What is life if you can’t appreciate the minor miracles when you see them?
No, The Duke—one of the players in Barstool’s Internet Invitational—is not the best golfer in the world. And if I had to guess, this is probably as good as he’s ever going to get without changing this action. But he’s rocking with it for now, and I’ve never quite seen anything like it.
If, while watching that, you thought to yourself: How did he do that? Well, here’s a quick explanation...
The Duke’s setup is the strangest part of all of this. He stands the club almost 90 degrees upright, and has a split grip with both hands rotated away from the target into a strong position. Strong grips tend to close the clubface, but gripping the club like this is really the only way to hold it from this setup position.
Rather than turning his body to the top of the backswing, The Duke then lifts the club directly upright in front of his body. There is almost literally no turn in his lower body, and almost none in his upper body.
That robs him of a lot of power, but it’s important to note the club itself has traveled a decent distance from where it started, which in itself creates power. At the top the club is parallel—if not slightly past parallel—to the ground. If this club was on the other side of his head, we’d consider this backswing pretty long.
But as he unfurls this madness of a backswing position, The Duke has one big emerging problem: The club is traveling far too steep. Look how vertical it is to the ground.
If he were to continue the club in this direction, he’d essentially be making the same motion as swinging an axe and hammering the ball straight into the ground. So he needs to begin compensating.
To shallow out this incredibly steep transition move, he begins rotating and thrusting his hips aggressively towards the target. That weight transfer adds power, but the more he clears his body this way, the more it shallows the club into a spot he can actually hit the ball from.
He rides this move so hard that he actually loses balance on the way through.
The end result is a kind of passable, low block-cut thing. And, of course, some entertaining viewing.