Anyone who plays golf wants to improve their golf swing. Unfortunately, many of those people have never taken a lesson and are forced to look at little tid-bits of advice in golf magazines.
When you're trying to learn the correct golf swing mechanics, things can get a little confusing. There is an overwhelming amount of advice out there but many tip givers don't fit their tid-bits of advice in with the context of whole swing. That little bit of missing information makes it very hard to keep sight of the big picture, and from there it becomes impossible to utilize the advice that they gave you.
By giving you pieces of advice on what I consider the five major sections of the golf swing and fitting those pieces in with the big picture, I hope to increase your knowledge of the correct golf swing technique and help you improve your swing.
- The Golf Grip
The proper golf grip is important but very simple. You need to hold the club in your fingertips. When holding the club, your fingers should barely wrap around the grip and the club should not inhibit any range of motion in your wrists.
Wrist hinge is an important part of the golf swing. You need to be able to move them freely so you can "whip" the club through the ball. We will talk more on that later. Interlock. Overlap. Weak. Strong. That is a discussion for another time. If you are holding the club in your fingertips, the rest should more or less come natural to you.
- The Golf Stance
The proper golf stance is the framework for your swing so it needs to be solid and stable. First, your feet should be placed a little wider than shoulder width apart. You want your waist to be the point of a triangle formed by your legs and the ground. This gives you a very strong base connected to the ground.
The ground is only thing that doesn't move during the golf swing so it is important to be firmly connected to it. This is a key point for consistency.
The next thing you need to do is get into an athletic stand and bend at the hips. Stand with your feet shoulder width apart and then squat down a little bit as if you were getting ready to spring to the left or right. Notice how you are not hunching your shoulders and your back is straight. Making a proper golf swing is a very athletic action.
- Hip Rotation
Before you can start swinging the club you need to learn how to move your body. The golf swing is a rotary action that generates power through coiling your body. The human body is meant to rotate in two areas. The hips and the shoulders.
In your athletic golf stance, rotate your hips and shoulders by turning your back to the target. There are a couple of things you can check to see if you have rotated properly.
First, coiling is done in place. It does not take lateral movement for an object to rotate around a central point (the stable base you just created with your golf stance). This means you should not slide to the right when you turn. When you've done this you should also feel resistance built up in your right groin. That's power ready to be unleashed.
Last, your back should be straight. Remember we are only rotating the hips and shoulders. The back remains the same. If you try and over swing or over rotate, your back will probably be facing down toward the ground out in front of you.
- The Golf Backswing
Bring the club straight up and keep your hands in front of your body. As you start to bring the club back, you want your chest to point at your hands while the toe of the club points straight up in the air. If you let the club begin to get behind you, you will inevitably have to make adjustments mid-swing and that leads to a lot of inconsistency.
Check yourself in the mirror to make sure you are bringing the club up on plane. Looking at a mirror from the back, you should see the club head rise up covering the area around your hands. As you continue the backswing and completely hinge your wrists, the club shaft should cross your right shoulder. And at the top of the swing, your left arm should also cross your right shoulder.
This means your body, your arms and the club are all moving along the same plane.
The last thing you can do make sure you have kept your hands in front of your body is to look at your swing from the front and check the space between your hands and your head. Some tour pros are extremely flexible and can rotate far enough to have their hands above their head but the rest of us should have a wide space between the two.
Width equals power in a golf swing. When you keep your hands in front of your body, the width from your swing generates a lot of leverage into your right shoulder at the top of the backswing.
- Your Natural Golf
Here is where you finally really get to let your natural ability shine through. If you have a good grip and stance, are rotating properly and brought the club up in position and on plane, the rest should really fall into place.
It is more important to give you a sense of what it is supposed to feel like to correctly hit the ball.
There are actually a lot of other athletic actions that you can compare to swinging a golf club that will help you ingrain this feeling. The two that come to mind first are throwing a ball and cracking a whip. In both actions you step toward your target and generate a wave of energy, traveling from your hips, through your shoulder and arms and ending at the ball or the tip of the whip.
The same is true of your golf swing. Once at the top of the backswing you want to "sling" the club down and around your body by first unwinding your hips toward the target and sending that wave of energy to the club head. It should feel like you are throwing or whipping the club through the ball.
By not swinging at the ball and letting the club whip through, you begin to properly drop the club to the inside and come at the ball from the correct plane. This will help cure all kinds of slicing issues.
I hope you learned a little something about proper golf swing technique and this information helps you improve your game and play better golf.