Muscles in Motion
A NEW LOOK AT JIM FURYK’S OLD SWING
FALLING SOMEWHERE between two football helmets colliding on an NFL Sunday and a high-powered rifle shot, Gary Woodland can produce sounds with his golf shots that are hard to forget. And even if you do, says his golf instructor Randy Smith, you’ll certainly remember what he just did to the ball.
“You know Tiger’s ‘stinger’? Well, Gary’s version of the stinger is a 2-iron shot that flies about 12-15 feet off the ground for 270 yards,” Smith said. “That’s not an exaggeration. I’ve never seen a man do that.”
Proclamations like that help fuel Woodland’s growing reputation as the best athlete in men’s professional golf and a true “masher” of the ball. He ranked 6th on the PGA tour in average driving distance (305.4 yards) at the end of June. Doesn’t sound uber impressive until you learn he’s doing that with his “70-percent swing” and often using a 3-wood. Woodland throttled back on his power, and started relying on a fade with his driver, in the hopes of playing from the fairway more often.
“I used to look at 335-yard carry and know that I could do it if I jumped on it. Now if it’s a 315-yard carry, I really have to jump on it. It’s really been an adjustment,” says Woodland, who used his newfound accuracy to help win the tour’s Transitions Championship in March. He’s finished T6 or better in four other tournaments this year “With the fade, I have to tee it up high and hit it as high as I can. That’s how I get my distance.”
Source: Golf Digest, 2010
