Phil Michelson for the first time in his career won the [tag]Players Championship[/tag]. This also marked the first win with his new full swing coach Butch Harmon. Throughout the week Phil was quoted to saying he has won with his short game in the past but he now wants to win with his full game.

One swing element that Phil and Butch have been working on is to shorten his backswing. They felt it was getting to long and caused Phil to lose control. Phil has been known to fight the control of his driver. To shorten the backswing they focused on maintaining flex in the back, or trail, knee.

Maintaining the flex in the trail knee restricts the hip turn. For Phil this helped shorten the backswing as he could not turn his hips as far. Another benefit is Phil may generate more power from a more powerful coil. by limiting the hip turn and still getting a full shoulder turn will increase Phil’ x-factor. The x-factor is basically the difference between the number of degrees between the hip turn vs the shoulder turn.

After three weeks with his new teacher there was not doubt that Phil was swing the club with more confidence. How much better can Phil get? Will this new found confidence help propel Phil to finally conquer a US Open? Only time will tell.

What do you think. Will having Butch Harmon act as a catalyst for Phil Mickelson’s game? With this added confidence how far can Phil go?

To get more information on the benfits of maintaining the trail legs flex in the swing Subscribe to the Weekly Newsletter this is discussed in Week #7

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