Win probabilities: AT&T Byron Nelson

Stewart Cink was nearing 50 and beginning to notice that his drives didn’t carry the bunkers they used to. A decline in distance is often an unavoidable consequence of aging, but Cink wasn’t ready to accept his shorter tee shots. Long hours in the gym and a plethora of protein shakes weren’t necessary for him to reverse the trend, though. He was able to gain more than 10 yards – and win for the first time in more than a decade – by making adjustments to his technique and equipment. “I didn’t think that I was really slowing down physically,” he said. “In fact, my clubhead speed wasn’t slowing down. I just had gotten a little bit inefficient with my driving.” Adjusting his setup – specifically, his ball position – allowed him to switch to a lower-lofted driver and unlock the power that he already had in his 6-foot-4, 205-pound frame. Just a few weeks after implementing these changes, Cink won the Fortinet Championship in September 2020, his first win since the 2009 Open Championship. “It gave me so much confidence … to be able to rip the cover off the ball,” he said after his win in Napa. He leapt from 113th to 27th in driving distance, averaging 306.6 yards off the tee last season. He ranked ahead of big hitters like Tony Finau and Bubba Watson, as well as young studs like Sam Burns and Scottie Scheffler. Cink is playing this week’s Sentry Tournament of Champions after also winning the RBC Heritage in April, his second victory of the 2021 season. At 48, he is the second-oldest player at Kapalua. We’ll take a closer look at Cink’s swing changes in this edition of Inside My Swing, where PGA TOUR players share what they’re working on and how they keep their game performing at an elite level. FORWARD THINKING Cink failed to qualify for the FedExCup Playoffs in both the 2019 and 2020 seasons. He was driving it straight and beating the local pros while at home, but his low-flying drives didn’t translate to success out on TOUR. “I could hit it nice and straight,” he said, “but I was losing yards in the air.” Cink’s coaches, James Sieckmann and Mike Lipnick, wanted him to move the ball forward in his stance so he could hit up on it and increase the carry distance of his drives. Moving the ball forward also allowed him to use a lower-lofted driver, which imparts a more direct blow and transfers more energy into the ball (for a more extreme example, imagine the difference between hitting a ball with a 3-iron and a sand wedge). Making a change, even to a player’s static address position, is often uncomfortable, however. Cink admits that he felt “like a clown,” when he first moved the ball forward in his stance. “I was almost embarrassed to hit shots in front of people,” Cink said. “But Mike showed me a picture of it and it looked like a completely normal setup. “My attack angle went from, say, -2 to about plus-2, which is a kind of a big deal in driving these days. The best drivers and the guys who hit it the farthest … are the ones that attack up.” A look at the stats confirms that. Some of the TOUR’s highest hitters are also the longest. PGA Championship winner Phil Mickelson had the highest average apex on his tee shots last season (135 feet, 2 inches). Rory McIlroy ranked second, and Bryson DeChambeau was fourth in that metric. The average apex height of Cink’s tee shots increased nearly 20 feet, to 114’, 4”. That was 26th-highest on TOUR last season. It led to a 15-yard increase in his average carry distance off the tee. “I wasn’t trying to change my attack angle, but the setup change and the way I was using the bigger muscles in my body on my back swing, I kind of accessed more of the power from stronger areas of my body,” Cink said, “and those two changes just resulted in a lot more ball speed and a lot better attack angle. TAKING YOUR MEDICINE Cink describes his backswing before the changes as “shrimpy.” He was swinging his arms, but not using his core and lower body to create power. “I was just a little bit lazy with my turn,” he said. “My lower body wasn’t doing much. It was a stabilizing part of my swing instead of an active and dynamic part of my swing. So we recruited the big muscles on my right side to really load a lot of energy.” Cink’s ball position was part of the problem. With the ball back in the stance, it was harder to turn behind the ball and load into his right side. Moving the ball forward helped him do this. So did making golf swings while holding a medicine ball with both hands. We recruit our core whenever we need to move a heavier object. That’s why this drill helped Cink feel how to properly turn in his backswing. “I am concentrating on getting that weight rotated into the right side,” he said. He doesn’t want his weight to travel outside the midline of his right foot, however. That thought keeps him focused on turning, instead of sliding, in the backswing. TURN AND BURN Because he hadn’t turned properly on the backswing, Cink had to restrict his rotation on his downswing. This kept him from swinging as fast as he could. Cink’s right leg used to stay bent during the backswing, but it now straightens as he turns his lower body and his weight shifts into his right side. “Getting deeper into his right leg – so that his right leg would straighten on the backswing – allowed him to use the ground a bit better and allowed him to rotate sooner on the downswing,” said Lipnick, the Director of Instruction at TPC Sugarloaf in Duluth, Georgia. Players can create speed by pushing off the ground in the downswing. Think of a discus thrower as he releases the disc. Before the changes, Cink had to slide to the left at the start of the downswing. This caused the club to fall below the desired plane. Now he feels like he turns almost immediately at the start of the downswing. “He has a little bump to the left, and then he rotates,” Lipnick said. The medicine ball again helps Cink feel the proper swing. He imagines heaving the ball into a wall down his target line. This teaches him how to unload the power he’s created in his backswing. “The idea of loading and unloading the power into a target is very similar to a golf swing,” Cinksaid. “(The medicine ball) is an external cue … like a swing thought, except it’s not technical.”

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Brendan Steele … If he just plays to his average, he’d very much be in the proverbial conversation of identifying the best golfer. Currently ninth on the PGA TOUR in total driving, 41st in greens in regulation, T34 in proximity to the hole and 20th in strokes gained: off-the-tee. Also 35th in birdie-or-better percentage, 38th in adjusted scoring, sixth in bogey avoidance and No. 1 in scrambling. His splendid season features a win and another six top 20s, the last a T6 at THE PLAYERS. Placed T15 at Oakmont last year, so the stage isn’t too big and the lights aren’t too bright for this 34-year-old in his prime. Byeong Hun An … If there’s still a chip on his shoulder for failing to slam the door at the Waste Management Phoenix Open four months ago, Erin Hills presents the kind of open-air routing that feeds into his zeal for bringing a course to its knees. While this track is too long to achieve that objective, he should no doubt double down on the confidence borne from the possibility. Combine fantastic form over the last month – he’s gone T8-T5-T24-T25 worldwide, respectively – and there’s reason to believe that the magic will continue. Alexander Levy … France’s top-ranked talent needed sectional qualifying to book his second appearance (T27, 2015), but he was already connecting with the kind of form that was deserving of a spot in the field. The 26-year-old’s win at the Volvo China Open in April punctuated a burst started by a solo fourth in Malaysia in February. That was trailed by a T8 at the Shenzhen International the week prior to what was his fourth title on the European Tour. He’s since added a T15 at the Nordea Masters. Ranks 41st on his circuit in greens in regulation and 35th in scoring. Bud Cauley … Making his first start in a major in four years and it really couldn’t have occurred at a better time. The 27-year-old has been a regular on leaderboards for the last two months. He strung together four consecutive top 10s and last logged a T25 at the Memorial. His surge can be directly correlated to hitting enough more greens in regulations and sinking a few more putts than field averages. Like diet and exercise to tone the body, it’s a formula that should trim scoring, and it has. Joaquin Niemann … His résumé is the stuff of hyperbole, but you need to be familiar with it. Just 18 years of age, he’s already the world’s top-ranked amateur. To put that into some perspective, he kicked aside all-everything Maverick McNealy of Stanford for the honor in April, while recent NCAA individual champion Braden Thornberry ranked 16th prior to his T4 at the FedEx St. Jude Classic. Niemann arrived at Erin Hills having won his last five competitions by a respective nine, six, eight, four and eight strokes. That blistering streak was sparked by a win in a professional competition in his native Chile, which was already his second pro victory of 2017. His run of wins included titles at Innisbrook’s Copperhead Course (host of the Valspar Championship) and at the Mexican International Amateur this past Sunday, which is where he traveled after surviving a playoff in the U.S. Open sectional qualifier the previous Monday. Committed to the University of South Florida this fall, he opened the year with a playoff loss at the Latin America Amateur Championship.

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After 29 years in the booth, NBC analyst Johnny Miller will retire after the Waste Management Phoenix Open in February. He will be replaced by Paul Azinger, a source told ESPN.

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