get the awareness of the club face
06:55because I've got it through the feeling in my right hand and on the back of the grip. Like you
06:59say
07:00that's not just an address thing that's feeling damage throughout. You need to be able to adjust.
07:05What about pressure? So we hear a lot of people saying strangle the life habit so you can't get
07:09any tighter, hold it like you're cradling a bird. Where do you sit on that scale? I hold it tight
07:14enough so
07:15that the gaps disappear. Yeah. And I can feel whether they may separate during the swing right
07:22because a bit loose has too many spaces already right but if you're too tight you will get tension
07:29up your forearms into your elbows. So the key part in the backswing is how your right arm flexes
07:35and folds because it's really the only joint that's moving significantly right. So if you're gripping
07:40too tight and the tension creeps its way all the way up the right arm to the point where you've
07:46got
07:46a straight right arm it will stay too straight as you go back and then you've got to start to
07:51bend it
07:53later on in the swing. But having it too straight early on will force the elbow to then bend in
07:58a
07:58slightly different direction. So it can lead on to loads of different backswing faults from just grip
08:04pressure. So we might have just struck up on the key secret move of Robert Rock's beautiful golf swing.
08:08You may have yeah. Which we'll talk about in the backswing just now. So that's the grip. Let's have
08:12a chat about the backswing. So on to the backswing and I think a lot of the aesthetic plaudits you
08:22get
08:22come from the positions you hit and how tidy it looks as a golf swing. Show us how you get
08:26there. What
08:27are the key moves? The main purpose of what I've done for my swing is just to try and remove
08:35all
08:36unnecessary bits and keep my body position as simple and as organized and as sort of locked in a
08:45framework as possible. So that the actual route the club flows on kind of gets set on a simple
08:53arc back and through. I think that's what people see visually. Why they like your golfing so much.
08:57There's no superfluous motion that looks wasted. It just looks efficient. That's what I see anyway.
09:05Yeah I think efficiency and reliability and having certain bits kind of hang your confidence on that
09:13right if I do this I'm going to guarantee this and if I keep building the swing up this line
09:19my path's
09:20not going to shift off too much one way or another. So that was the whole point for it and
09:23to
09:24to build my iron play better was to guarantee the low point and strike right and reliability of
09:31clubface to get shot shape. A key part of hitting iron shots close is hitting them on the same
09:36trajectory and flight so they go the right length because hitting them straight is the easy bit.
09:41Yeah. Which doesn't appear that way but it actually is. Hitting it straight that looks like straight
09:47like many times you hit a shot that goes down the flag but it comes up on the front of
09:50the green or
09:51the back of the green it's no use to it. You hear that a lot about Scheffler. Montgomery back in
09:54the day was always pin high wasn't he? Tiger was great. Pin high is everything and that comes from
10:00reliability of strike. Take me through then show me how you build that backswing. So
10:03taking that the setup's given right and we've got the awareness of what we need the clubface to help
10:08build a proper setup. We want a simple turn right and the turn needs to be angled down at the
10:18ball
10:19and we don't want to be moving our centres too far off from how we start up. Define centres,
10:27head, sternum, everything? Head, sternum, hips yeah basically. So I'm going to have a definite setup
10:33position. I don't want to move too much from that and I don't want my posture to change from this
10:38view
10:39so my because my actual radius from the ball is going to change. Yeah. Difficult to find that
10:45that strike that we're after because the strike's key. So the turn needs to be angled down at the ball
10:51like in this sort of manner. So this again is a relatively simple bit to do. You're turning,
10:55you're moving your left knee down and inwards towards the ball. That allows your left
11:00hip to go down which allows the left shoulder to go down. So I've got a turn now. If all
11:05this goes
11:05down, this side goes equally upwards, I'm going to stay pretty level. Problems arise if you allow
11:12yourself to shift off too much to the right. This bit isn't then moving inwards or down. So
11:18if you practice the angled turn of your shoulders and your hips and your knees, that keeps the
11:24backswing pretty consistent as far as the turn's concerned. So we're going to try and stay
11:27centered and we're going to try and stay in that posture. You're allowed a little bit of movement.
11:30Okay. Because we're, the club is working on a circle that goes away from us and then back
11:36towards this way. So there will be a little bit of flow of sort of momentum and shift but not
11:41loads,
11:42only like a tiny little bit. But you're staying in your angles. But you're staying in this angle so
11:46that when I unwind the turn, I want to come straight back down the same plane. We hear a lot
11:52about turn,
11:53people talking about the turn and moving like that. What do you feel actually turns? So your takeaway,
11:58what's it led by? Is it hand led? Is it club head led? Is it torso? Is it shoulders? Do
12:01you think
12:02about that at all? Yeah. My takeaway has been a huge factor in building a decent backswing. Okay.
12:07Because I wanted it to flow up a nice simple path. And if I didn't get the takeaway right,
12:13I could tell there was a little bit of deviation from a smooth line. I was watching your hit balls
12:18earlier and a couple of times you took it away and then stopped yourself. I can feel when it does
12:23have
12:23that little track off. When it flows back smoothly and up this ideal line, I can just feel the balance
12:31of it going up. So there's no shift in one way or another. And plus, if the club head goes
12:36drastically
12:37offline, it will make moving, keeping the turn angle more difficult. So the more I go in and behind,
12:44the more this shoulder will want to track up. And similarly, if the club goes too far out early on,
12:51now it's got to go back. So it now will flatten me off later. So I want the club head
12:56momentum in the
12:57club. That's the key part in the takeaways, building this momentum. So the club head goes up the ideal
13:03line and then you will follow it more likely. But in real basic terms, what are you moving there?
13:08Just moving club head. So let's say we've got this backswing turn angled as a given,
13:13because you can just practice that. You can practice that as long as you like.
13:17I'm moving the club head primarily, first of all, to let it move just slightly up an angle plane,
13:25as if there's another seven iron there. I want the club head just to track up that line. It doesn't
13:31have to be all wrists. It's not going drastically like that. From that view, it can be over here,
13:38but it can be a bit of width to it. There is obviously leeway in what we're doing and loads
13:43of
13:43pros have got different styles. But the key folding element is the right arm, right? Because
13:48my left arm's straight at the start and by the time I get to the top, it should still be
13:52quick
13:52straight. All other than that is turn my body and move this in. So nothing really is moving
13:59significantly, I don't think, other than how this right arm folds. Talk to me about the right arm then,
14:04because I've seen your TRS slider, which is a great bit of kit. We'll put the links in the
14:08description down below because that's a really worthwhile bit of kit. Talk to me about how that
14:12helps and what you like to see with the right arm then. I did that for me just to add
14:17a couple of
14:18little, call it like an anchor point if you like, but I didn't like pinning my arms to my body
14:24with a
14:24glove or a towel because I don't think they stay there, right? But I don't want them also strapped so
14:31tightly to my body that there's no freedom of movement for build-up of sort of width and power
14:36and length of swing. So that particular thing just gives my right arm a boundary of a little bit of
14:40movement where the right arm slides around your rib cage basically to the top, but it doesn't go
14:45super high, right? And it stops it folding back in that manner. So it just
14:51allows the right arm to fold. And it was another variable that I managed to sort of
14:57fix through doing that. So if I can ensure that this only moves in that sort of circle around my
15:03rib cage at the top, then all I've got to worry about is how I very slightly hinge my right
15:07wrist
15:08and how the forearm moves because this now is fixed in a certain little slot. It's interesting all the
15:13thought process and the little moves that go into making something look as simple as you make it.
15:17So there's a good talk about the backswing, staying centered, keeping those low points,
15:21stay in our angles, right arm function, what moves straight off the ball. There's a key point for the top
15:25of the backswing to
15:26so obviously we're saying this is the bit that does all the folding and bending. Now we don't want
15:31the arm to bend loads and we don't want the wrist to bend loads because we end up too close,
15:34right?
15:35And that's when we start to end up with positions where the grip separates, right?
15:39Yeah.
15:39So if the arm folds incorrectly, you'll get separation in the grip. So feeling this position of the right
15:48location of the grip on your right hand and right forefinger, getting that to sit in that little slot
15:53at the top there, whilst the grip doesn't separate at all, gives us another anchor point of reliability.
16:03As soon as this arm goes out of position, I'll get some gaps. So this is a telltale sign for
16:09me that
16:11if the grip unit is staying intact all the way to the top and I can feel this slot at
16:17the top there,
16:18that's where my backswing should end. And with the boundaries of allowing the right arm just to
16:23slide around, that's basically my top of my backswing. And that's when you feel ready to make that
16:27transition. That's when I've got the weight of the club, as it's going back towards a target,
16:31I've got it loaded onto that knuckle there. That's when your lag starts to kick in because it's acting
16:36on that point of your right hand. Cool. So that should all put us up, all those points.
16:40That's now square clubface with a rounded grip, can't quite feel that same.
16:45So you've got that checkpoint, you've got that reference points in your hand that you've created
16:48with all the moves we're talking there. We're in a good top of the backswing position,
16:51that's loads of information. Should we see how we get down and hit it?
16:54Yeah, the next bit's the R bit. Cool. Let's see it.
17:00Right, so that's interesting. We've got in a nice top of the backswing, nice and neat and tidy,
17:03I think so. We've got enough information there. So I've had loads of contradictory advice,
17:08rather, on the downswing from people like Sergio Garcia, who've said, don't even think about it,
17:13just done all the work on the backswing, let it happen. Some people have a few more thoughts about
17:18clearing and all sorts of things. Where do you stand on it? Conscious or unconscious?
17:22Completely conscious. But it depends. If you've got a naturally good downswing,
17:27don't think about it. Because it's complicated and it's hard. But if your downswing isn't right,
17:39the ball really only knows how it's being hit, coming down. It doesn't go anywhere on the way
17:45back. And in theory, yes, a nice build up to the backswing can make this downswing more
17:51likely. But that wasn't the case for me. I had a pretty decent backswing and my downswing really
17:56knocked me off playing, affected my low point, couldn't get the sort of compression and strike
18:03quality that I do now. So I had to rejig the whole of the downswing to make it line back
18:07up.
18:07So how did you go about that then?
18:08So body position is the key part. So we talked about in the backswing that learning this slightly
18:15angled turn going back, but you've got to learn how to unwind that. And it's not just as simple as
18:20just spin your hips coming down or shift your weight forwards, because people translate that
18:25in different ways. Right now, in my particular instance, I got a decent backswing, tried to shift
18:31my weight and unwind my body, but I would just do it sliding my hips forwards and dropping my upper
18:37body
18:37back. So now I'm in a totally different tilted body position compared to what I built going back.
18:44So it couldn't realistically hit the same point every time. So it's like starting off with a setup
18:49that's like this and then go, right, actually, I'm just going to set up like that. Now you're bringing
18:54the ground into play before the ball. And I used to bend my left arm coming down to avoid hitting
18:59this
18:59ground here, but it meant I delivered into the ground too sharp too late.
19:03Okay. Well, stop telling us what went wrong. Tell us how to do it right.
19:07So learning how to keep your body position
19:11constant and keep that angled turn continuing coming down and through is the key part, in my
19:17opinion. Now, if you're lucky enough to have a nicely organized downswing, you're one of the lucky
19:24few, right? And carry on doing it, enjoy it. But for me, I had to learn how to stop shifting
19:29the lower
19:29body forward so much. Try and get, and I'm still, still doing this on a daily basis, trying to unwind
19:35my shoulders early enough so that they kept pace with everything else. Because you want to be in a
19:41position where your arms have got a nice bit of clearance through this zone so they can swing past
19:46your hips and get this nice leaning shaft position that gets your strike location forwards,
19:55it keeps your low point consistent. If you're backing up as you're trying to hit down, it brings a few
20:01different strike points into play and different path issues and also clubface variations, right?
20:07So if you've got the... In terms of dynamic loft that you present?
20:09Yes, hitting it the right length is then difficult. Your one shot that you feel like you strike good and
20:14start straight might come off with all different spin numbers and not go the right length. So you're
20:20looking at it, I think it's a great sharp, it comes up short. It doesn't go the yard as you
20:23think it
20:24should. So unwinding properly was what I had to learn to do. So it meant holding my legs still a
20:30little bit more and I think Nick Valdo did this back in the day, but it's learning, it's understanding
20:36what you do on the way down. What do you instinctively do and what actually should you add in to
20:42make it
20:42more balanced? So I guess that's a point we need to make is you sort of selling the videos,
20:46building the perfect swing, but everyone's perfect swing is going to be a little bit different.
20:49It's not the same start down for everyone. I guess that's what everyone's asking, right?
20:53How do you start down? In an ideal world, we all start down and unwind the body
21:00in a nice order on the right angle so it doesn't tilt with the actual head position or shoulder
21:07position. So if that can unwind and you can get the right shoulder back to where it started from
21:15pretty early on because being aware of impact is actually the most important bit, knowing where
21:21you're trying to deliver the club to from a position. So if we're starting here, a lot of people would
21:27assume trying to get back to impact is maybe just a bit weight a bit forwards but similar,
21:31but it's kind of, it's there, right? Now that is more open shoulders, right arm connected,
21:40pressure with your legs and feet shifting across on a more sideways motion than it is forwards or
21:47spinny. It's more that way. Trying to put some force on the side of the shaft so you can actually
21:51get
21:52some bend and load into the shaft that, again, I feel on this knuckle here, right? So you're pushing
21:58there, this is your flat surface that you're trying to have a reliable square impact thing. Like,
22:05if I was hitting a square object, I'd want this to come in and meet it solidly, wouldn't I? Like,
22:13this is obviously a round ball, it's different, but you can treat the ground as that flush object that
22:18you're trying to hit there. I saw you're doing some stuff with Ben, who you work with, Ben Boren
22:21before, where you're just putting pressure on a flat surface. Yes, so if you use something like this,
22:26the edge of there or the side of this, I'm trying to put that pressure there, and you wouldn't just
22:31do it like that with your arms, right? You would connect it to the body and use your body to
22:36just
22:37more powerful, right? That's what gives you the stability of the club face going through, and
22:41obviously that's where your good grip and the location is right hand being not up like that,
22:46because then that, when you push through, it's going to twist. It's got to be on the side,
22:49it's got to be pushing forwards, so then the talked about bit is sort of exiting left,
22:55right, which is nonsense. That's the headline, Robert Rocks has exit left, it's nonsense.
23:01Well, if you just push down the line, if you see how the shaft keeps pointing on that red,
23:05pretty much on an extension of that red line, I'm not trying to go left, I'm just pushing forwards,
23:09maintaining that pressure in the back of the right wrist, and I'm carrying on my turn on the angled
23:15turn, so the right shoulder keeps coming forwards and down. It goes around the corner to the end,
23:20the right around to the left, but it's certainly not a come in and then go, right,
23:23I've got to go this way. It's not manipulated, it's happening naturally.
23:25You're pulling the middle of the face away from the ball, so it gets glancy, and again,
23:29you don't hit the right length. Right, so there's a lot of information there for a lot of people,
23:32and there's a lot of people very smart out there who will be following exactly what they're saying.
23:35For people like me, tell me exactly what Robert Rock thinks from the top of the backswing,
23:39how many thoughts do you have? How many thoughts can you have in that period of time?
23:43What are you thinking? Top of the backswing, how am I going to strike this? Clear?
23:46I've generally only got one coming down, because it's too quick.
23:49Good. I like this. I will have a few going back sometimes when I'm practicing, especially
23:53when I'm on hearing balls. I'll have maybe whatever I'm working in my setup, I'll certainly
23:57have something in the takeaway area to make that momentum of the club flow up to the top so I
24:04can
24:04feel my position at the top easier, because as soon as I can feel that I'm going to get to
24:08a good
24:08top of the backswing, the earlier I can feel that, the better, because then I can start shifting
24:13my focus on what I want to do on the way down. That's so interesting to hear you thinking,
24:16I can feel this is good. If your backswing is too quick, you'll lose that and then you'll panic on
24:22the way down because you're not organized and that's where, for me, that's where rhythm comes from.
24:27Right, two more questions on this. I promise then I'm going to let you go.
24:29That's all right.
24:29So we've got, I just want a total clarity on what that one thought is from you
24:34and then I'm going to think of the other one while you're telling me that.
24:35Okay, so for me, it's once I'm building up to this top of the backswing position, I'm trying to get
24:42my
24:43shoulders to come back open enough without the arms getting thrown and the club getting thrown over.
24:51There's a big difference between that because some might view opening the shoulders back up as chucking
24:55it over the top and it's not. What I want is my shoulders to unwind on the same axis to
25:01there,
25:01right, but my arms can still be in here, which has the delivery from, still from the inside.
25:09So my shoulders have opened up but the club is clearly still coming down and will fall down,
25:16hopefully down this playing line, squarely into the back of the ball leading the shaft forwards.
25:20So for me, all I think about is unwinding the shoulders, allowing the lag to happen and for me,
25:30because of my previous faults, I like to feel like the stretch it makes on my left arm.
25:34Okay.
25:34Right, so the left arm doesn't pull down too quick because if it separates from my chest,
25:38it will bend. So as I'm unwinding, the gap is closing back up.
25:45Cool.
25:45That stops me coming over the top, basically. So I get into this impact position where I feel
25:51like my right shoulder is going to back me up as I go through.
25:55Well, I've kept you talking for a while. I want to see one.
25:57Oh, I can't do it. Let's just talk about it.
25:59You can hear. You talked a good game. Let's flush one. Let's see it.
26:02Okay. Right. So, let's try and do it properly.
26:05Oh, full routine. Yes, I like it.
26:06Full routine, Robert.
26:20That's the sound we're looking for, isn't it? That was...
26:22Yeah, that was all right, actually. Yeah.
26:23It was all right, was it? It was all right.
26:24Maybe a little bit late, but decent. Robert, that was fascinating stuff.
26:28Thank you so much. You're welcome.
26:29And that's how you swing it like Robert Rock.
26:30And that's how you swing it like, Robert Rock.
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