Instruction
Are These The Two Worst Swings in Golf? Not So Fast…
A golf swing is like a fingerprint; no two are alike. While some golf swings may look more aesthetically pleasing, there’s no one swing that will be effective for every golfer. Just look to the PGA Tour for proof. You have your Adam Scotts and Jason Days, who have seemingly perfect swings, and then you have your Bubba Watsons and Jim Furyks. Their swings look less pleasing, but they’re not less effective.
The point is, every golfer is different and some golfers can make nearly any swing work. How a swing looks isn’t as important as what happens at impact.
One of the best parts of my job at Combine Performance in Scottsdale is having all the instructional tools at my disposal that help me to NOT change something in a golf swing if I don’t have to change it. Using the latest technology, we can look deep into the mechanics to see what actually needs to change to improve performance.
To demonstrate this point, I want to discuss “the high” and “the low” in the golf swing, and everything in between. The two swings below will help you see that perfection isn’t necessary to play this game… and play it well.
The High
Our GolfWRX Tour photographer snapped this photo recently on the range at a PGA Tour Pro-Am. According to our source, crowds were gathering to watch this man hit 240-yard draws from this backswing position.
The Low
“Swanson, your swing is too flat!” lol, yea if you hate 330-yard squeeze fades pic.twitter.com/bLOcsBnH5T
— Longballswanson (@Longballswans1) August 25, 2017
This is swing so rounded that the head must rotate off the ball, and it’s certainly not something you’d teach. I saw this swing with my own eyes, however, and this gentleman also hit the ball 240 or so with a nice draw. In fact, he shot in the low 80’s that day at Bighornn on the Canyon’s Course, which is no slouch!
The Middle Ground
After looking at the high and the low in the previous examples, you can now understand that the rest of our swings are somewhere in the middle, including myself (see above).
As a young golfer, I spent years on the range trying to build a swing that looked good. It was my first priority, and figured that playing well would come as a result. Boy was I wrong! As I have said before, golf is all about learning how to score. I’d rather score like Furyk than look like Ernie Els on a day when he’s struggling to find the center of the club face.
Here’s the question you need to answer for yourself: Are you willing to own your mechanics and make the ball talk, or must you try to conform to what everyone says the golf swing should look like and possibly not break 90?
The lesson to be learned here is that sometimes you just CAN’T move in a certain way due to past injury or X number of years doing it the other way. The key is to make your golf swing manageable, and if you do that, you can likely perform to your expectations. You must understand, however, that drastically unorthodox swing will likely only achieve a certain skill level of play.
In the golf instruction world, we have the technology to know exactly what will improve your swing. The question is, how much time to you have to execute the change? If the answer is “not much,” my advice is to learn to OWN your swing. Make peace with it… and make sure your short game is killer
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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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Robert Parsons
Sep 1, 2017 at 11:01 am
Working or not, I’d still try to fix it and improve.
Jeb
Sep 2, 2017 at 1:26 am
Would you tell the obese guy to shrink his gut as the first obvious fix? You can’t safely rotate your core carrying all that fat ballast hanging over your belt. Golf can be dangerous for such obese men if they attempt to swing all that fat around their spine.
Ron
Sep 1, 2017 at 10:10 am
Completely agree with this article. The issue is finding an instructor who is knowledgeable enough to only fix what he needs to. Most instructors these days seem to have one vision of the swing and try to teach that method to every one of their students.
OB
Sep 1, 2017 at 3:53 pm
You don’t plug in a swing into a body, you assess the body and then tailor a swing to that body type.
There is a book called The L.A.W.s of the Golf Swing where they classify the body types and then determine the optimal swing mechanics for that body. I have the book and it is written by a pro teacher and biomechanists. It is the only book that I know of that attempts to type the body and then prescribe a swing style. All other instruction books, articles and videos apply a generic swing into some kind of standard body shape without regard to physical limitations.
MacD
Sep 2, 2017 at 1:32 am
A smart instructor would first try to sell those weirdos a new set of Single Length golf clubs and convince them that they will only need one swing style for all clubs. Then let them go and muddle about for a while and then have them come back for lessons. They are stuck with the club cost commitment so then they can be milked for lessons to get the kinks out of their new swing. It’s the same as reeling in a big fish.
Steve S
Sep 1, 2017 at 9:22 am
Golf is a game of results. I play with a guy who appears to cut across the ball on every swing, including putts. He consistently breaks 80. He somehow squares the clubface at impact and hits baby fades on driver thru wedge and makes a lot of putts. His tempo is also extremely fast. He snatches the club back so fast it appears to be as fast as his downswing(but it’s not). He breaks every rule of the “conventional” golf swing but it works for him. He’s never had a lesson and should never have one!
pooch
Sep 1, 2017 at 9:36 am
Exactly.
Is the ball straight? is it in the fairway? Results.
TT
Aug 31, 2017 at 5:19 pm
Looking at “tubby” he’s got his top of swing in front of him because he can’t rotate all the belly mass whatsoever. Not only does his belly interfere with rotation, it giggles around on it’s own so he simply blocks his hips. Swinging that belly mass would destabilize him and he would topple over.
He has a pure “arm” swing and gets away with it to his credit. Keep on heavin’ tubby.
Mower
Aug 31, 2017 at 4:00 pm
Does the “Low” golfer have some kind of condition not enabling him to make a full backswing? It’s kinda weird… or… no – it’s full-blown weird.
Roger McIntosh
Aug 31, 2017 at 1:38 pm
If it ain’t broke don’t overanalyze it. Let the jokers have fun no matter how grotesque.
cgasucks
Aug 31, 2017 at 9:30 am
You don’t hit the ball with your backswing. It’s impact that really matters. Jim Furyk would agree with me.