24 golfdigest.com | june 2019Play Your Best Swing Sequence
I
t took Adam Long
nearly a decade to
reach the PGA Tour but
only five tournaments to win.
Guess you could say he was ea-
ger to prove he belonged.
“You’re never sure how you
stack up until you win,” Long
says, “but now I feel like I’veearned the right to be out here,
playing with the best.”
Long outperformed Phil
Mickelson and Adam Hadwin
to win the Desert Classic in
January, shooting a final-round
65 that included two chip-ins.
“It was a round where you
don’t think about your swing—you just play golf,” Long says.
When he does think about
his swing, it’s mostly timing
and tempo, he says, and mak-
ing sure his left hip rotates back
and away in the downswing.
“As long as it keeps moving,
I can release the club as hard as
I want and not hook it,” he says.Long’s work with coaches
Brian Fogt and Josh Gregory
has produced a driver swing
that blends decent distance
(291.2-yard average) with accu-
racy (63 percent of fairways hit).
“He doesn’t really have
a weakness in his game,”
Gregory says. —ron kaspriskeAdam LongA PGA Tour rookie
who swings it
like a veteranSTRETCHING IT OUT
Gregory likes how
straight Long’s left arm
remains in the back-
swing. “Like all good
ball-strikers, he’s main-
tained the width of his
swing. One minor issue
is that the right leg is
still flexed. I’d like to
see that leg straighten
as he loads more into
the right hip, with his
hands deeper.”USING THE ABS
Long is using the core
muscles to start the
swing, Gregory says.
The amateur mistake is
to initiate with the arms
only, which forces the
club upward prematurely.
“The core muscles move
the body, arms and club
together,” Gregory says.
“The feel for Adam is,
he’s loading into the
right leg and hip.”A FLARE FOR STABILITY
Long sets up a little
open to his target with
his feet, but his shoul-
ders are square, says
swing coach Josh
Gregory. “He also flares
his feet to provide
more stability. Two
things I like here: The
ball position isn’t too
far back, and there’s
not too much spine tilt.”