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Golf: Breaking Down The Golf Swing

When I wrote about fault no.1 I mentioned the 9 parts of the golf swing. The golf swing is a continuous motion. For beginning golfers, it is good to understand each part of the golf swing. Even players who have played for a while can benefit from this knowledge. In order to play to the best of your ability, is it necessary to get each part exactly right? Absolutely not. As I have written many times, the swing is not the thing. Your pre-swing actions, before grabbing a club or at the address position, probably affect your shot more. Still, it is helpful to understand the elements of a good golf swing. It is also beneficial to learn the best ways to accomplish them. It is also good to know some of the pitfalls to avoid when executing the golf swing. Without further ado, here is the golf swing

Step 1. Starting the golf swing. The main goal here is to start the club low to the ground for the first 12 to 18 inches of the golf swing. Arnold Palmer thought this was the most important part of the golf swing. He felt if you did this, you could not make a bad swing. The easiest drill I know to get the right feel is to place a large ball behind your club at address. A soccer or volleyball will do. As you start your swing, just push the ball away. This will give you a great feel for keeping the clubhead low to the ground. You will hear a lot about the one-piece takeaway with everything starting at once. Some of that is even being questioned today. I would not worry about the one-piece takeaway. Simply keep the club low to the ground and begin turning your body.

Step 2. Getting the club shaft parallel to the ground. Once the shaft is parallel to the ground, you want to check the position of the clubhead. The clubhead should be pointing in a direction that is parallel to the ground. If you have closed the clubhead to your intended line, then the clubhead will be pointing toward the ground. If you have fanned open the clubhead, then it will be pointing toward the sky. The easiest way to see this is to lay a club on the ground with a tee behind the clubhead to keep the club head from falling over. Take your stance with the middle of your feet even with and perpendicular to the club shaft. Take your swing, and when your club shaft gets parallel to the ground, it should be a perfect match. There will be some players that have a slightly closed clubface at this point in the swing. That is not a bad position and can help in preventing a hook. You will never see anyone really fan open the clubhead at this point in the swing. Even Hogan, whose clubhead was wide open at the top of the swing, was still square at this point in the swing.

Step 3. The left arm is parallel to the ground. At this point in the swing, the club shaft should be perpendicular to the ground. The left arm and the club shaft should form an L. This is where the wrists should be almost fully cocked. Everyone uses their wrists differently, but if the wrists are fully cocked at this point in the swing, then I think you can avoid getting into that wrist-flipping action at the top of the swing. The cocking of the wrists is one of the most interesting subjects of the golf swing, but if you want to increase your distance, getting them fully cocked at this point in the swing will help. To do this, the club shaft needs to be perpendicular to the ground at this point in the swing.

Step 4. The top of the backswing. The key positions here are that the left shoulder should be under your chin. This will give you a 90-degree shoulder turn. Your hips should turn 45 degrees. You should feel that your weight is almost all on the inside part of the right foot. These are guidelines. My view is the more you can turn your hips, the better off your body will be. At this point, your club shaft should be pointing on a line that is parallel to the target or right of the target. Some touring pros may have their shaft pointing left of the target, but they are big and strong. For the average player, this position will just lead to short, crooked shots.

Step 5. Starting down. This is where the swing starts to get tricky. A lot of people will refer to this as the transition. Another observation is that the downswing starts before the backswing is fully completed. If you watch videos of some of the great golf swings or the golf swings of tour players, this is very true. However, thinking about it usually leads to disaster. I think you need to do two things at this point in the golf swing. You must be aware of or feel the change in direction of the golf swing. This will cause a slight pause at the top. It has to happen because nothing can change directions without stopping first. This is a basic law of physics. You want to feel the pause, not consciously do it. Then your next thought should be to get your weight on your left foot before starting down. It is not important how you do it, just do it. You want to try and feel that your arms and hands are starting down slowly from that paused position.

Step 6. Your left arm is parallel to the ground and the club shaft is perpendicular to the ground. The exact same position when your left arm is parallel to the ground on the backswing. The one big difference is that things are happening so fast in the swing at this point you can’t consciously control it. This is where you have to begin to let it go. You have to trust your swing at this point and finish the job. This is why starting down slowly is so important. This is where you can maintain your wrist cock as you start down. If you can do that, the wrists will still be cocked when the arm is parallel to the ground.

Step 7. Impact. The moment of truth. Your body is unwinding. The key point of impact is that your belly button has to be past the ball at this point. Your head is still just above or slightly behind the ball. This is where a lot of people begin to come up and out of the shot. You must stay down and finish the job.

Step 8. The straightening of the right arm. This straightening of the right arm is a result of staying with the shot. You have to be able to resist the temptation to look up to see where the ball is going. A great feeling is that your right shoulder is coming around and literally forcing your head up and out of the way.

Step 9. Finishing the swing. A lot of people like to call this the follow-through. I prefer finishing the swing because that is what you are doing. The straightening of the right arm and finishing the swing in a nice balanced way are very important parts of the swing, even though they happen after the ball has been struck. You want to be aware of these parts of the swing because it stops you from hitting at the ball. You want to be able to hit through the ball. If you are aware of the last two steps of the golf swing, your swing will accelerate through the hitting area and not be slowing down.

This is essentially the golf swing. You do not have to perform each part of the swing perfectly or exactly as it has been described here. Having an idea of what is required will at least help you in developing a style that will be effective for your game. Having an effective sound golf swing will help improve your game. Getting a fairly good golf swing can help, but there is still the short game and putting, which can really drive you nuts if you let it. Hit ’em straight.

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Golf: Fault No. 1

The number one fault in golf has been around for a long time. It was first written about some 104 years ago. What is amazing is that it is really not discussed much today even though practically every player does it to a certain degree. When I say it is not discussed much, nobody comes out and just says it. There are many swing tips to keep you from doing this but I think the tips would be listened to more if the reason for these tips was given. Let’s go back to an article that was written in 1922 to find out what the no. 1 fault in golf is.

The article was written by O. B. Keeler. He interviewed Stuart Maiden the Scottish teacher of the great Bobby Jones. Like most Scotchman, Maiden was a man of few words. After much poking and prodding Keeler was able to get Maiden to discuss what he thought was the commonest fault in golf. The answer, which is still true today, is hitting too soon. What does that mean. To quote Maiden, “It means hitting before several things. Hitting before the club has got back to the intended limit of the backswing. Hitting before the body has pivoted. Hitting before the hips are advanced. There are a dozen ways of hitting before you are ready. Maybe more than a dozen. I never counted them”. When asked about how do you stop your pupils from hitting too soon, he replied, “I don’t always stop them”. Today this problem is sometimes referred to as hitting from the top. Some players have this problem so bad they are hitting on their backswing which is way before they get to the top of their swing. The result of this problem is that the ball gets what is left over. Obviously this will affect your distance by as much as 50 yards. Why is this problem so hard to correct.

One, you cannot consciously correct the fault. Some instruction advocates trying to maintain your wrist cock as long as possible. This would be great advice if your hands and wrists were not connected to your arms. If your arms come down too fast then they are going to slow as they get closer to the ball. If they don’t, then you are going to hit the about 30 yards left of your intended line. Just like not finishing your backswing anxiety is another culprit. I think one thing that can be helpful is to at least know when the hit is supposed to start. The hit should begin when your left arm is parallel to the ground on the downswing. If you look at the entire golf swing from the start to the complete follow through, the hit should not take place until you are about 2/3 through the golf swing. You can break the golf swing down into 9 parts. The take away. Getting the club shaft parallel to the ground. Getting your left arm parallel to the ground. The top of the swing. Starting down. The left arm again parallel to the ground. Impact at the ball. The straightening of the right arm after contact. Finishing the swing. This blog is not going to go through how you should get to those positions. I might do that sometime in the future. For now we want to think about the best way to go about hitting the ball at the right time. This the only way we can increase distance and accuracy. That is the good news here. If we start to hit the ball at the right time both parts will improve.

How is the best way to try and do this. You must complete the backswing something we have previously discussed. In order to go from the backswing to the downswing there must be what I call a natural pause in the swing. This is true of any endeavor. You have to stop in order to change direction. So the pause is real but you must feel that it is happening on its own. You want to feel the pause not try to pause. After you pause you must feel that your backswing is starting down slowly. If you can start the hands down slowly then you have a fighting chance to hit the ball with maximum speed at impact. Once you start down as your hands drop into the hitting zone things will be happening so fast that you have to just let it happen. This may be the final reason players can’t keep from hitting too soon. When you do it right, the club head is flashing through the hitting zone so fast, you have the feeling that you cannot control it. Once you are aware of where the hit takes place your goal should be to not hit too soon. If you can do that, you will be ahead of about 98% of people who play this game.

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Golf: Fault No. 2

The 2nd most common fault I find to be the most interesting. Eighty to eighty-five per cent of all golfers aim to the right of the target. What I find interesting about this fault, is that even after they are aware of it many golfers continue to do it. When I taught golf for beginning golfers, when we got to the part of hitting the golf ball I would have them aim at a target about 50 yards away. As I checked each one I would find that 8 out of 10 would aim to the right. There would be one aiming left and one would be right on target. Aiming right causes many problems. Somehow your body knows you are aiming right but does not communicate this at least to your conscious brain. Every player that I see aiming right and I see it all the time, instinctively pulls across the ball attempting to get it back on target. Many times they over compensate and the ball ends up left of the target. That can make a player feel they were aimed up left of the target. Now they may aim even farther right than they were before. Despite all of this, the fault remains one of the easiest to correct

The easiest way to make sure you are lined up correctly is to use the Jack Nicklaus method of lining up. He gets behind the ball and picks out a spot just in front of the ball about 1 to 2 feet. It may be a leaf or discolored piece of grass that is on the same line as his target. He then steps up to the ball and lines his club head with the spot in front of the ball. He then gets his body in position in relation to how the club head is line up. This will put you in correct alignment every time.

Why do so many people still aim right even after they are aware of doing it. One problem is that when they are lined up correctly it feels that they are aiming left. They just feel more comfortable aiming right because they have been doing it so long. The over the top swing can be a very powerful feeling swing. The only way that swing can be accurate is to aim a little right. That is the key phrase, a little. Sam Snead’s swing has a little bit of that action. Instead of aiming just slightly right the average golfer aims a lot right, sometimes as much as 25 to 40 yards depending on the length of the shot. The short game seems to fall under this aiming right curse also. It seems like it is a big psychological block to aim correctly. It is essential to making good shots. If you are aiming right and make a good swing the ball is going right of the target. It is something that has to be done correctly if you have any chance of improving your game. So get over it. Start aiming at the target.

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Golf: Fault No. 3

Some people may say this is not a fault. However, because this part of the game keeps people from improving, I am calling it a fault. Fault no. 3 is putting. If you were going to give people a putting handicap similar to their regular handicap, it would be at least 2 higher than their handicap. There might be a few exceptions, but not many. Why can’t most players putt that well? I feel that there are some underlying issues that players do not think about and therefore are lacking awareness of just how bad they are. There is more information on putting than on any other aspect of the game. This blog is not going to go through ways to putt or how to putt. I have done previous blogs on the subject. I am not sure all this information on putting is doing much good. I think one of the reasons people putt so poorly is that they simply are not aware of how bad they are. I know every golfer complains about their putting, but that is just part of the game. Even though they complain, I think there is a feeling that on a lot of days they do not do that bad. They are wrong. Let’s look at a couple of things that cause players to overestimate their abilities on the green.

I think putting stats are very misleading at times. The basic stat that you should allow 2 putts per green is very generous. If you follow this rule and think that 36 putts is a good putting round, you are way off base. Here is how you should feel: 30 to 32 putts is an okay day on the green; 27 to 29 putts a round is a good day on the greens; anything 26 putts or less is a great day on the greens. If your round has anything over 32 putts, then you had a bad day on the greens. Another misleading stat is how the pros putt. The latest stats show that from 8 feet, the pros make 50% of their putts. However, when you see one of the leaders on Sunday putting from inside 10 feet, the graphic may say that he has made 48 out of 49 putts from 10 feet or less. Granted, some of those putts could be under 2 feet, but that is a 98% rate. That means somebody out on tour that week is making only about 5 to 10% of those putts; those are probably the guys that missed the cut. The bottom line is this: the top 10 on the leaderboard on Sunday are putting at a rate that we can only dream about. If you are going to improve your game, putting is the best way to do it. It takes no extra strength. The ball does not leave the ground. So how do we do it?

Putting is always what makes or breaks the hole. Because of this, we put too much emotion into the results. Even so-called stoic pros seem to finally succumb to lipped-out putts or bad strokes with signs of emotion. All of these emotions lead to a general lack of awareness of what is really going on. You need to pay more attention to what is happening on the greens. You need to start on the first putt of the day. This should dictate how you putt the rest of the day. We have all had these days where, on the first putt of the day, you make a really good putt. Maybe it goes in, or maybe it doesn’t. The putt was well struck on the intended line you wanted and with very good speed, ending up just a couple of inches away from the hole if it did not go in. Right away, you should feel that you have it. You have the touch for the greens on that particular day. Don’t fight it or try to figure it out; just go with it. Then there are the days that the first putt you hit is terrible. You leave it 4 feet short or long. You did not hit it on your line. You did not even read the putt right. Maybe it broke a lot more than you thought or a lot less. Maybe it even broke the opposite way you thought it would. Whatever the problem was, you need to correct it immediately. If you are short, make sure the next putt of any length is long. If the opposite is true, make sure the next putt is short. Correct your line right away. Play more or less break depending on what went wrong on the first putt. Instead of getting upset about missing the putt, just be aware of how you missed it and correct immediately. Once you increase your awareness of what is happening on the greens, the better your chances are of improving that score.

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Golf: Fault No. 4

The 4th most common fault has nothing to do with the golf swing. It is an on-course problem. It is not properly evaluating your current shot. Even though I rank it no. 4, it may be the most important. I say this because the tour pro spends so much time evaluating their shots. This can be the reason the regular golfer may be given a pass on this problem. If we spent this much time trying to figure out each shot, a round of golf would be much longer. It could actually take 6 hours. These are the factors that need to be considered on every golf shot, in no particular order: the wind, the temperature, the lie of the land, how the ball is resting on the ground, the distance you want to hit the ball, the trajectory of the ball, the curvature of the ball, where the trouble spots are, and where the pin is. There is no way you can take all of this into consideration in the course of a round and play golf at a reasonable pace. However, when the pace of play is so ungodly slow, you can think about the shot a lot more. I put these in no particular order, but here are the ones that are the most important.

The most important factors on any golf shot are the lie of the land and how the ball is lying on the ground. This can make as much as a 20-yard difference in how far the shot is going to fly. Anytime your ball is on some kind of a slope, uphill, downhill, or sidehill above or below your feet, you are not going to hit the ball as far. The distance could be as much as 20 yards shorter depending on the severity of the slope. This is not a blog about how to play these uneven lies; you can easily look them up. The bottom line is this: you are not going to hit the ball as far. There are two reasons. One, you are going to have to swing easier just to maintain your balance. Second, the technique required for hitting some of these lies reduces your distance. The way the ball lies on the ground is also critical. Shorter fairway grass decreases your distance. A tighter lie can reduce your distance by about 5 to 10 yards. On the other hand, if your ball is lying in the rough, it will add some distance. If the ball is sitting up fairly well, it can add about 5 to 20 yards. The other important factor is pin location. This is overlooked the most on tee shots on par 4s. You want to try to get your tee shot on the side of the fairway that is opposite of where the pin is. You can try and factor in other considerations of the shot as time allows. If you really pay attention to how your ball is sitting and how the slope of the land is, you should be able to take about 2 to 3 shots off your score per round.

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Golf: Fault No. 5

Standing too far away from the ball is fault no. 5. The reason standing too far away from the ball is such a common fault is that it just feels good. Your body feels nice and stretched out, giving you a sense of freedom, and in a powerful position that enhances your confidence at address. However, this comfortable feeling can be deceptive, as it often leads to poor mechanics. It seems like the fault gets worse when we get to the irons and the short game, where precision is paramount. When you get too far away from the ball, this has a tendency to get your weight on your toes, the big no-no discussed in the previous blog. This improper weight distribution can cause a variety of swing issues, including inconsistent contact and loss of power. Fortunately, there is an easy drill to get you to stand the proper distance from the ball, and it works with every club in the bag, ensuring you develop a more reliable and effective setup that can greatly improve your overall performance on the course.

Just take your normal address position. Once you feel you are in your address position, simply take your right hand off the club and let your arm dangle straight down just swing back and forth about 6 inches each way. It’s vital to allow your arm to relax, as tension can affect your swing. Once you feel it is in the straight down position, simply bring it back to the club without maneuvering it at all. When your hand returns to the grip, if it goes right back into the proper grip position, then you are at the correct distance from the ball. If you find that you are standing too far away from the ball, then your right hand will make contact with your left hand at a higher position on the club shaft, indicating an adjustment is necessary. To get back to the optimal grip position, you will have to move a little closer to the ball, allowing for a more aligned and effective stance. On the rare instance that you are too close to the ball, your right hand will make contact with the shaft about an inch or two below the left hand, causing imbalances that may interfere with your swing. In order to get back to the grip position, you will have to get a little further from the ball, ensuring that both hands can work together harmoniously throughout your swing sequence. Proper positioning and adjustments are essential for striking the ball effectively and can significantly enhance your overall game performance.

This drill is easy to do anywhere or anytime on the golf course or the range. Once you get used to standing the correct distance from the ball, you will find that many times you can just picture the drill in your mind and instinctively know that you are at the proper distance. Getting the right distance from the ball is crucial; it will not only improve your balance in the swing but also enhance your overall performance. Moreover, it helps your swing stay inside the line and curb that tendency to come over the top, which can often lead to inconsistent shots. Although often overlooked, standing too far away from the ball can lead to a plethora of problems with your golf shots, such as mis-hits and loss of power. Once corrected, many things just go right automatically with the golf swing, making your practice sessions more productive. As you continue to refine this essential aspect of your stance, you will likely notice an increase in confidence and even a newfound enjoyment of the game.

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Golf: Fault No. 6

This one is one of the more interesting faults because there are so many opinions about how to distribute your weight along the bottom of your feet. There is one thing that everyone is 100% in agreement on: do not let your weight get on your toes in the address position. This is fault no. 6, allowing the weight to get on the toes at the address position. According to most instruction, there are three ways you can have your weight distributed under your feet. Having your weight on the balls of your feet is still the most popular. The second one that is gaining traction is to feel that your weight is heaviest just below the arch of your foot. The final advice is to have your weight mostly on your heels as you address the ball. This is by far the least popular recommendation, but the major advocate of putting your weight toward the heels was Ken Venturi. I am just glad the foot is not any bigger so there is not a fourth way to distribute the weight.

The big fault here is letting your weight get on your toes. You have a tendency to do this because you are leaning over to get down to the ball. The way to avoid this is to make sure that you can wiggle your toes at address. You cannot do this if you are putting too much weight on the front of your foot. Which way should you distribute your weight? I would give all three a try to see which one seems to give you the most relaxed swing. There are advantages and disadvantages to all three ways to stand at address. Having weight on the balls of your feet is the standard athletic position. It seems to put the body in a very good position to move. A problem can develop because the ball of the foot is not that far away from the toes. Just a slight move toward the front of the foot will get the weight toward the toes, which will restrict the turn in the golf swing. Having your weight over the arch of the foot is another way of saying that you want to distribute your weight evenly over the foot. This is not all bad, but sometimes this makes your foot overly attached to the ground. This can make your swing a little restrictive. Having your weight on the heels really allows your body to turn. The problem with having the weight toward the heels is that it sometimes becomes difficult to maintain your balance during the swing. Find the one that works best for you and remember to stay off those damn toes. The next fault ties in with the weight distribution problem, just like a lack of turn ties in with not finishing the backswing. See you next time.

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Golf: Fault No. 7

If this blog had been written about 30 to 40 years ago, this fault probably would be in the top 3. The grip is fault no. 7. Still not bad, but for different reasons. A bad grip would be something you would see all the time back in the 80s. You do not see as many today. I do not know if that is because of the internet and all the pictures you can see of the grip today. Speaking of pictures, if you want to see the very best grip, just look at Sam Snead’s grip below. For all the admiration of Snead’s swing, he had one of the best grips of all time. Gripping the golf club correctly is still an awkward thing to do because there is nothing like it in other sports where you have to grip a handle. Baseball, tennis, ping pong, hockey, and today pickleball all grip the handle of their sport differently than golf. For whatever reason, people seem today to be able to overcome the uniqueness of the golf grip. However, there are some things about the grip that people either refuse to acknowledge or understand how the grip can help your game quite easily. The grip can help you correct the curvature of your shots. The other misunderstood aspect is grip pressure, or how hard to hold onto the club.

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I have written about grip pressure before, but to briefly summarize, most of the time players do not hold the club firmly enough. If you play other sports that require holding a bat or racket, like baseball and tennis, then you should apply the same firmness that you do in those sports. If you read any instructions about the grip, there is almost always the word firm in the instructions. Where we have gone astray here is the fear of the so-called death grip on the club. Because of this, we often see the advice to grip the club lightly. Along those same lines, instruction will say that your grip will tighten naturally when you start the swing. I do not think this is the best way to handle grip pressure. The old advice about gripping firmly with the last three fingers of the left hand and the middle two fingers of the right hand is, in my view, the way to go. I think it is the only way to develop consistency in making contact with the ball. Firm is the thought you want to have, not squeezing with all of your might. You need to feel that you have control of the club, and you are not going to feel this way with light pressure on the club.

How you place your hands on the club can help you control the curvatures of your shots. You hear the terms neutral, strong, and weak when it comes to the position of your hands. Let’s just forget about those terms for the moment and concentrate on the palm of the right hand and the back of the left hand. The starting point for a grip should be that the palm of the right hand and the back of the left hand are pointing to the target. If after using that grip for three or four rounds your main problem is a slice, shots moving from left to right with too big of a curve, then you should turn your hands to the right about an inch or two. This will put your right palm and the back of your left hand looking left of the target. This should help you square up the clubhead at impact. If the opposite problem exists and you are hitting those right to left hooks that are traveling way left, then you can turn your hands to the left. If your starting grip is truly having your palm and the back of the left hand looking at the target, you will not be able to turn your hands to the left very far, maybe just about 0.5 to 1 inch in that direction. Even that small of a turn should help in keeping you from closing the clubhead. Hooks and slices can be caused by other swing faults, but until you start moving your hands on the grip, you will always be fighting the way your hands and wrists want to perform during the golf swing. Just watch the pros’ grips on TV or YouTube. You will see many positions of the hands on the club. There are certain principles of the grip, but exactly how you place your hands on the club is not one of them. How your ball is curving will dictate how you eventually grip the club. Don’t be afraid to try different positions. The pros sure do.

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Golf: Fault No. 8

Up to this point we know the concept of hitting down and through the ball. We know the importance of the body turning in the golf swing. The eighth fault is not finishing the backswing. The 8th fault is more common than the 9th fault and they seem closely related but not as much as you might think. Everyone who plays golf has a backswing. Even if your backswing is not technically correct but you finish it, you are going to have better results than a player who has a correct backswing but does not finish or complete it. Finishing the backswing is one of the most important things you have to do in order to make consistent shots. Not finishing the backswing is a mental problem not a physical problem. It is not a problem of improper fundamentals. The number one reason players do not finish their backswing is anxiety.

Anxiety takes on different forms as you make progress with your game. When you are just starting out in golf, you are worried about making contact with the ball. The further away you take the clubhead from the ball, the less confidence you have in making contact. As you get better at making contact, your backswing will have more of a chance of reaching completion. As your game progresses, you then become anxious over certain situations in golf. It could be the first tee jitters. It could be a tee shot on a hole where there is trouble on the right and left. It could be a shot over water. It could be a shot that will enable you to achieve one of your better scores. These same anxious moments can creep into your short game and putting. No matter what the reason, the result will be the same. You will not make a complete backswing. This anxiety will cause you to want to bring the clubhead back to the ball sooner than you should. Your backswing will be shorter than it usually is. Other than the results being terrible, how do you know they are related to an unfinished backswing? When you do not finish your backswing, there will be two possible results, with both being extreme. One is the dreaded duck hook that rolls forever until it finds woods or water. The second is the extreme right-to-right shot that is so bad that you cannot even imagine how you could hit a shot so far to the right. The two extreme results are due to how you manipulate the club with your hands and arms, but we need not know the aspects of this. Once we correct the backswing problem, the manipulation will take care of itself.

How can we make sure that we finish the backswing? You need to develop some simple checkpoints when you feel you are not making a complete backswing. Make sure that your left shoulder gets under your chin at the top of the swing. Kick the left knee toward the ball and point the knee just behind the ball at the top of the swing. Feel the right hip move closer to the target at the top of the swing. On longer clubs like the driver, see if you can see the top of the club and the end of the backswing in the corner of your eye. Going from the backswing to the downswing involves a change of direction which always require a brief pause at the top of the swing. Making sure you do that helps complete the backswing. You do not have to think of all of these things; just pick one to see if it corrects the problem. You may find that different ones work on different days. Keep working at it until your backswing feels that it is complete. The short or unfinished backswing can happen in the short game and putting. There is one other reason that backswings are not completed in those two areas of the game: there is a fear that a longer backswing will lead to the dreaded deceleration when executing the shot. You need a longer backswing in the short game and on the green in order to gradually accelerate into the ball. There is no question that for all shots around and on the green, the clubhead needs to be accelerating when it makes contact with the ball. However, even a decelerating shot will have better results than one that has a short, fast backswing. On short game and putting strokes, just make sure that the backswing is long enough to feel that you are easily accelerating the club into the ball. Once you gain confidence in executing a longer, complete backswing for all types of shots, your game will begin to improve.

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Golf: Fault No. 9

Fault no. 9 is not turning the body and, more specifically, the hips, when making a golf swing. The golf swing is a turn. On the backswing, your body turns away from the target. On the downswing, your body turns back to the target, with your belly button facing the target, depending on your flexibility, at the finish. Why is making a turn, or as some people like to say, a pivot, so difficult? The first problem is the arms. They want to control the golf swing. The arms are an important part of the golf swing, but they need to be followers, not leaders. The other problem is that many types of instruction encourage the hip turn on the backswing to be restricted. This brings us to the X factor. You can easily look up the X factor, but in a nutshell, the more you can turn your shoulders without turning your hips, the more you create this stretch up the left side that will act like a slingshot on the downswing. With this type of swing, you can increase your distance. There is no question this is true. The problem is this type of swing puts a lot of stress on your body. There has always been a certain standard when it comes to turning the hips and the shoulders. The shoulders should turn 90 degrees, and the hips should turn about 45 degrees. In the X factor swing, the goal is to increase this 45-degree differential between hip turn and shoulder turn. If you turn your body fully in the backswing, you might lose some distance, but your body will thank you for it. So how do we learn to turn our body?

The simplest way is to do a drill that takes the arms out of the golf swing. You can do this drill anywhere: indoors, outdoors, and if we had them around in a phone booth. Without a golf club, you simply take your golf stance. Then you place your right hand on top of your left shoulder. Next, place your left hand on top of your right shoulder. This will fold your arms across your chest. Go ahead and make your golf swing, keeping your arms folded across your chest. Do this as many times a day as you can to get the true feel of how your body should move in the golf swing. I tried to develop a swing on this principle that I dubbed the shoulder control swing. I used this swing for about 18 months, but I finally abandoned it. I was proved wrong by a man much smarter than I am, Bobby Jones. He stated that you are always going to get into trouble if you try to keep any part of your body out of the golf swing. This is still a great drill. Just make your swing with the arms folded across your chest. You will see quickly that your swing feels a lot slower, which is good. Just try duplicating the movement once you get a club in your hands with the arms in their normal position at address. During the drill, feel your hip turning anywhere from 45 to even 60 degrees. You can make as big a hip turn as you want, as long as you keep your weight on the right foot at the top of the swing. As you turn your right hip away from the ball, it will actually move closer to the target. If you overdo it a little bit, you could get your weight on the left side at the top of the swing, which could cause the dreaded reverse pivot or weight shift.

So far, we have pretty much concentrated on the backswing. There is just one simple rule when it comes to turning on the downswing: the belly button must pass the ball before the arms and hands do. Easy concept, but not easy to do. Obviously, when you are doing the drill, the belly button is passing the ball before the arms because, essentially, there are no arms. What this amounts to is that the more you do the drill, the more your swing will be controlled by the body and not the arms. The arms have their function, but they are so determined and can move so fast that it will be hard to keep them under control. The drill will give you a great feel for what the body should do during the swing. Once you feel it, then you should be able to take this feel to the normal golf swing with the arms participating. Once you have a swing with a good body turn, the 8th fault becomes easier to correct. See you next time.