00:00But I wanted to get kind of your perspective as a guy who walked with Victor the last two days
00:05on some of the mechanical things.
00:06There were two things he talked about that I thought were interesting.
00:08One is being kinder to yourself on the golf course, something that I'm in a space right now where I
00:14can relate to that greatly.
00:15Maybe you need to talk to our guy, Brett McCabe, about that.
00:17But just the way he was patient with himself throughout the week.
00:20But then observing the mechanical things as a guy that is constantly thinking about and trying to adjust his swing.
00:27And there were some key moments yesterday where, especially when he when he hit a club a little less than
00:32full, where he kind of had that left miss.
00:34But like when when when Vic is on form, right, like what is he doing well mechanically in the swing
00:40that allows him to be one of the best players in the world?
00:43You know, when you watch him, when he's going with his irons and his driver, it looks like he can
00:48swing as hard as he wants to.
00:49And the ball is going to be relatively online.
00:52And when you look at his statistics over really, I think 2023 is the banner year that we look at
00:57with him.
00:57And that's what he refers back to as well as when he was technically swinging at his best.
01:02And even his scrambling numbers were great that year.
01:05But I see a couple of different things.
01:08One, and Kira K. Nixon did a report on this talking to Shea Knight, his caddy, is that when you
01:12look at his ball speed that year, he was right around 177.5 on average.
01:17And you go look at 2026 and look at his ball speed average, he's at about a 172 to 173.
01:24So we're talking about a five mile an hour ball speed difference.
01:28And even club speed, too, is about a three mile an hour difference between the two.
01:32So he's swinging the club slower in 2026.
01:35And what you can you know, what do you ask is like, why did he did he lose strength?
01:41What Victor had said is that he just hasn't been as efficient.
01:45But anybody who's ever gone through some driver struggles like he has done over the last year or two.
01:50And I say struggles.
01:51I mean, he's still an accurate driver.
01:53The golf ball still hits more than 60 percent of his fairways, but still feels like he was a little
01:58bit more guidey and how he was swinging the driver.
02:01And he he had lost a ton of speed.
02:04And I think just watching him this week and seeing how the golf ball was coming off the face and
02:10then also looking at his track man numbers to see that he was getting low 180s a time, upper 170s.
02:16That just tells you that mechanically he feels like he's in a good spot to be able to go at
02:21it and feel like it's going to go straight.
02:22As far as the actual mechanics of that, based on what I understood, and I think Luke, the guy from
02:28Golf Digest, did a report on it.
02:29He watched him hit balls, as did many of us on Sunday after he missed the cut at the U
02:33.S. Open, is that he sometimes over flexes his lead wrist on the way back.
02:37And that sometimes leads him into some precarious positions in the downswing to where he has to slow down.
02:44He's now in a position where he wasn't slowing down and he was speeding up, played aggressive and sure, a
02:50couple of iron shots were off.
02:51But he's a generational iron player, man.
02:53This guy is a point and shoot dude.
02:56We saw him hit shot after shot after shot, especially against the world number one, which is, I think, amazing
03:02to see.
03:04Yeah, I mean, I can think back to 2023 when we had Victor on the show and we were talking
03:08about him as one of the best three players in the world at the time.
03:11I think the conversation was Scotty, Jon Rahm, and Victor Hovland, obviously throwing Rory as a fourth there.
03:17But the journey he's been on since and you just talking about what a unique shallowing move he has.
03:22And when he is doing it well, he's one of the best in the world.
03:24But don't go out and try to replicate that if you're someone at home trying to learn a golf swing
03:28because it's a very unique move.
03:31I want to flip over to Scotty quickly because, I mean, golly, dude.
03:35Like, if you ever doubt Scotty's ball striking ability, just go watch the approaches on 17 and 18 to close
03:42the day and then 18 again today.
03:45I mean, it's just amazing.
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