TP&C: Willy Wilcox- Part One, Full Swing

By Wayne | Tour Players and Celebrities

When I first saw Willy’s swing on television in 2015 I was happy that I was recording the tournament. They showed him several times and I did a video analysis of his swing. I loved it. It was certainly unconventional with the ultra-open stance and whippy-fast action, but it just looked like (without the aid of slow motion) it was producing an extra high-level strike on the ball. When I did slow it down it looked even better. He kind of disappeared for a few years and from out of the blue he contacted me through Messenger and expressed interest in chatting about his swing and his game and perhaps coming up to Baltimore to see me since he was going to be fairly close by anyway. The first lesson was 95% short game (I did a video on that as well), but in the second we had twice as much time so after another round of short game work we went out onto the course where I filmed him hitting various shots. With his conventional (square) set up he wasn’t opening his upper body enough to keep his hard flattening action from getting the club stuck behind him, so I suggested that he go back to opening his stance, which agreed with him as it was quite familiar. He went away from it while searching for answers to his suddenly erratic ball striking, while at the same time making his backswing far less deep. I suggested he also go back to pulling his arms across him in the backswing, and he had no problem with that either. I really wasn’t doing anything except having him go back to what at one point hit the ball as well as anyone in the world. If you look at his stats for that period (11 events) it might as well be Henrik Stenson, it was that good. He has played well since I saw him, and I look for great things in the future.