In the hours after his opening-round 78, Justin Thomas was on the TPC Sawgrass driving range, figuring out what had just happened.
On those odd occasions when Golf Channel clipped to him and he wasn’t hitting balls, JT was rehearsing his swing. But not with both hands on the club—or with a club at all. He would get into golf posture, then swing his right arm up to the backswing and stop, making sure to keep it straight the entire time.
Whatever it was worked. JT tied the TPC Sawgrass course record 62 less than 24 hours later.
That magic right arm move is a staple of JT’s range sessions. I noticed him doing it at Bay Hill last week, too. So I asked him, quite simply: What’s the deal with his straight right arm only golf swings?
Here’s what JT said:
“Width [in my right arm] is something I’ve always tried to work on in my swing. I have a tendency, especially with longer clubs, to get long. My arms kind of run on. If I can keep the width, it’s harder for my backswing to get too long.”
Why ‘width’ matters
JT identifies an increasingly common golf swing problem, among pros and amateurs alike, in the distance-crazed modern era of golf.
Everyone knows they need to hit the ball far, so they make a big backswing. And as we’ve written about before, they hit the limit of their flexibility—but they keep forcing themselves to turn, even though they can’t really anymore. No different than a wall caving in after too much load is put on it, eventually, something has to give.
For golfers, this usually comes in the form of bent left and right arms. It’s a sign arms have collapsed, making their backswing appear longer than it is.
JT’s feel: Push hands far away from body <img src="https://golfdigest.sports.sndimg.com/content/dam/images/golfdigest/fullset/2015/07/21/55ad8fcab01eefe207f74187_instruction-2009-01-inil02butch.jpg.rend.hgtvcom.966.1449.suffix/1573450658681.jpeg" alt="
To counteract this, JT wants to keep his right arm straight and wide, far away from his body.
“I feel like my hands are as far from my body as I can. I push the grip as far from my body as I can. It’s harder to get long if I keep the distance between my body and arms.”
JT continues:
“When I get off, everything’s not in sync. Maybe my body will stop turning but my arms will keep going. When I think of width, you can still take it back far, but you take it back far with your body, not with your arms.”
Everything was certainly in sync for JT on Friday. And the rest of us can learn a little something from it.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
