Alfredo García Heredia has turned the season around like a sock with his solo second place in the Omega European Masters. Behind this great result, which could well have been a triumph had he not fallen in the final playoff against Matt Wallace, there is patience, perseverance, a lot of work and blind confidence in what he is doing with his cousin Jorge Parada, one of the most prepared coaches on this and the other side of the Atlantic.
Alfredo had lost solidity in his irons during a period of this season and, as always, he turned to Parada’s magic wand. As Jorge lives in the United States, the work sessions, as usual, were conducted by video. The improvement was quick and evident, but there was still one last adjustment to be made. The swing was good, but not perfect. The final key, the definitive click, occurred just a few days ago and the story is related to Bryson DeChambeau.
Parada, in his own way, is also a scientist. He relies on statistics, numbers and biomechanics, among other things, to find solutions. To produce that last change in Alfredo’s swing, he used Sportbox AI, a biomechanics application supported by artificial intelligence. An inseparable companion of DeChambeau. In fact, at the US Open he used it constantly. He recorded all the swings and detected that every time a bad ball came out it was due to a specific data. Until they managed to get their balls out without that data, they did not leave the practice field. In case you don’t remember, DeChambeau won that US Open.
Specifically, what Parada and Alfredo have used is a section of that application called Chest Side Bend, which controls and measures the parameters of shoulder movement. Basically, as Parada explains: “one of Alfredo’s recurring mistakes is that at the top of the rise, the left shoulder is a little higher than it should be, which causes the club to come more from the outside on the way down and the important failure to the left occurs. Through the application we checked it and corrected it. The sensation we used was to feel the left shoulder below the chin, to ensure that it is lower and the spine a little more inclined over the ball”, explains Jorge.
In this way, Alfredo manages to get his natural ball to the phase, left to right effect, where he is more comfortable. Precisely, the irons throughout the week, and especially this Sunday, have been a spectacle. No one has left them closer than the Asturian. This is a video of the application, where all the parameters of Alfredo’s swing are seen in green, at the bottom. That means it is being done correctly.
And here you have Alfredo’s swing during the work he does with Parada through the video on the practice field.
Obviously, there are many more things behind it and other lines of work that they have been maintaining for some time, but that definitive and crucial click was the left shoulder below the chin.
With his great result in Switzerland, García Heredia has entered the Irish Open through the new category created for the Back Nine: the three best within the 114 of the Race to Dubai who are not exempt from the tournament by their category. In addition, he has positioned himself on the doorstep of the BMW PGA Championship. To qualify he would have to score enough points in Ireland to get into the top 50 of the Race to Dubai. He has it within reach. He is less than 40 points away. He needs a good Irish Open. In addition, in the world ranking he is going to position himself on the doorstep of the top 300.
