I first met Lee Westwood in 2005 when he and Darren Clarke came to The Montgomerie to practice prior to heading to Qatar for the Qatar Masters. It was a treat to have two of the finest players in the world at our facility and find out more about what they were working on. At that time Lee was playing quite well but his body was a very different shape to what we see now.
Fast forwarding to 2009, Lee has been with us at the golf school practicing and opitimizes the modern golfing athlete as you can see from some of Claude’s great high def images. I asked him what drove him to work on his fitness so hard and his answer went something like this-
I had been to see the best coaches in the world and they were all basically telling me the same thing- I was losing posture in the downswing. Now I was also aware that at points in my career, I had been one of the best golfers in the world so I knew that I had the ability and coordination to achieve technical results. My conclusion was that if all of these people were saying the same thing and I was trying to do it but couldn’t, something else must have been in the way. The answer lay in my body and through work with Dr. Steve McGregor I was able to identify the areas which were letting me down in my swing, strengthen them and then work on the areas as mentioned only this time, I was able to see results.
This story confirms what we here at BHSG know about the link between the body and the swing and through our knowledge and technology, we will be able to identify whether your body is to blame for an annoying swing fault. Sometime it is not the answer, but in Lee’s case it was.