Understanding the role of the hips in the golf swing is a huge advantage… if we can learn how to move them to the best of our ability. So what is the role of the hips in the golf swing and how should they move?
The hips play the role of joining our upper body to our lower body. Together with our pelvis, they are responsible for transferring energy throughout our body. They help us bend forward to create the angles in our body that allow us to maintain balance and posture in the golf swing. They are also responsible for turning our body in the swing. In a sense, the hips are both the motor and the transmission in our golf swing.
Most golfers I work with struggle to use their hips correctly often losing their efficiency in the backswing by swaying and not loading their trail leg properly. In this video, I share two drills that will help you gain a feeling of how the hips should turn in the backswing so that your body won’t be forced to compensate in your forward swing.
Best of luck, and please leave me a comment if you have any questions.
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Instruction
Clement: Laid-off or perfect fade? Across-the-line or perfect draw?
Some call the image on the left laid off, but if you are hitting a fade, this could be a perfect backswing for it! Same for across the line for a draw! Stop racking your brain with perceived mistakes and simply match backswing to shot shape!
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Instruction
The Wedge Guy: The easiest-to-learn golf basic
My golf learning began with this simple fact – if you don’t have a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, it is practically impossible for your body to execute a fundamentally sound golf swing. I’m still a big believer that the golf swing is much easier to execute if you begin with the proper hold on the club.
As you might imagine, I come into contact with hundreds of golfers of all skill levels. And it is very rare to see a good player with a bad hold on the golf club. There are some exceptions, for sure, but they are very few and very far between, and they typically have beat so many balls with their poor grip that they’ve found a way to work around it.
The reality of biophysics is that the body moves only in certain ways – and the particulars of the way you hold the golf club can totally prevent a sound swing motion that allows the club to release properly through the impact zone. The wonderful thing is that anyone can learn how to put a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, and you can practice it anywhere your hands are not otherwise engaged, like watching TV or just sitting and relaxing.
Whether you prefer an overlap, interlock or full-finger (not baseball!) grip on the club, the same fundamentals apply. Here are the major grip faults I see most often, in the order of the frequency:
Mis-aligned hands
By this I mean that the palms of the two hands are not parallel to each other. Too many golfers have a weak left hand and strong right, or vice versa. The easiest way to learn how to hold the club with your palms aligned properly is to grip a plain wooden ruler or yardstick. It forces the hands to align properly and shows you how that feels. If you grip and re-grip a yardstick several times, then grip a club, you’ll see that the learning curve is almost immediate.
The position of the grip in the upper/left hand
I also observe many golfers who have the butt of the grip too far into the heel pad of the upper hand (the left hand for right-handed players). It’s amazing how much easier it is to release the club through the ball if even 1/4-1/2″ of the butt is beyond the left heel pad. Try this yourself to see what I mean. Swing the club freely with just your left hand and notice the difference in its release from when you hold it at the end of the grip, versus gripping down even a half inch.
To help you really understand how this works, go to the range and hit shots with your five-iron gripped down a full inch to make the club the same length as your seven-iron. You will probably see an amazing shot shape difference, and likely not see as much distance loss as you would expect.
Too much lower (right) hand on the club
It seems like almost all golfers of 8-10 handicap or higher have the club too far into the palm of the lower hand, because that feels “good” if you are trying to control the path of the clubhead to the ball. But the golf swing is not an effort to hit at the ball – it is a swing of the club. The proper hold on the club has the grip underneath the pad at the base of the fingers. This will likely feel “weak” to you — like you cannot control the club like that. EXACTLY. You should not be trying to control the club with your lower/master hand.
Gripping too tightly
Nearly all golfers hold the club too tightly, which tenses up the forearms and prevents a proper release of the club through impact. In order for the club to move back and through properly, you must feel that the club is controlled by the last three fingers of the upper hand, and the middle two fingers of the lower hand. If you engage your thumbs and forefingers in “holding” the club, the result will almost always be a grip that is too tight. Try this for yourself. Hold the club in your upper hand only, and squeeze firmly with just the last three fingers, with the forefinger and thumb off the club entirely. You have good control, but your forearms are not tense. Then begin to squeeze down with your thumb and forefinger and observe the tensing of the entire forearm. This is the way we are made, so the key to preventing tenseness in the arms is to hold the club very lightly with the “pinchers” — the thumbs and forefingers.
So, those are what I believe are the four fundamentals of a good grip. Anyone can learn them in their home or office very quickly. There is no easier way to improve your ball striking consistency and add distance than giving more attention to the way you hold the golf club.
More from the Wedge Guy
- The Wedge Guy: Golf mastery begins with your wedge game
- The Wedge Guy: Why golf is 20 times harder than brain surgery
- The Wedge Guy: Musings on the golf ball rollback
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Instruction
Clement: Stop ripping off your swing with this drill!
Not the dreaded headcover under the armpit drill! As if your body is defective and can’t function by itself! Have you seen how incredible the human machine is with all the incredible feats of agility all kinds of athletes are accomplishing? You think your body is so defective (the good Lord is laughing his head off at you) that it needs a headcover tucked under the armpit so you can swing like T-Rex?
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Gorden
Apr 2, 2018 at 2:25 pm
Turning hips back a lot easier then returning them when you get in you 60’s…as I near 70 I have found opening the hips (as they would look if you were opening up to hit a fade/slice] at address just a tad cuts down on the hip rotation in the back swing and makes it much to get them through on down swing…
Adam
Apr 3, 2018 at 7:51 am
Great idea Gordon. The article is written as a way to inspire golfers that tend to have a reverse spine angle due to a sway of their hips in their backswings(a problem for a lot of golfers) The majority of golfers aren’t aware of what they are doing and for them to try these drills as a way of feeling how they can move more efficiently is the goal here. It Sounds like you are doing a great job though and I wish you the best with your game this year. Thank you for your response.
SK
Apr 1, 2018 at 5:17 pm
Adam: — “Best of luck out there…”
You got that right Adam, because 80% of all golfers cannot turn into and load their trail leg. Why? Because they are rigid in their hip joints due to a sedentary lifestyle that destroys body rotation that causes reverse loading and hip blocking…. believe it.
Adam
Apr 3, 2018 at 7:57 am
Thank you for your great response SK. Having sufficient joint integrity plays a major role in how efficiently our body’s can move. TPI has an amazing platform with a screening test to help golfers learn about their limitations and help them regain improved functionality so they can improve their game. Thank you for the response.
Speedy
Apr 1, 2018 at 1:16 pm
Another time-old drill, which for some reason has to be said a different way. Swing around your rear leg, the post of stability.
Adam
Apr 3, 2018 at 8:18 am
Speedy thank you for your response. Did you even read the article? Sometimes rebuilding the wheel is not what is needed, good old fashioned swing drills said in a new way can help some to be inspired to learn.
The trail leg plays two roles in the back swing, stability as you’ve mentioned, but also mobility…too often golfers that have poor mobility are already too stable in their trial leg in their backswing so in order to search for freedom to move their hips they tend to sway which leaves them in a challenging position to play good golf from.
This article is meant to inspire golfers that are struggling finding good rotation in their back swing which is clearly not you but thank you for your inspiring words of wisdom. Perhaps you should make your own content instead of what the world really needs another condescending critic doing the easy job of building up their own ego up by putting others down.
Good luck with your game and thank you for your response.