The article below was written by Jack Backhouse of National Club Golfer.
Not everyone can swing the same way, so we shouldn’t try to, but understanding some basic principles of the golf swing can certainly make hitting better shots easier. In this video, PGA professional Jack Backhouse discusses 3 Things That Destroy Your Golf Game and how to fix them.
3 things that destroy your golf game – centred turn
Good contact is the key to low scores and enjoyable golf. Striking the ball before the ground rids your scorecards of any duff shots where the ball travels shorter than you can throw it, and incredible frustration. If you knew you would be on or around the green in two or 3 in every round, you would be breaking 90, no problem.
One of the keys to this is where your hips are located. At impact, the average tour player’s hips are 4 inches forward of where they start at the address, which is an awful long way forward.
Knowing this, when a golfer makes a backswing, it makes no sense whatsoever to have the hips move away from the target, especially at the top of the swing. Most PGA Tour players have actually begun to move their hips forward by the time they get to the top of the swing.
An amateur golfer should visualise pulling the rip cord of a lawn mower when making a backswing, pulling the trail hip and trail shoulder straight back rather than moving them across in any way.
Doing this gets the body in a position where it has made a big turn but hasn’t moved laterally at all, so is now able to shift forward into our desired impact position.
Use your wrists correctly
What to do with the hands in the golf swing has been a common question in golf lessons for a long time. Wrist hinge, wrist cock, passive hands, ulnar deviation, radial deviation, there are a lot of words there which are misunderstood.
Golf is primarily a hand-and-arm sport, so we cannot deny the importance of the hands and arms in the swing in returning the face to the ball appropriately.
We do know that we want our hands forward at impact with a flat or bowed lead wrist.
In the backswing, it makes sense to try to get our wrists into appropriate conditions that allow us to get into the desired impact position, so getting a flat or bowed lead wrist would be ideal.
A golfer needs to feel like their trail hand doesn’t cock 90 degrees straight in front of them, doesn’t hinge 90 degrees away from the ball, but a blend of each, feeling like the club moves out 45 degrees to their trailside.
This 45-degree angle adds the right amount of trail wrist extension to get the lead wrist into the desired impact condition, which you should then try to hold throughout the swing. This wrist action should happen early in the swing.
Swing depth
To get into the correct impact position, we must swing the club on the correct angle into the ball. The correct angle is from behind the player on a shallow plane.
The best golfers in the world do not swing the club down steep and in front of them as this would mean they lose power and have to manipulate the golf club.
The easiest way to ensure that the golf club is swinging into the ball from behind the player is to make sure the hands have enough depth going back.
As a rough guide, I like to see the hands above or behind the trail heel. This may feel flat or wrong to a player who has been above this plane, but getting the hands into this position will allow them to swing in on a shallower angle, bringing the club down from the inside, which allows for lag and a draw shot.
There have, of course, been exceptional players that don’t follow these rules, but don’t look at the outliers for advice, instead look at what the best players average and work towards those components.
Working on these 3 rules can help a player of any level improve their ball striking, their control of the golf ball, control of the club face, and help them hit the ball to the target more often.
Improving the conditions of the club at the moment of impact will never be a waste of time and will always improve your game.
