Hip Tilt: The Difference Between PGA Tour Players and Amateurs
In this tip from the PGA Tour, Athletic Motion Golf Pro Scott Hamilton talks about how to get the proper hip tilt and why it’s important for puring your golf shots.
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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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Steve Wozeniak
Jan 4, 2018 at 11:06 pm
Wow…..hey dude, haven’t you heard that STACK and TILT has destroyed every player that tried it???? Come on, learn a little simple physics and how the body works in motion….this ain’t it…..
Steve Wozeniak PGA
425 533 4711
Steven
Dec 30, 2017 at 12:56 pm
Is this what you found just on their iron swings or on their driver swings as well?
AMG
Dec 30, 2017 at 7:14 pm
We see it with both irons and driver.
Fore Golfer
Jan 1, 2018 at 1:55 pm
Based on the comments below, I don’t know what you see. Perhaps you can reply to the other comments in this topic thread.
Acew7iron
Dec 29, 2017 at 4:14 pm
Most I see do just the opposite…get lower on the trail hip and try to help the ball into the air.
steve2
Dec 30, 2017 at 4:41 pm
Do you mean that they flex their trail knee in the backswing instead of firming up the knee? This is the only way I can envisage a lower trail hip in the backswing.
ImaGolfer
Dec 31, 2017 at 12:19 pm
The hips don’t only tilt ‘up’; they tilt ‘down’ as well.
In the backswing the lead hip drops because the lead leg flexes; and the trail hip becomes ‘higher’ than the lead hip point.
In the downswing the lead hip rises with weight shift and lead leg knee joint unflexes. Meanwhile the trail leg knee joint flexes thus dropping the trail hip joint.
Is it only me?
OB
Dec 29, 2017 at 4:02 pm
Interesting… so the hips tilt during the swing and do not ‘level out’ in the tour pro swings.
Since there are three types of dynamics between the ground and the hips:
1.horizontal thrust,
2.torque for the rotation,
3.vertical forces that account for body weight and vertical lift going into impact; it only follows that the hips must tilt back and forth to accommodate all these actions in the golf swing.
Trying to maintain a level hip rotation will mess up the generation and transmission of the forces and torques and would require ungainly knee flex actions.
Those that advocate “quiet hips”, they are not promoting the pro swing, and perhaps are recognizing that most rec golfers have stiff hip joints due to a sedentary lifestyle and must compensate in their swing mechanics to play the game.
OB
Dec 29, 2017 at 4:13 pm
Just spotted this current GolfWRX video by Alistair where he demonstrates his hip rotation, with very little tilt. He does admit that he is “not the most flexible”, and that’s because he is a short, stocky, width swing golfer. Sort of makes my point too.
http://www.golfwrx.com/482172/how-to-pivot-correctly-in-the-backswing/
OB
Dec 29, 2017 at 4:34 pm
Now I’m really confused with all the contradictory philosophies on hip action!!!
Just look at this year old GolfWRX article that I bookmarked!!!!
http://www.golfwrx.com/420740/testing-brandel-chamblees-restricted-hips-swing-theory-on-trackman/#comment-549116