Nelly Korda’s swing – and how we can all learn from it

World No.1 Nelly Korda has more than 6,000 videos of her own swing on her phone. It’s a move that is talked about as one of the best on the planet and it’s already helped her to two Majors and an Olympic gold medal.

“I go through a practice session and I’ll probably video maybe 20 or 30 until I really like it,” she said. “But I’ve been told that I need to stop or I just need to delete them all and keep the one I want.”

Jordan Spieth described it as ‘like playing with Adam Scott, she swings it so sweet’.

Here, Advanced PGA Professional Deana Rushworth breaks down Korda’s action.

The posture

From a posture point of view, Nelly’s got an athletic stance and she really maximises her height. She’s not overly crouching and crowding the ball so, from the coccyx through to a thoracic spine, it looks very straight and that really does help with rotation and mobility if golfers can achieve that. If your lumbar spine is nice and flat in the set-up, it just helps secure your pelvis through impact. So it’s a really good set-up to have.

WATCH: Nelly Korda’s swing – slow motion

The takeaway

In terms of the first move she has a nice one-piece takeaway. The hands are not out racing her body or anything like that. For any golfer, male or female, who struggles to control the club at the top of the backswing, if you can cock your wrist, especially with an iron, sooner rather than later then you’ll find that you can control the club at the top. Whereas if people cock the wrist too late, it gets out of position, and then it becomes a bit of a cast on the way down.

The fact that she has it set at a nice 45˚ angle when the lead arm is parallel with the ground, then that’s brilliant. What’s really nice is she’s got a lovely flat left wrist at the top and it’s matching the clubface.

The transition

From the top she retains her height quite well. A lot of players tend to sink from the top of the backswing and you can see here that her right shoulder is well away from her ear. When people get a little bit over the top and they start smothering it, the gap between their shoulder and their ear is very narrow. So she’s doing a great job of keeping it shallow and keeping her shoulder back.

You can see that as she goes into a downswing position, the shaft really lines up nicely with her right forearm so she’s in a position to deliver that club and throw it at the ball. Now she’s set to really rotate through the shot whereas, if she was forward and coming over the top, then she would be very cramped at impact.

As she approaches the ball she’s retained her angles really, really well. She’s got great width, a great release and forearm rotation on the way through.

The rhythm

In terms of tempo, when you watch it at full speed, she’s got really good rhythm and nothing’s too hurried. This is helped by a good set-up and by retaining her posture really well through the swing.

If I’m teaching rhythm, the way I’ll speak to people about it is I’ll say, look, imagine you’re running a 400m race and you want to save a bit in the tank to the sprint finish. I’ll draw a chalk line from the ball to three feet past the ball and I’ll tell them that this needs to be the fastest part of your swing. So they have to keep themselves in check naturally to be able to put that acceleration in through the shot.

Another good feeling is to feel like you are swinging a rope and to try and feel it swish. It’s all about getting that feeling of that acceleration through the ball rather than to the ball. You’ve only got a certain amount of acceleration in your swing and, like a water pistol, once you’ve squeezed the trigger, it’s gone.

You can teach players to do distraction techniques where you get them to say something like ‘Severiano Ballesteros’ and then to try and marry that up with a swing, but the bottom line is that we want commitment at the ball and the acceleration point is good for commitment, strike and also holding the club on line through the shot.

About Deana
A former England player Deana is now the Head Professional at Witney Lakes in Oxfordshire and she is a regular in Today’s Golfer magazine