Over the last couple of years a flatter golf swing has become in vogue across golf instruction and among Tour players. Everyone seemingly wants to swing just a little bit flatter, and Stacy Lewis admits she got caught by the bug last year.
“I think everybody – you know, you have this ideal image of what the golf club, what position it should be in at the top, which you should, but to an extent, you know, everybody’s body is a little bit different,” Lewis said. “I think when I try to get flatter with it, whether it’s the way my back is or with the surgery or just the way I am in general, my hands are just going to always be naturally higher. And I played some of my best golf with my hands a little bit high, so it was kind of looking back at what had worked in the past and just figuring out how to really get back to that again.
In other words, flatter isn’t always better. We have seen it with Tiger Woods blocks right in recent years after he made the switch, and Lewis says she saw something similar in her game in 2014 when she made the change.
“I think you can definitely look at that. I think the problem with the flat swing is if you go hard at it with your body, it’s stuck behind you,” Lewis said. “So a flat swing can work if you’re not trying to go hard at it, which Tiger likes to swing hard. I like to go hard with my body at the ball, so really just, I mean, putting it in a position where you can swing at it and go hard. That’s something I like to do on the golf course.”
It’s admittedly hard for Lewis to be too displeased with a golf swing that she used in a year in which she won the Rolex Player of the Year, money list title, and Vare Trophy, but she got frustrated with what she felt was inconsistency and not her best golf over the latter half of 2014. She won three times in the months of May and June but didn’t win again the rest of the season. So her and coach, Joe Hallett, went back to the drawing board this offseason and tried to get the hands back to the place they used to be in 2012 and 2013.
“We were just kind of talking about what we worked on last year, what went right, what didn’t, and we just found the flatter we tried to get my swing, the more the club essentially got behind me instead of being flatter and when the club is behind you, then you’re fighting it all the way down,” Lewis said. “So it was really kind of us talking about it and just figuring out where we wanted to go for the next year.”
It’s starting to show up in recent weeks. Lewis has finished in the top 11 in all five of her tournaments to open 2015 but is really rounding into form lately with three consecutive top-three finishes. Typically, that would eat at her, getting that close and not finishing it off with a win, but she’s had to keep it in perspective this year.
“A lot of the work was just on the takeaway, making sure the club stayed outside my hands because once it gets to the top it’s in a good spot. So it took a little while. [Coates Golf Championship] was a little bit rough, wasn’t quite trusting it, but definitely the last few weeks it’s gotten better,” Lewis said. “Now it’s just kind of fine tuning and making sure the timing is good, but we’re definitely working in the right direction. That’s something that Joe and I have texted to each other multiple times the last few weeks, even when I finished second or third, we’re going in the right direction, so it’s not too disappointing.”
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