In the week of the 150th Open ChampionshipWorld renowned swing coach Pete Cowen talks Telegraph Sport through some of the most imitated golf strokes.
Cowen coached Louis Oosthuizen, Darren Clarke and Henrik Stenson as they lifted the Claret Jug and has eight major championships under his belt.
These are some of the most enviable shots in sports and how to execute them.
Tiger Woods’ Angel
It’s how low he hits it that’s the key. It’s like a putt because if you don’t put a lot of spin on it, the ball is much harder to move on the line. He puts the ball one ball wide in his stance and then manages to do it with lots of shaft pressure and a lifted clubface, keeping his trail shoulder on top of the ball and staying high through impact.
Tiger says he softens his arms and speeds up his hips and “brakes” his hands shortly after the impact. It’s very, very effective, especially on a left lane where there’s so much walking and wind. People ask why not every professional golfer uses this, but the simple answer is that Tiger will have practiced this stroke more than anyone else, plus the fact that he had the biggest body movement of them all in his prime.
He could control his body so that the lowered head would hit the ball with such precision that he would know, “I’m not hitting him in that or that bunker.” In the 1990s, he almost exclusively used a two-iron to play this shot, but then switched to a three-wood and sometimes even a driver. Any skill.