2017 U.S. Women’s Open winner Sung Hyun Park has a swing that catches your eye as you spot her on television, or in print. At the top of the swing, her hands are very steep as her arms are beautifully extended up high in an upright position. I thought it would be fun to analyze her powerful swing with all that leverage!
In the high definition video below, there are three segments showing Sung Hyun Park’s great swing. I chose to analyze her swing using the middle section of the video showing the split screen of the Face on and Down the Line views.
Sung Hyun Park sets up in a classic way. Knees flexed, spine angle bend is about 15 degrees at the waist. Arms are hanging down tension free with just a “ hands waive” distance between the end of her grip and her belt buckle.
0:11.(11-second mark of the video). During the takeaway, the club head is just outside her hands at this checkpoint. This indicates width, which you want. The club face should be blocking the hands, or just outside the hands as you see her do here. She has a nice “triangle” between her shoulder, down the arms to her hands as she begins to turn her back.
0:13. Here Sung Hyun has a nice extended left arm. See the distance between her hands and her right ear? Nothing collapsing here!
0:15. She has a very vertical or steep position at the top. Her arms have terrific extension and her back is fully turned 90 degrees towards the target.
Her back turn distributed the weight onto the inside of the right foot and braced right knee. Classic torque as the upper body turns into a resisting lower body! She is fully loaded up on her right side.
Notice the white box on the ground. At this point, there is a gap between her leg and the box (screenshot of video above).
0:16. She shifted her weight forward first and around with a great rotation and opening of the left, or lead hip! See how Sung Hyun has now moved forward and covering part of that white box?
Her left arm is parallel with the ground on the downswing and she maintains nice “lag” as the shaft is still pointing behind her back toward 2:00 pm at this point. Her knees are still flexed and her spine angle tilt remains!
Notice that her club head is left of the point that it was on the way back when it was “outside” her hands. This shows that she flattened the shaft plane on the way down and is now attacking from the “inside”. So, she takes it back pretty steep and has a nice, slight “reverse loop” to get her powerful inside attack.
High handicappers have the club head on the “inside” of the hands during the takeaway and then deliver the clubhead well to the right of this Point or “outside in” on the downswing.
0:17. Her right arm is parallel with the ground in her follow through with great extension toward the target. You can see how her right hand released as well at this point. Her right shoulder is down and the left, or lead shoulder is up!
0:22. She has a powerful, full release with the body facing left of her target. See how the right shoulder is closest to the target, then her head, then her left shoulder? She is balanced and shows everybody the entire bottom of her rear shoe, showing that she shifted every bit of weight that she could!
The club shaft is released and points from 11:00 at the grip end to about 4:00 on the club head end, indicating a full release!
It’s been fun to see how Sung Hyun Park is so fundamentally sound with a steeper looking swing that has excellent width, extension, torque, leverage, and a powerful inside attack!
Pete
Video courtesy of our friends at GolfSwingHD
