Brooks Koepka’s game has been in a rough spot recently — something the four-time major winner has admitted himself. It’s only natural for us to suspect Brooks will start tinkering with his game in order to rediscover the magic, but could it be that the former World No. 1 is considering going left-hand low?
Not so fast. Yes, Brooks was spotted swinging left-hand low on the driving range ahead of his first round at the 3M Open on Thursday, but swinging left-hand low on the range is nothing new for Brooks. Indeed, it’s actually something of a go-to drill for him.
We’ve written about the drill before, which Brooks begins to use when the club gets too far behind him on the downswing, which Brooks says is a “bad tendency” that he has. When the club gets “stuck” too far behind his body, and therefore moves too much in-to-out, he struggles to hit his preferred fade.
And that’s why he turns to hitting shots left-hand low, a drill Koepka’s short-game coach, Pete Cowen, uses with many of his students. As Cowen told me last year, swinging left-hand low forces the body to rotate more through the ball:
“Cack-handed swings. It teaches a full release of the club by forcing the body to rotate through the shot.”
That added body rotation helps Brooks hit his favored fade, and can help lots off golfers who struggle with pushes and push-hooks.