What Jackson Koivun’s Swing Can Teach the Rest of Us

So Jackson Koivun is super good at golf. He's won the Haskins Award twice. He's only the fourth player to ever do that. He was a low amateur at the US Open. And then in his third start on tour, he beat Scottie Scheffler by three shots to grab his first win. I mean, this is incredible stuff. But the thing is, the thing about Jackson Koivun is that my favorite thing about him is his golf swing. Because he does some really interesting stuff. He makes some really interesting moves in his golf swing that the rest of us can learn from. And by the rest of us, I mean literally the rest of us. Junior golfers can look at Jackson's swing and learn something and then older golfers can look at Jackson's swing and they can also learn something and it's because he's part of a broader trend on tour called the Tour Draw Group these are guys who are learning to get really good at hitting low curve power draws he does it really well because of the moves in his golf swing that's what i wanted to do a whole episode about today okay so i kind of mentioned there were three moves here and the first move comes just after he starts his golf swing comes in the takeaway you can notice that before every swing he kind of does this little takeaway rehearsal and what's really interesting is that his takeaway rehearsal doesn't actually look that similar to his golf swing takeaway when he actually does a swing it's a real feel versus real thing but it's important that he establishes this feel because in his actual golf swing what you can see is that his natural tendency is to kind of point the club face down towards the ground to keep it a little too shut now you can see a lot of golfers on tour a lot of good golfers play good golf from this position Victor Hovland's like a great example his club face is definitely pointing down at this point in the takeaway but Jackson Koivun he's using his rehearsal to feel the opposite he's feeling like the toe is pointing more up towards the sky when the club is parallel to the ground in this position and this is kind of the first key it's something again I talked about in the draw video you should go check it out if you haven't already but this is important for Jackson swing and it's important for I think anybody who's really out there aspiring to hit a draw because this feel of a more open club face anecdotally is something that I hear a lot of players who get good at hitting draws this is something a lot of them talk about now the reason why someone like Victor Hovland for instance can do really well playing from a shut club face position is because he tends to hit more fades and when that happens that you get the club face shut on the way back but then as you on the way through you're really feeling like you can aggressively turn your body and hold the club face open you're of course the club face is closing but the feeling that a lot of fade players like have is a big body release that they can just turn their body really hard that they can feel like they hold the club face open and because they've got it shut on the backswing they kind of shut on the backswing plus the turn of your body on the way through those two things cancel each other out they feel like it then creates the conditions for that nice fade but draw players often like this is something that Michael Kim told me once that he once loved Victor Hovland's fade golf swing so much that he tried to close the club face on his takeaway a little more and he immediately started playing terribly he started hooking it didn't really know why and the reason why is because Michael Kim like uh Jackson Coyle he likes to hit draws and when a draw player gets themselves into a position where the club face is closed on the way back what happens is that it starts screwing up their feel they feel like that now all of a sudden they can't release on the way through because the club face is closed if they released on the way through like they like to all of a sudden that's going to start turning into pulls and hooks and all sorts of bad stuff so instinctively what he figured out was that actually in order for me to really groove my draw what i need to feel like is that i'm going to release hard through the ball with my hand i'm going to feel the opposite of what fade players feel that I am really turning it over with my hands as I'm turning through of course and so this is why Michael Kim in this case he went towards realizing that I actually like the club face a little open on the way back because once it's open I feel like I can release on the way through and then bringing it all back to Jackson Coyle this is why you see him doing a similar rehearsal position on the takeaway because even though his club face tends to get a little sharp by constantly reminding himself and like reminding himself to feel like it's opening up that opening up on the backswing allows him to feel like he can really get aggressive with his hands on the way through so even though the feel doesn't match the real exactly this kind of match up is the key idea that a lot of golfers draw golfers especially gravitate towards and again if you're out there and you're like okay what can i learn from Jackson Coyle's swing how can i learn to hit a draw because of it this is a really easy one you can just do before you even hit the ball before you even start your swing simply rehearse on your takeaway instead of the club face getting shut instead of it rolling in that you get it nice on your hands with the club face open again a lot the takeaway is one of these things just to go off on a side tangent the takeaway is one of these things that it matters for some golfers and really doesn't matter for other golfers but again this is the feeling seems to pop up with a lot of draw players that they want to get the club in a position on the backswing where they can release on the way through and if you feel like you're going to hook it on the backswing because the club face is too shut then you're not going to be able to release it well on the way through you're going to be scared of releasing it on the way through this is exactly the problem so feeling like you open it up slightly that you keep it kind of in line with your hands but opening it up that doesn't work for every golfer nothing works for every golfer but that feel is one that keeps popping up a lot with draw golfers and that's why Jackson Coivin is a good model but the second one the more important move that I'm really excited about again talk about it in the video is that he has a perfect example of the differences between tilting and turning in your golf swing now if you look at Jackson's downswing what you'll see is a huge kind of reverse C-shape on the way down and this is good this is good a lot of people you know again just to go over another side tangent a lot of people they immediately see side bend when the golfer side bends like that and they immediately say oh his back's gonna give out that's no good and listen i get it it's not the best move for your back on paper but the one thing that a lot of people gloss over with this move is that a every golfer has it in their move to some extent this is how you play good golf by getting into this position and second is that even though on paper this isn't the best move for your back people are flexible in different ways people are strong in different ways and so even though it may hurt me to get into that severe of a reverse C position on the way through Jackson Coivin is more flexible than me he's probably stronger than me in certain areas too and so for him getting this position it's fine it's the same way that go running a marathon for you may be perfectly fine for you because you've trained for it because you're conditioned for it but if i just try to run a marathon tomorrow probably wouldn't turn out that well it's because my body isn't in the same shape it needs to be in order to run that marathon the same is true in the golf swing but anyway enough of that side tangent the key thing here is that as i said all the good players they create this shape in their body they create the shape where they're tilting back as they're turning on the way through if you all get into what happens if you just turn too much but the key thing here the key number that Jeff Smith who's this amazing teacher teaches a ton of tour players he's a top 50 coach on Golf Digest's teacher list and he also does a lot of work with SportsBox which is a 3D golf swing app really cool and what he found is that draw players they tilt more than they turn on the way through so every golfer on the way down they have two things they tilt their body away from the target and then they turn their body towards the target everyone they tilt and they turn every single golfer has that the thing is faders a fader like Wyndham Clark for instance it's just a classic fader he has some tilt yes but he has a lot more turn that body release we were talking about he turns a ton on the way through and he tilts a lot too but he doesn't tilt as much as he turns draw players they do the opposite and this is where Jackson Coivin comes in so you look at his swing you say oh why is he tilting so much well because he's a draw player and what happens is that he is tilting more than he's turning on the way through and that feeling of him tilting away a lot and turning a little bit is what allows him to actually release his hands on the way through and create that draw and if you really push it to the extremes here if Jackson Coivins on one end of the extreme he tilts a ton and turns a decent amount if you look at a slicer what they're doing is that they are tilting almost none and they're turning a ton so you know i use paul paul sam sam's my colleague he's a great guy he does the mind game series but i always use him as an example of a slicer even though he's getting a lot better at it but if you look at his swing at impact he is like a straight up and down when you look at it from face on but he's got a ton of turn and this is just a classic position that you see a lot of golfers who drag the club over the top is because they have no tilt but they have a so they're just in a straight line but they have a ton of turn look at what happens to my hands when i do that my hands just go straight over the top because i don't have that tilt to be able to shallow them out and get them in that position that you need they get on before i get too much in the weeds even though i'm already in the weeds the key thing to remember here every golfer they have tilt and they have turn on the downswing and the draw golfers they tilt more than they turn so if you want to hit a draw if that's your goal here again you've got your takeaway in a good spot you want to feel like I am tilting more than I'm turning you probably don't even need to think about the turn part even though that's important you need to think about creating that shape that tilting shape where your upper body is away from the target and that is what Koivisto does now quick note here is that i know he does also work on like limiting that tilt because too much of anything in the golf swing can turn a good thing into a bad thing so he's always trying to keep that under control but again tilt is good you don't just need to turn you need to tilt and you need to turn the final thing in jackson's swing that i really like is kind of his like left arm position and i get to why too but remember on the back swing he's feeling like okay i'm gonna get the club i want to feel the club slightly open so then I can release it on the way through but then on the way through what you see is often especially when he's you know really going after it his left arm tends to bend a little bit it's almost got a hint of Jordan Spieth and Bryson with that like high left elbow here now I'm not going to go out there and say that everybody should try to do that they definitely shouldn't you should talk to your coach that's what coaches are there for they know this stuff better than anyone but what I think this speaks to is that a lot of draw players will say that they like to have what feels like a kind of wall that they can release into something that because we all know that draws can get away from right that's the whole thing you can't speak to a draw and when a draw turns to a hook nothing good tends to happen so what a lot of draw players say is the way I keep this under control is that I feel like I can release it that's how I hit my draw in the first place but that i release into a stop sign that something somewhere along the way is going to stop me from releasing it too much there's some move there's some feeling that makes me do it bryson and uh jackson they seem to land on this idea of the arm acting like a wall that they're releasing into but they can release it and they can release it hard but they're not going to over release it and that's the key feeling here so there's a few different things to do it like when i i remember when i was hitting i tend to try to hit more fades now but when i was trying to hit draws the one thing i like to feel is that the entire left side of my body acts as that wall that my left leg snaps that my left side gets really high and that that is kind of the wall that's preventing me from over releasing my hands so anyway that is a bit more of an individual feel but i just find it interesting to see it in Jackson's swing the way that left arm works acts like a wall and if you're out there trying to find the missing piece to your draw because you keep seeing them turn into high hooks or low hooks god forbid you need to say okay what is my feeling of a wall going to be what can i put in my golf swing as i'm releasing it that's going to act like an emergency break for Jackson and for Bryson that's his left arm other people have different feels to do it but so these are the kind of the three essential ingredients to really dialing in your draw just wanted to go into a little bit more detail then again if you haven't watched the tour draw video love if you go watched it and love to hear all the comments you have and yeah Jackson Coevin he's really good at golf and it's cool to see him doing it hitting a tight draw like he does something for the rest of us to aspire to