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 Bruce Lietzke's loopy swing looks weird, but it helped him master Inverness's rough and pull off shots like the eight-iron that cinched his win
By Mitchell Spearman
It has been fascinating to watch the men with pro golf's most off-plane swings -- Jim Furyk and Bruce Lietzke -- win the U.S. Open and the U.S. Senior Open, respectively. Furyk goes outside during the takeaway and drops the club inside while sweeping down into the ball. Lietzke starts inside, casts the club away from his body at the top and draws it back toward his torso while descending through impact. These guys are national champions because they have effective and repetitive swings, especially Lietzke, who is the game's most one-dimensional player. Lietzke has one shot -- a fade -- and his genius is that he has never tried to change his action. Lietzke's in-out-in swing path is great in gnarly rough like Inverness's, because it produces a very steep angle of attack, allowing the club to avoid getting caught in the grass before striking the ball. That's how Lietzke could hit only 47% of the greens in regulation to rank 58th out of the 60 who made the cut and still beat Tom Watson by two strokes. Of all the shots Lietzke hit from the thick stuff last week, his best was the 136-yard eight-iron to within two feet at the 16th hole on Sunday (above). That shot set up the birdie that gave him an insurmountable four-stroke lead.
Mitchell Spearman teaches at Manhattan Woods Golf Club in West Nyack, N.Y., and is a Golf Magazine Top 100 Teacher. Issue date: July 7, 2003
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Courtesy of NBC
