I love Angel Yin’s swing as it is so fundamentally correct and it’s great to use her action as a model for my students. Here is some high definition down the line and face on video of Angel courtesy of our friends at GolfSwingHD

Angel Yin – Down the Line View

Set Up

Try to copy her posture (0:01 in the video). Angel has the correct amount of spine angle bend and proper knee flex with her arms hanging down.  Her chin is away from her chest which will create room for her left shoulder in the backswing.

Backswing

The clubface blocks the hands during the takeaway (0:09) when the shaft is parallel with the ground and along the line of her toes.  This is a position that indicates great width and an ingredient for distance!

The right knee stays flexed and braced as she turns into it.  She pulls the club back nicely and has a nice width between her hands and the back of her head.  Her left arm is nicely extended.  Try to copy this as it is a great position to set up an inside attack.  The club face angle matches the angle of her flat left wrist, keeping the clubface square!  The shaft is parallel at the top of the swing with the “ball to target line” (0:13).

Downswing

Angel starts the downswing with a lateral move toward the target with her lead hip, then drops that right elbow down close to her right pocket (0:15).  This is a great inside attack.  The club face is on a slightly flatter plane on the way down.  I like to measure it by locating the club head position when the club is parallel with the ground on the way down as well.  It is indeed, just barely under the plane she took on the backswing.

At impact, she is great at facing the ball and keeping her shoulders square to the ball, even as her lead hip is doing its forward move and rotating open to the left.  A lot of less talented golfers would have their shoulders opened with the hips at this point which is more indicative of a less powerful and steeper “outside in attack”.

Angel extends the clubs shaft down the target line with extended arms just after impact (0:16). Work on this as most amateurs fold the arms in too early at this point just beyond impact.

A good down the line checkpoint at the finish is to see the club shaft released behind the head and diagonal through the head from about 11:00 on the grip end to 5:00 type position with the club head (0:21). Everyone behind her can see the whole bottom of her rear foot as she balanced the weight on her toes with this foot.

Angel Yin – Face On View

Backswing

Angel Yin has a nice one piece take away with her two extended arms and club shaft forming the Letter Y at the start (0:23).

Her right knee is braced and it does not move to the right as she turns her back which loads up the inside of the right foot (0:24). No one could slide even a single piece of paper under the inside of the right foot as she traps the weight nicely there!

Also, note the tree just to the right of her right hip. She will not “sway” and move her hip to the right, which would cover part of that tree.  Her right pocket rotated back correctly around the arc of the barrel.  I always draw my lines in video lessons vertically and touching the rear hip to check for sways.

Her lead hip is now slightly detached from where it began where it was touching the middle silver tripod leg of the camera in the background.  I always draw a vertical line at the front hip as well.  This small separation from where her lead hip started indicates loading up the right side correctly with the majority of her weight pivoted to her right side instead of 50-50 where it started.  It is important to get the separation from the front of the barrel, yet not slide or sway to the right of the rear of the barrel!

The braced and flexed right knee also holds and does not move to the right.  This helps prevent a sway!

Moving these body parts to the right is a sway.  A “sway” means the lower body and (often the head) didn’t resist and moved too much to the right as the back turned and loaded the right side.  This results in much less torque.  Torque is the turning of the back or upper body into a resisting lower body which produces so much lower in the swing.  Swaying can result in golfers having bad timing in the downswing, often hitting behind the ball as a result of the upper body striking before the lower body could transfer the weight forward in the downswing.

Downswing

She starts the downswing correctly (0:25) with her lead hip moving laterally (forward) and around to the left.  There is a camera tripod behind her.  Her lead hip is up against the silver middle leg of the tripod at set up.  At the top of her backswing, she detached her lead hip from this silver tripod leg as she turns.  Again, this small gap between the lead hip and the middle tripod leg shows she is indeed loading up the majority of her weight on the inside of her right foot and right knee correctly.  On the downswing, she returns her hip forward and open to the left past the tripod leg where it started (0:43). The zoomed in the video really shows this well.

Angel has great lag (0:43)!  I like to measure lag by finding the position of the club shaft during the downswing when her left arm becomes parallel with the ground.  You can see that her shaft points on the target side at about a 45-degree angle! That’s plenty of powerful lag being stored up for a long ball!  Many amateurs “spend” the lag to quickly and the club’s shaft would be pointing straight up or even away from the target when the left arm is parallel with the ground on the downswing, producing a much weaker hit.

Most good players “nudge out of the barrel with this lateral move in the downswing.  Most amateurs never get that lead hip leading the downswing with that forward AND rotational movement.   So, many amateurs finish the swing more “in the barrel” with too much rotation and not enough “forward AND rotational” movement.   Right at impact she “stands tall” on her left leg and rotates around it with lots of force.  Many amateurs have that lead leg to bent at impact.  Going from a flexed lead knee to this extended left leg st impact takes practice!!

At (1:05) Angel is balanced and releases beautifully. The front of her shirt is pointing correctly a bit left of her target.  Her right shoulder is closest to the target in the follow through! She lets the shaft release all the way behind her!

Pete