Gi: Early results this season suggest the majors this year are going to be impossible to call – how do you explain the depth in the game?
Denis Pugh: I think the hardest thing when you watch golf regularly, and certainly when it comes to analysing the game as a coach, trying to see where the trends are going, it all seems very much up in the air right now because in almost every area you look there are no boundaries.

Take the majors. Not so long ago Tiger set the boundaries – two majors a year were his. That was almost a given. Now we simply don’t know. Will he ever get back to his best? You’d have to assume he would contend in a major again, given his talent, but we don’t know for sure. The younger players coming through are no longer concerned when they see Tiger’s name on the leaderboard – in fat they relish the opportunity to beat him. The Robert Rocks of this world now know they can take him on – and as Robert did so superbly in Abu Dhabi, out-play him. If you had dropped in from Planet Zog you would have assumed Robert was the better player on the basis of the evidence – he swung the club better, hit the better shots and scored better.

He out-played Tiger in all three areas. That never happened in the last group. It’s a testament not only to the quality of Robert Rock’s golf – and he has been one of Europe’s most underrated players for a couple of years now – but all the golfers out there at the moment who are able to do what Robert did. And there are a lot of them.

Gi: Do you get a sense that Tiger is finally getting it all back now – the inspiration he gave to a generation behind him has produced a legion of young players who do everything he did?
DP: Yeah, but I think it goes beyond just kids. If you are a professional golfer, at whatever age, if you are capable of being on tour these days, you know how good you are. These guys do all the work – on the range and in the gym, with putting gurus, on the mental game. From where I’m standing, if you’re a player who has earned the right to be out there, and you do all of that work, you are justified to think you have done enough to win.

Gi: How big a part has technology played in the ever-increasing number of players who now seem capable of winning?
DP: I think the physical specimen almost allows the equipment to change. Tiger has been that influence in the last 10 years. Before that, in the mid eighties and early 1990s, Nick Faldo was the biggest influence on the game because he brought in the widespread understanding of technique. There have been great players in every generation, of course, but to actually influence the way the whole industry looks is huge, and Faldo was one of the first to really understand what he was doing with his swing – before that most played by feel and talent. Today, the majority of tour players not only understand what they are doing, thanks to technology that helps them analyse it, but they have incredible athletic talent, which is a winning combination. What Tiger did is take it to another level again, adding that understanding of technique to what is literally an Olympic-standard athleticism, which is why we are increasingly seeing the club being swung at tremendous speed. And we all know how far equipment has come, ‘matched’ perfectly to the increased speed in terms of shaft flex, kick point, larger sweetspots, longer shafts, bigger heads and golf balls that match in perfectly – and which unfortunately only fully reward the guys who are capable of swinging it at 115mph and more.

Gi: We hear this about the modern ball – what is the clubhead speed at which the greatest benefits are experienced?
DP: There is a mathematical equation – and guess what? I don’t know it! My best guestimate would be that it starts at around 110mph and performance really takes off from there and up.

Gi: To put this into perspective, what’s the average speeds you see with category 1 amateurs?
DP: I would say anything between 95 and 105 mph would be pretty good consistent swing speeds. 110 mph would be a terrific swing speed. At his best Tiger was between 120-130mph. Now, on top of that, there are a lot more players in that bracket. And the thing is, the guys who can really swing it fast through the ball get an almost exponential advantage. It seems a little unreasonable.

Modern Fundamental 1: Strong Left Hand

The modern ‘athletic’ player does not look to create speed with the hands in his swing, he works on the rotation of the body to create extreme centrifugal force to accelerate the arms. The hands just hang on, and using a strong left hand grip presets the wrist hinge at the set-up. I am seeing more and more examples of the left hand turned to expose at least three knuckles.

Gi: So at the highest level of the game there’s a gulf that’s been created as a result of technology?
DP: Precisely. When I played tournament golf a long, long time ago, I was a relatively short hitter, a drive would fly around 220-230 yards through the air. The long hitters – the Greg Normans and Ian Woosnams of the world – would carry it 240-250 through the air. Now, coming up to 60, I can carry the ball 230-240 through the air, and I ask you, in what other sport could you be 40 years older and get better? Technology has changed the game. It’s made it a lot more enjoyable for a lot of players, but at the highest level it is stacked in favour of the guys who can swing it the fastest. And the key point is this: the short-to-long hitter gap that might have been 30-40 yards in my time is now 80-100 yards. Guys are carrying it over 320. If you can’t hit it at least 270 yards these days there is no point being out there. And so equipment has made the game easier for the stronger player. So therefore the stronger player gets stronger and we are seeing the emphasis on the game change dramatically – and not for the better, in my opinion.

Gi: So as far as the pro game goes have we seen the last of the creative artistry in golf, the shotmaking that defined the Faldo era, built around control. Is that now consigned to history.
DP: Unless there is a serious rethink in the rules governing equipment, yes. In those days – and it really wasn’t that long ago – the ball would spin a lot more, the trajectory had to be controlled. Faldo’s way of playing was a much more complete way of playing the game, and more fun in many ways both to play and to watch. But you’re right, in many respects it’s a chapter in golf’s history. The game is lightyears on.

Modern Fundamental 2: Distinct Spine Angle

A hint of knee flex provides the stability in a set-up position geared towards a compact swing governed by the rotation of the torso. Majority of athletic players are one-plane – i.e the left arm is seen to tie in with the right shoulder (natural rotation of the upper body explains that)

The once relied on checkpoint of running a line up through the ball of the right foot, through the knee and right shoulder to check for good posture is not one that applies today. Players are looking to engage their body‘core’, and do so with a more defined angle at the hips, which gets the chest more over the ball at set up

Gi: And yet for the majority of players the sort of natural swing Faldo developed is more applicable as a coaching model?
DP: No doubt, most golfers are not going to come close to the speeds that are required to play properly with the modern equipment. And here’s the quandary we are in. As the equipment is now made stronger for the stronger players, youngsters are in the gym trying to get themselves into shape to use it. It’s self perpetuating. This is where the game is going now – you drive it as far as you can because wherever it lands you are better off with a wedge or a 9-iron out of thickish rough than a 7-iron from the fairway. Mishits are not going off line as much, the balls are not designed to spin as much, and so standing there and thumping it does not produce the crooked shots the way it used to.

Gi: Have you seen any evidence that this fixation with distance, the players working so hard on driver swing that is detrimental to the way they swing the club with the irons?
DP: Not detrimental in the sense that the technique they use, their ‘power swing’, can be adapted down to the wedges – and four wedges in the bag is the norm now, so there’s even less skill needed there, too! All the skill factors that we traditionally equated with the game have been whittled away so we are left with how far can you hit the ball, how well can you putt, and, when you miss a green, can you get out your lob wedge and splash it close out of long grass. That’s the modern game. Is it the game we would prefer? Probably not, but it doesn’t matter what I think or even what the majority of golfers seem to think. It’s the modern game.

Every day I see stronger, longer, fitter, technically better players coming through. The technique is now geared around an ‘athletic body’. The dominance of ‘springiness’, utilising fast-twitch muscles instead of bulk. It’s changing. As long as you can power it a long way and use a wedge, you’re OK. And the key thing now is that, if you can’t putt, you can find a way of getting the ball in the hole – belly-putter, long putter, a weird grip. Every aspect of the game that was difficult has been made easier – as long as you have speed and power, you can compete.

Gi: All of which adds up to a game in which we see greater percentage of players who can win?
DP: In a field of 140, it’s really no stretch to say that there are 140 guys who can potentially win. Is it great? For the guys on tour, yes. It’s also exciting to watch the finishes, as we’ve seen recently in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. But we don’t have the tradition so much now where one player is going to be that dominant – I don’t think we will see the situation as we did with Tiger where one player is in command. He was a one off and he caught everyone by surprise.

But there’s no doubt that the true artistry of the game that someone of my generation would regard as being what separates players has all but gone. And the shame of it all when you look at what is happening to golf courses today is that classic challenges are being disfigured to accommodate technology. Take a hole like the 7th at Augusta, which was designed as a terrific short par-four, but is now somewhere near 460 yards to a green that was originally built to receive a short iron. This is where the game has been made to look silly – and it’s all down to the technology that is driving it.

Modern Fundamental 3: Width Away from the Ball

With the strong grip, modern players are making a wide move away from the ball, wrist action kept to a minimum.

Gi: You watched Tiger in Abu Dhabi, where does he stand now in the game?
DP: Tiger has an interesting mix of swing backgrounds. In his early days with Butch, he had a swing that was pure brute force and power. Butch made sure it was controlled power. Taking spin off the wedges was probably the single biggest thing they did together. Butch is a great coach. Then he goes to Hank Haney – another great coach – and he wants to win majors swinging it like Ben Hogan, so they swing in a shape that was totally contrary to the way he did with Butch, good or bad. Then he comes to Sean Foley, the modern genius coach, he understands the golf swing. And what he is trying to do is get Tiger to understand not only the shape of the swing that he makes but the shape of the shots he can hit with that swing. And what I think has got Tiger’s enthusiasm back for the game is that he really is beginning to see results. I watched him on the range and he certainly he appears to have all the shots on tap. But then, inexplicably, he loses it. The interesting thing is, he won’t keep losing it, and when he has that full selection of shots and his full power – we will see Tiger back again.

But regardless of what Tiger does, the fact is the standard across the whole field has got so much better. In his absence there was always this talk of what having Tiger back in the field would do in terms of heaping pressure on the guys looking to win, that it would jolt everyone – bit it didn’t. What Robert Rock did was great for Robert Rock but even better for all of the other guys on tour with dreams of winning big tournaments. Robert is one of the best players with one of the best swings on tour but he isn’t a Rory McIlroy or a Jason Day, one of the players we talk about as being favourites in a major. But the message was clear: if you ain’t up to your game, Tiger, you’re going down. That never happened before. As soon as Tiger appeared on the tee in his red shirt on Sunday, it was a formality.

Gi: Who are the men most likely to feature in the majors this year?
DP: You’d have to start with Rory. There’s no doubt he can stay with Tiger and when he’s on song he has that extra gear to burst away from the field, as he proved at the US Open last year. We’ve mentioned Jason Day and of course Adam Scott would have to be in anyone’s list of potential major winners, along with Lee Westwood. If I have to name names I’ll go for the three players I coach, obviously, (the Molinari brothers and Ross Fisher) plus Luke Donald and McIlroy.

Gi: In a sense the world No. 1 defies the convention you have described - bombing it?
DP: On the one hand, yes. But on the other hand I’d say Luke Donald is exactly the modern player. He is getting the maximum out of his equipment, for his physique, so he’s a bomber in terms of the gear – everyone thinks Luke is a short hitter who hits it accurate, but he’s actually average to long and he hits it off line. Then he gets it near the green and kills you with his wedges. It’s not just that he is a great putter, he is perhaps the best wedge player in the game. The No. 1 player in the world exemplifies how the game is right now – he hits it further than he ever would with the old equipment and he’s one of the best in the world near the green.

Modern Fundamental 4: Leverage in Compact Backswing

With leverage built in to the wrists, the full turn completes the backswing

Gi: In terms of technique, what are the modern conventions that you see on tour now, the things these players are working on.
DP: The traditional technique that we respected – the old textbook, if you like – is now very much up in the air [see how I keep on linking this to your headline?!] And I think there have been five major changes. The first one has to be the grip. The majority of players today use a noticeably stronger left hand grip. Traditionally, every instruction book stated that ‘good golf begins with a good grip’ and then went on to explain how you should hold the club. But the astonishing thing these days is that the grips I see on tour look home-made, and they look home-made strong.

The players appear to hold it more in the fingers and they have the top hand wrapped over more, the right hand underneath so that the finger nails on the middle two fingers on the right hand are visible to the player.

In times gone by you would just have looked for the ‘V’ and the fleshy part of the right hand. Today the V is towards the tip of the right shoulder and even outside. And it’s morphed this way because young athletic players do not create speed with the hands as much as they do with the rotation of their body. Traditionally (at least from the 1980s and early 90s), we would see more forearm rotation and wrist hinge in the backswing, leading to a ‘cupped’ or relatively straight position of the left wrist; today’s neutral is straight or bowed. And the reason for this is there is no real forearm rotation through the ball to square up the clubface. The body rotation takes care of everything, and the hands are holding on, shut to square at the top, then holding on through the downswing to prevent the toe of the club turning over the heel.

Gi: So that we are clear, this is instruction that is aimed at young players with athleticism?
DP: This instruction is purely what I am seeing on tour – it is not necessarily what is good for the club golfer. In fact, I would strongly recommend anyone who is interested in what I am describing to go and talk to their PGA pro to identify exactly where you are on the scale, if you like. I’ve seen a lot of amateur golfers who have strengthened their grip as a result of watching the pros on TV, and struggled, as they have not fully understood the reasons behind it. I actually think using the wrists and forearms is the way forward for the majority of club players who simply don’t have the same athleticism and speed potential with the body action (few do!). The problem is that amateurs like to copy what the tour players do – and most are not equipped to do so.

Gi: The next new convention you have identified is the posture – what’s the trend here?
DP: What I see happening now is there is little less flexing of the knees (still noticeable, though – and you do need that flex for stability) and more of a tilt forward from the hip bones. As a result the chest is hanging out more over the toe-lines. I’m finding this more and more prevalent on tour. The old checkpoint – i.e. running a line up from the ball of the right foot, knee and right shoulder – doesn’t apply anymore. Now that right shoulder is forward, which makes it easier to engage with the ‘core’ muscles in the abdomen that are now so vital to generating rotational speed. There is no doubt this is the position of today.

Gi: And following directly from that posture – and with the leverage offered by that strong grip – is the wide move away from the ball?
DP. Precisely. After the basics of grip and posture, the fundamental movement that I’m seeing now is this wide takeaway. Look at the face-on images (on the previous page) and you see the left arm and the right shoulder are ‘joining up’ more as the club is moved away – the plane is to go from the left arm through the right shoulder. There is a lot of discussion about one-plane and two-plane, but I’d say that most modern players are one-plane at the top of the backswing. Rotation explains that. With the emphasis on rotation of the core, the swing is flatter and the wrists are not hingeing the club up to a second plane as noticeably they once did. Ultimately, what we are talking about here is ‘leverage’. The players I am seeing on a daily basis are making this wide movement away from the ball with their ‘levers’ (arms and body), with a delayed wrist hinge and a delayed turn. In other words, their arm swing leads them into the backswing – there’s a resistance with the body before the full rotation of the torso then kicks in to complete the backswing. This is something I am seeing a lot of – the hinging is delayed, the movement in the lower body is delayed.

Gi: For a good player who doesn’t have that same athletic ability, there’s no real harm in having that early wrist hinge as long as they do not ‘early turn’?
DP: No, exactly right. Let me stress again: the interpretation of golf technique is up in the air purely as a result of what we are seeing on tour. If you are someone who goes to the gym and does a modern work-out, this is probably the way you want to swing the golf club. The guys who are working on the new fundamentals I am talking about are the guys who are at the same time training their bodies to be stronger and more flexible. At the top of the backswing we are seeing shorter and more compact positions – short of parallel, the wrist action is delayed and the full hingeing only occurs as the momentum of the clubhead pulls on the hands what is actually the change of direction. I’m posing the backswing position with a mid iron in the photo on the previous page, but this could easily be the top of backswing for a modern player using a driver. From the takeaway to the top, it’s all about leverage.

Modern Fundamental 5: ‘Body-Spring’ Generates Power

Gi: The leverage is controlled by the body?
DP: Yes, it’s a combination of body and arms, with the wrist action delayed in the backswing and then ‘held’ through the ball. In this sequence of images (above)) I am illustrating the ‘connection’ between the upper centre and lower centre of the body in the rotation. (1) Using a cane to illustrate, this starting position sees a vertical line run through the groin/ belt buckle up to the middle of the chest. That vertical relationship is set at address, and then, as I turn into the backswing (2) that line is maintained – what the guys today called a ‘centred turn’. The feeling is that you turn more within a barrel. What I’m noticing is there is less resistance in the right knee and thigh – more a straightening of the right hip and thigh as the upper body rotates in the backswing. Leverage is built in to the first (wide) move away from the ball, and the final turn to the top of the backswing is very late.

Now, the most dynamic move in golf is from (2) to (3) in this sequence (I appreciate it may not appear that way as I am demonstrating it, but trust me on this!). There’s even new terminology here: we talk today about a downspring; there’s a fairly empty coil in the backswing, just to get into a position where you can fire the spring, the core area in the downspring. This works from the ground up, through the feet and knees, which keeps the upper centre back for a split second to create this slight diagonal position (3). [The weakness of these static photos is that you are seeing a coach demonstrate positions but not the athleticism – regular Sky Sports viewers will have noticed I’m not the most athletic swinging on the Shot Centre!] That is the body-spring that fires everything forward. What happens now is the players then recover from the diagonal position into the vertical. A balanced vertical finish.

In summary, the four frames above show: (1) upper and lower centre vertical; (2) the undynamic winding of the body, (3) a very dynamic move – the spring – and (4) the spine relaxed again in a vertical finish, easing the back.

Centred to diagonal to centred again is the modern body action, featuring the downspring while the hands hold onto the grip.

Of course, the goal of every swing is to return you to a great position at impact and over the years numerous different methods have been explored to do this repetitively. The body athletic swing that I’m seeing is one that is exclusive to the young fit, athletic and flexible players who work in the gym almost as hard as they do on the range. Built around leverage and balance, the explosive players in the game today – even the guys with limited hip turn going back – have a massive downspring. Watch Dustin Johnson, Gary Woodland, Charl Schwartzel – it’s impossible to convey the violence of the movement through the ball. These are the things that I am seeing in the game today – new fundamentals, more powerful than ever before, maximising the performance of the new technology that is driving the game of golf.