Inbee Park: A Swing to Copy

Inbee Park withstood the strong winds of Southern Australia to earn her 20^th LPGA career win at the ISPA Handa Women’s Australian Open. Royal Adelaide Golf Club challenged the women on a day that tested their skills and mental toughness.

Park out lasted all challengers on a day where only Cristie Kerr (69) was able to shoot in the 60’s and while her 74 was her highest of the week it still gave her a three shot margin of victory over Amy Olsen.

It was Park’s first win since 2018 and may be a signal that she is returning to her form that made her the youngest player to qualify for the LPGA Hall of Fame at 27. From 2012 to 2015 she won 16 LPGA tournaments including six majors and was the number one female golfer in the world. And she was the Olympic Gold Medal Winner at the Rio Games when golf finally came back to the games.

During her reign as best in the world her putting was beyond compare and her ball striking was as pure as anyone in the game, male or female.

There is much to admire about her game as she works her way back into the ranking of the games elite and one of the constants in her game has been her tempo. She has as deliberate a back-swing as anyone and her smooth, consistent tempo allows her to deliver the club-head back to the ball with amazing consistency.

We men can fantasize about driving it like Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka or Adam Scott but if we are honest with ourselves it’s Inbee that we should be modeling our swing after.

I for one have plenty of faults on any given day with my swing. But most of them can be traced back to poor tempo. A slow back-swing does no good if I over swing on the down-swing. Nor does a mismatched tempo between the two. The best way for any hacker to improve their game (short of lessons) is to slow down that driver swing.

A slow take-away and a full turn allows the club-head to pick up enough speed to get the ball out there and a controlled swing allows us to play from the short grass instead of yelling “Fore!”

Take a look at Inbee’s swing, sometimes it’s hard to tell if it is in slow motion or regular speed. But it has worked for her, got her into the Hall of Fame, a gold medal and 20 wins.

It has to be good enough for us.

And her highlights from the IPS Handa and that smooth swing.