Akshay Bhatia Joins Smylie to Talk Latest Swing Tweaks
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:03 - Coach Gabriel Yedshed, and I was like, thank you.
00:05 (laughing)
00:06 I thought I was gonna fumble it so bad,
00:08 but here's a video he sent,
00:10 and I think a lot of people when they see this face on,
00:13 it's not a perfect angle,
00:14 but they can see how quick your arms are.
00:17 You're working on trying to get some friction at the bottom,
00:19 but you move towards the target.
00:21 Just kind of talk about,
00:22 that seems to be something a little bit new
00:24 you're doing this year with him.
00:26 - Yeah, I think, I did a kind of like a trial week at Honda,
00:31 and he looked at my pitching,
00:34 and yeah, first thing we did was we went from,
00:39 interlock grip, so we went overlap, which is a big change,
00:44 but obviously it softens the, kind of softens the blow,
00:47 and then matching the backswing speed with the through swing
00:52 and all of a sudden,
00:55 I'd never spun the golf ball a lot.
00:57 I play a low spin ball,
00:58 but now I'm starting to spin it a lot,
01:00 and I feel like I can hit a lot of the spinners,
01:02 and I just feel like now he's helped me understand
01:07 my baseline, but then you have the versatility
01:11 of different shots, different lies,
01:13 just random things,
01:16 and I feel like he's really good at
01:19 kind of just telling you how to do it,
01:21 and I feel like he unlocked the potential I always had.
01:25 - Yeah.
01:26 - And so now I understand, like, okay,
01:28 well, if the ball's sitting up in the rough,
01:31 then I hit up on the ball,
01:33 and if it's sitting in a divot,
01:36 and then I like tow it down and hood the crap out of it,
01:40 or in the, there's just so many different shots.
01:43 Like if you have a short shot in the rough,
01:47 and you have three, four paces,
01:48 and I like, I'll hit the golf ball
01:51 and like draw my hands back,
01:53 and it'll come out like really soft,
01:55 but there's so much speed that it's not like a muff shot.
01:59 - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:00 - It comes out like normal.
02:01 So there's just so many different things that I've learned,
02:03 and it's fun, you know, it's a lot of fun.
02:08 - I think this is a really cool shot
02:09 that we have here on the screen now.
02:10 It's like, this is the face is wide open,
02:13 but you're taking a really slow backswing
02:16 and getting a ton of speed at the ball.
02:18 Is this kind of that low spinner shot right here
02:21 that you're kind of working on?
02:23 - So this one is, we call it a flow.
02:26 So it's like longer, slower,
02:28 but then this one we call like the low flow
02:30 because I move forward still.
02:33 And so it'll come out with, you know,
02:35 soft, but a lot of spin.
02:38 And then if I'm short-sided or it's firm greens,
02:41 then I'll go with the flow,
02:43 which is like really long, really slow,
02:45 but the ball will come out super soft.
02:47 Sometimes it'll come out spinny.
02:49 And like out of guts, I chipped it.
02:53 Like if you ever get Shane Lowery on the podcast
02:57 and you ask him about my short game,
02:59 out of guts, like it was nasty, dude.
03:03 Like-
03:04 - Didn't you hit a flat shot on like behind the green on one?
03:06 Didn't you like hit like a full flop?
03:07 - Oh my gosh.
03:09 It was, it was, yeah, it was like a sandy,
03:12 it was where all the chairs were.
03:13 So it was into the grain, sandy, matted down.
03:18 And obviously like, you know, that green is wicked,
03:21 but I hit this like, I just, you know,
03:26 like bunker shot, like fat flop that lands like
03:29 on the small little shelf and trickled to like a foot.
03:32 And then 15, the first day I hit it long in the green
03:37 near those like three pine trees.
03:40 And it is downwind or like down off the right.
03:45 And I hit this flop that landed like off inch on the green.
03:50 I went to like six feet and Shane, you know,
03:52 Shane comes up to me and goes, dude, I wish I was 22.
03:55 And I was like,
03:56 and yeah, it was just like my short game
04:03 that week was nasty.
04:04 And even, you know, Phil and I are good friends.
04:06 And he even saw some of those flop shots I hit.
04:09 And he was like, dude, that was, that was nice.
04:11 (upbeat music)
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