Another great instructor, Mike Malaska, speaks of "it should feel like you are coming over the top, but from the inside." When you said that, that clicked. His hips 'pushing back' as he begins his downswing gives him the room to compress the ball and deloft the clubface. Another key.
Hideki pause while his leg and hip moving to stretch out the core and his hand and arm get the club to the best position to hit the ball. So it looks like he pauses, but his core muscle is stretching to get ready pull his upper body around.
It's a fact. If his whole body actually paused, he'd lose all the tension in his swing and he'd just swat at the ball. His lower body is actually starting it's right to left weight swift during the "pause"
On the range/practicing, I actually try and hold/pause at the top for about 5 - 10 seconds. It helps me with my tempo and stability throughout the swing.
I started integrating the pause at the top into my already unique and weird golf swing. I don't pause as long as you, but I agree completely that it helps with tempo and stability. I have a really slow back swing. My back swing takes about 2 seconds, then I pause for a second at the top, hard swing through the ball, jump into my toes and to finish it off, my follow through is a wild helicopter follow through. Everyone thinks it looks uncomfortable, but it's all about tempo and the results show, if I do say so, myself
I need to try this, I get way too quick and keep trying to pause but maybe I'm not exaggerating it enough, im gonna give it a go and count to 5 at the top today at the range
What works for me is I use my Right Shoulder and Right hand to hold it at the top while my left arm is straight and flexing. When I "let go" of the Right Hand from keeping it up in the pause mode, I bow the left wrist and get a great explosion move to the ball.
I've always heard the drill called a freezer. I use it to work on specific parts of my swing in backyard. I'll rarely use it on the range though because I don't want feedback from the ball when I'm gonna change something initially. It gets ugly sometimes lol
Seeing his right hip rotate 'to the target' on the takeaway.... I wonder if he had an alignment rod in his belt loops where the rod would point at the top...... where do you think?
WGC Bridgestone Invitational brought here. Still gotta clean swing even with the pause....made me think of Charles Barkley’s swing for some strange reason 😆🤣
So what you do is, your put your belt on so that your belt buckle is above your left hip, that way no matter how shite your swing is , your belt buckle will always point toward the target. It is that simple!
In my opinion, pausing at the top is a bad drill that will only work for a few. The reason for this is because pausing at the top will most likely make you out of sync and make the lower body move to fast at the ball. If anything I think most amateur golfers would benefit if they speed up their swings instead of making them slower. Only real benefit I can see with pausing at the top as a drill is to practice completing your backswing.
I tend to disagree. Pausing at the top to the degree Hideki may get your lower body out sync if you are doing that while playing a round vs practice. Are you referring to moving to fast at the ball meaning towards the ball or towards the target? Freeze drills at the top as Christo demonstrates is a great way in learning how upper and lower body separation feels like, and getting the body started in the correct sequence. My opinion many ams already swing too fast and with their arms, causing many problems like early extension, hip stall, casting, flipping etc.
Well to be fair, using it as a drill might have some benefits, like as the author said to find the balance at the top of the swing. However, to have even a small pause at the top while hitting to an actual target is what I don't like. Referring to moving to fast I mean the kinetic sequence get out of sync. Just compare with a sport with a moving ball like tennis, you would never see a player try to pause at the back of their swing. You need the flowing motion to keep your balance and grace.
