Tag: 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.