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Great article in Sports Inllustrated on the “fixes” Butch Harmon brought to his man Phil Mickelson. I’ll summarize them here, but to read the entire article, click here.

Number 1

Square left foot
Check out Mickelson’s alignment—both feet are square to his target line. Photos of him at last year’s U.S. Open show Phil with an open stance, and he’d been known to flare open his back foot, a move that decreased the resistance in his left hip and allowed him to take the club back farther and with more hip rotation.

Number 2

Weight moved back
This one’s a bit more subtle, but dramatic in its consequences nonetheless. Our sources indicate that Harmon has moved Phil’s weight from his toes slightly back to the balls of his feet at address. The whirling flourish of hips, legs and arms seen in previous Mickelson swings has been replaced by a more stable turn through the ball with more of his spikes in contact with the ground.

Number 3

Shorter backswing, tighter coil
The most apparent change in Lefty’s technique is his abbreviated backswing—well, abbreviated for him. A backswing that once went way past parallel now stops short of full.

I liked this picture the best and I think it makes everything else work.

Listen to Butch Harmon’s 3 Tips to Phil Mickelson Made a Big Difference at the Player’s

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 at 12:58 pm and is filed under Tournaments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.