At 22, Charles Howell III hits it big off the tee and is making it big on the tour
Left: Sixty percent of weight on right side, hands behind ball -- a good setup. Middle: Ready to unleash the lag into the ball. Check the load on the shaft. Right: You'll be seeing a lot of this position.
So far, so good
The first thing you notice about Charles Howell is how much power he generates for a guy so slightly built. He's actually deceptively strong, but what really gives him his power is that he has tremendous coil and leverage, and great balance.
I've worked with Charles since he was 12. He's always had great hand-eye coordination, even though he didn't play other sports growing up -- he knew golf was his game. He has been a perfect student, always willing to learn and now very knowledgeable about his own swing mechanics. Give him a drill and he'll work hard at it. He is an avid practicer -- almost to a fault. Now that he's married and playing the tour full time, he has to find the right balance between playing, practicing, traveling and resting.Charles hits the ball vast distances with both his driver and his irons. Besides a big coil, he has huge lag in his swing. Most people need more lag -- the clubhead trailing the hands well into the downswing -- but with Charles, we're trying to de-lag him somewhat. Sometimes his hands get so far ahead of the clubhead at impact that he delofts it, turning a 6-iron into a 4-iron. He hits his 10-degree driver pretty low, too.
Charles' ball flight? He can work the ball left-to-right or right-to-left if he needs to, and he may prefer a controlled fade. But mostly he just hits the ball straight. As his stats show, he's one of the best drivers on tour.
We're now working hard to improve Charles' distance control -- especially with the short irons, which can be a problem for power hitters. And he's still got to get a little more consistent with the putter. But with a swing like this -- once he gets a taste of winning, he's going to do a lot of it.
