Phil Mickelson: for a different look at one of the best swings in golf, we flopped these photos to turn `lefty' into a righty

Golf Digest, Sept, 2002 by Rick Smith, Ron Kaspriske

PHIL MICKELSON MAY BE A HOUSEHOLD NAME to golf fans, but his swing is hardly public knowledge. I mean, here's a guy who's won 21 PGA Tour events and made the flop shot famous. But because he plays left-handed, few right-handed players have actually studied his full swing. The reason? Most right-handed players have trouble absorbing information from a swing that looks backward to them. So to make understanding his swing easier for the 94 percent of you who play the game right-handed, we decided to take high-speed photos of Phil's left-handed swing and flop the images.

Phil is naturally right-handed but learned the game by standing across from his father and "mirror imaging" his father's right-handed swing.

On the following pages, I'll highlight the key elements of Phil's swing and tell you what he and I have worked on during the last three years. Phil has always had the great ability to make major changes to his swing and then use them immediately on the course without fear. Many players cannot do this. If you compared his swing from five years ago with the way he's hitting it today, you would see that now it's much more compact and in control..

`Righting'

Phil's Swing

Phil has always been a swinger of the golf club. By that I mean he's always had a long, flowing swing. Five years ago, his swing was effective but had a tendency to be unreliable at times. He was still successful because he has some of the finest hands in golf. If he got into an improper swing position, he was able to square the clubface by manipulating his hands or adjusting his body angles. Unfortunately, he couldn't rely on those adjustments for every shot. To get to the level he's at now, Phil knew he had to make changes.

We have worked hard on three areas of his swing. The first was to get him to take the club away so the toe was straight up halfway back. He used to take the club back inside with a closed face. Coupled with an active lower body, this inside swing path prompted him to either hook shots well right of the target (he is a lefty, remember) or try to save the shot but block it to the left.

Second, we worked hard on quieting his lower-body movement. This improved his arm extension and encouraged a full release of the club. His club release really is awesome, to the point where it makes it difficult to keep a tight grip on the club. (This explains why it often looks as if his right hand is coming off the grip through impact.)

The final adjustment was to get Phil to feel as if his spine is on top of the ball. In other words, he used to fall backward during the follow-through into the classic "Reverse-C" finish position, causing the hook. But by maintaining that "on top of" feeling, he makes a much more controlled swing. It's so much more stable. That feeling has been the key to his improvement in accuracy while preserving distance.

These will be his swing thoughts for a long, long time.

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"Phil is the only right-hander I know who plays the game left-handed. Had Phil come along 20 years earlier, his father may have discouraged him from doing so. The reason? Equipment. Until the mid-1980s, left-handers had a limited number of options when it came to clubfitting. This was especially true with persimmon woods. But by the time Phil reached his teens, metal woods had become popular, and there were more choices available in irons as well.

I'm a natural left-hander who learned to play righty, partly because my father was aware of the lack of good equipment available to lefties in the 1960s."