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Mike has an excellent swing that can be helped by improving his rhythm and tempo. As we know, rhythm refers to the ratio of backswing time to forward swing time (3:1 being optimum based on studies of a large amount of great players) while tempo refers to the overall amount of time it takes to make a swing from the moment the clubhead moves away from the ball to the moment it hits the ball. Mike’s major issue in his swing is the slow unwinding of the lower body in the downswing. His left knee does not disappear behind the right from the down the line view until the shaft is all the way down to parallel to the ground, which means that he is going to hit the ball with his hips barely open. When impact is achieved with lower trunk facing the ball the right shoulder is not able to move forward to cover the ball, which means there is no support for the right wrist to drive past impact without flipping the face closed. From watching the swings it appears to me that Mike’s slow takeaway and lack of upper trunk rotation in the first part of the backswing lead to him lifting at the top while he tries to make up for the lack of coil, and if you have watched a bunch of my lessons (including analysis of my own swing) you know what a problem lifting in transition can be. The pattern holds here as Mike’s left knee moves forward and hangs around in view way too long in the forward swing, and thus is in the way as the arms and hands try to get in front of the ball at impact. The thoughts here would be to increase the pace of the takeaway, get more early turn from the upper trunk, crunch down into the right hip as the swing approaches the top, then clear the left leg as hard as possible after the initial push forward from under the right foot (which incidentally could hold its brace a bit better).
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