Tag Archives for " Willy Wilcox "

TP&C: Willy Wilcox’s Back 9 with the Lead at the Web.Com Abaco Championship

By Wayne | Tour Players and Celebrities

This video simply shows a) how hard it is to win on any tour and b) how a hard course under trying conditions will punish shots that are just millimeters off. With a couple of good bounces Willy could easily have won this week’s Web.Com tournament. However, he has two fourth place finishes to start off the year, giving him a great head start on his quest to win enough money to get back on the PGA Tour.    

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TP&C: Willy Wilcox in the Hunt at the First Web.Com Event

By Wayne | Tour Players and Celebrities

Willy is playing well and gaining confidence, and here I look at some of his swings from the Web event in the Bahamas this week as well as some swings from his visit to Boca Rio the week before. It also helps that he has developed greater confidence in his putting with his new arm-lock putter, which I take a look at in a video soon.    

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TP&C: Willy Wilcox- Going Back to the Old Swing

By Wayne | Tour Players and Celebrities

I did a video of Willy in 2015 when he was on TV and playing great, noticing right away how open his stance was in relation to his target line. I have an affection for open stances as I’ve always been a Trevino fan and I played that way myself for many years. I felt that with the open stance I could clear my hips much faster and easier, and since I have always been prone to flatten the shaft, be slow with my hips, and thus get the club stuck behind me on the approach, dropping my left foot back made a big difference. One of the reasons I went away from it was due to the problems with teaching all day talking about alignment and swing plane, items which are much easier to visualize and explain when all the lines are parallel and perpendicular. Anyway, when Willy got in touch with me and came to my club the first time we worked mainly on short game, but when we did hit some full shots I was surprised to see a dead square stance. I didn’t really have time to go over much in that 2-hour session as far as the full swing was concerned, but when he came up again the next week I made it my mission to get him back to what had worked so well back in 2015. I suggested he go back to the open stance and pull the hands in deeper on the backswing while opening the face a bit. From there it was all familiar to him and he started hitting it nicely right away. He has had some nice results in the past month (22nd, 8th, 3rd) on the Web.Com Tour, and is in position to regain his Tour card.

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Playing for Money: Willy Wilcox Part Two: Short game Simplification

By Wayne | Videos: Swing Analysis

When Willy and I first spoke, I was surprised to hear that what he thought he needed the most was to get a better idea of what to do with his short game, especially his short pitching and putting. I gave him my usual opinions on pitch shots, explaining that I view it as a mini full -swing and that most players that develop trouble are making the process too complicated. If you are a good ball striker, and every Tour player is, you should have no trouble hitting the ball short distances, unless you try to reinvent the wheel and make it a whole different exercise. In both Willy’s pitching and putting there was excess finish, and when I got him to finish more down and to hold it both improved greatly. There is a discipline to holding the finish on short shots that any good player can forget about, and if they do they need to be reminded.

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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.

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