Vintage Monty -2

Late 'setting' loads the wrists

High hands at the top is one of Monty's trademarks - and one that provides a useful swing cue for those of you who are prone to swinging the arms and hands too flat around the body. Try to visualise swinging your hands up and over the tip of your right shoulder in the backswing. Do that and you will find that your swing is on a better plane, making it easier for you to return the club on a consistent path into the back of the ball.

The second part, or completion of the backswing is very interesting. Having already established the width and the slide [of the hips] behind the ball, he lifts his arms and cocks the wrists. And there's a tremendous amount of wrist cock taking place in the space of the final two frames you see above (the arms have travelled only a short distance while the clubhead has reached the extent of its journey, beyond the horizontal).

It's actually very hard to do this.

There are few players who have Colin's flexibility, and who are able to extend the left arm so fully, the wrists fully hinged to achieve the top-of-the-backswing position. This late setting of the wrists is idiosyncratic to Colin, and not something I would necessarily recommend to all golfers. But for those of you who perhaps cock your wrists very early, narrowing the swing, I would point to this action and suggest using this image of Monty's backswing to help you work on taking the club away from the ball on a wider arc in an attempt to encourage this later hingeing or 'setting' of the wrists.

Looking down the line confirms the two-dimensional nature of Colin's action: from that tall, easy posture, we can see that he takes the club straight back in line with the target (left). It's a wide takeaway, and he makes no attempt to take the club behind him on the inside. Colin doesn't see a third dimension of swinging the club behind his body - to him it's a case of taking the club straight up and then swinging it straight back down and through the ball.

Good footwork, great rhythm

During the Open this year Colin was concerned when he saw a newspaper photo of himself on the 18th tee in exactly the position you see here (above left). He looked at it and asked me if his swing was too flat. The reality is that he has simply shallowed the plane of his swing with a subtle shift in the lower body (as all good players do). Because Monty swings his hands to such a high position at the top, the club is a little higher through the transition than most world-class players would have it. ["Oh, that sounds very technical," said Monty. "You better worry about that, not me."]

The first thing that strikes me about this downswing sequence is that it actually does give you a sense of Colin's wonderful rhythm. It's almost a dance move, the way he swings and accelerates the clubhead from the top of his backswing all the way through the ball. He has a terrific empathy with the clubhead. From the moment he re-plants his left heel to signal the change in direction, it's a smooth sweeping action, and while he is using a driver here, his technique is pretty consistent with every club in the bag.

Over the years Colin has been one of the straightest hitters in the game, and the reason for this is that he is not turning as he hits the ball, he is simply throwing the clubhead towards the target. The pre-impact position down the line (left) shows this perfectly. Players who rotate their body very aggressively through the ball would appear with their hips wide open at this point, while Colin's hips are more or less square to the target line. It's not a powerful body movement, but it's certainly a very reliable arm movement. Colin relies on leverage to create power - he is able to maintain a fairly straight left arm in the backswing and through the ball both arms are superby extended, maximising speed and the width of his arc.

In fact, on the day this sequence was shot (for his shoe sponsors, Ecco) he explained to the group that he carries a 4-wood in favour of a strong 3, because as and when he needs distance off the fairway he simply hits his 10.5 degree Yonex Cyberstar Nanospeed driver off the deck.

Sweep it all the way to a finish

Only once the ball is hurtling its way down the fairway does Colin aggressively rotate his body towards the target to complete the follow-through. With his weight then fully supported on the left side, he maintains balance on the toe of the right shoe - classic.

With wonderful footwork, Monty changes direction from the ground up and demonstrates a classic weight shift towards the target. This really is the key to his downswing. Having moved laterally away from the target on the backswing, the hips now move laterally towards it to prepare the arms and the body for the delivery position - they are sliding, not turning. Only in the final stages of the swing are you aware of a turning action, as Colin emerges through the impact area and comes through to face the target. Then he has a massive turn as he clears his hips and turns his shoulders to the finish.

Another point to note is the way Colin keeps his head behind the ball as he sweeps it off the peg. The ideal combination (with the driver) is weight forward, head back. The quality of the last two frames above is revealing: good ball-strikers have this rotation of the hands and forearms and I am sure that if we looked at images of the likes of Tom Watson and Seve Ballesteros we would see a very similar position through the ball. As it happened, Colin popped in to my office at The Wisley as I was putting the finishing touches to thus article and went through the pictures one by one, and we both agreed that these images showed the best shape his swing's been in ever. He was that positive about every single image.

The one thing that has really improved is this sweeping action through the ball - as you see above. He makes a great weight-shift towards the target and maintains terrific balance. Let me tell, you, Monty was just killing his drives on the day we shot this sequence. And I hope there have been some pointers in this article that will help you to go out there and do the same.