The "Nicklaus" Head Swivel

I recently watched another great video by Shawn Clement on head position and lag and tried something he mentioned, and this alone has made a huge impact on my game from the first try. It directly relates to that universal golf fundamental: Stay behind the ball or keep your head behind the ball.

When you address the ball in your standard manner, turn your head 20-deg to the right and then tilt the right side of your head 20-deg down. Just your head…not your torso, so perform it as a "1-2" move after address. Your left cheek should be behind the ball, and your right ear pointed down to the ground, as if you were trying to drain water out of it. The head is both behind the ball and tilted to the right; if you've been on top of the ball, this will completely change your perspective of the golf swing…and for the better.

Bradley's Head Movement

Why does this make a difference for me? First, the turn to the right (move 1) presets the head in a good position to allow a full, relaxed torso turn without any upper-body sway (i.e., the head is not blocking the left shoulder). This alone helps prevent a reverse pivot, because the head is not blocking the left shoulder. Second, the downward tilt (move 2) presets good secondary axis tilt away from the target, necessary to hit inside-out and to retain lots of lag for effortless power; you can't maintain tilt away from the target if your head is level or leaning left.

In addition, I monitor the following points: The 20-20 head swivel applies to the neck and head ONLY; be careful that you're not turning and tilting your torso more than the standard setup position, which can cause fat shots and shanks (remember, it's a "1-2" head movement only after standard address). The club head is lightly touching the ground behind the ball--almost hovering. I also let the club head lag my hands on the takeaway, keeping the club head outside my hands and ensuring my wrists are relaxed, so that I can sense a loaded club at the top and better retain lag coming down. Keep the club face pointing at the ball during the takeaway. Grip: Use a somewhat strong left hand grip and a neutral to weak right hand grip for most shots (alterations can be used to shape shots). I now understand Clement's analogy of "hammering into a door frame" and why one's head must be behind the ball (Would you hammer into a door frame with your head in front of it? Of course not; you wouldn't be able to see it or get any leverage). Though the 20-20 head swivel hinders the tendency of the upper-body to sway to the right on the backswing, the hips can still sway to the right, so be aware of this--all that's necessary is a rotation of the torso; no additional rightward shifting is necessary. I believe there are only a few universal requirements for a good golf swing, such as a FLW and forward shaft lean, and I also believe that staying behind the ball through impact is one of them.

If you dig deeper, you'll discover that Jack Nicklaus--arguably the greatest golfer of all time until Tiger gets his crap together--did this very thing as his swing trigger. And then you'll find out that he got it from Sam Snead. And then you'll see that Bobby Jones did it too. So there's something to it. It may look weird in the modern golfing era, but it has really helped my swing.

You'll also see that all modern pro golfers get behind the ball through impact; most simply don't preset it the way Nicklaus and Snead did at address or as a swing trigger--they achieve the correct head position while in motion, which contributes to the illusion that they stay on top of the ball because of their address positions. Examine the image of Keegan Bradley above. The vertical green line represents the back of the golf ball at address. The colored boxes mark his head positions throughout the swing: red is at address, yellow is at the top, and the green box is at impact. His head position at address is level and right on top of the ball, but by impact his head is well behind the ball's position and tilted right. The modern way to achieve Nicklaus' head position is to move into it during the swing; amateurs like me are better off presetting it address and leaving it there, as the former requires greater timing.

Another reason that this probably makes a difference for me is that I'm right-handed but left eye-dominant, which is not typical. Thus, I'm getting my left eye right on back of the ball.

You have to swing the club. To do that, your body must be in position, beginning with your head, which needs to start behind the ball and stay there all the way through impact.

Jack Nicklaus: My Lifetime Principles For Great Golf

First, it is a positive move, like the forward press of the hands, from which to start the backswing. Second, turning the head to the right makes it possible to take a longer, freer turn with the whole body than would be possible if the head were held straight to the front. Third, and most important, it is a method by which we help brace ourselves against swaying to the left on the downswing and moving our body out ahead of the ball at impact—a sure way to ruin a golf swing.

Give Every Shot A Cockeyed Look - 02.17.64 - Jack Nicklaus 

[Sam] Snead suggests that if we tilt our head slightly in the direction of our backswing, it will relieve a lot of the tension in the back and left side that keep us from making a full turn. 

Snead Says, "Tilt Your Head To Help Relieve Tension During Your Backswing" 

Jack Nicklaus was famous for turning his chin to the right before he took the club back. He moved his chin (head) to the right so that he [could] turn freely during the backswing.
Also, tilt your head slightly to the right at address. Because your spine should be tilted to the right at address, your head should be tilted as well. 

The Head Movement during the Golf Swing 

Most people's dominant eye is on the same side as their dominant arm, leg, etc. However, despite being right handed, I am left eye dominant. So is Jack Nicklaus. 

3Jack Golf Blog: The Dominant Eye and Golf 

Joe Dante, one of America’s best known teaching professionals, from his book Four Magic Moves To Winning Golf. “Keep the head still.” This impossible advice has been given in one form or another for about as long as there has been any literature on golf: “Keep your head down.” Keep your head still.” Keep your head fixed.” “Keep your eye on the ball.” “Don’t lift your head.” “Don’t look up.” You’ve heard these directions a thousand times. If they would only say, “Keep your head back,” they would be much closer to being right. 

Expert Advice - Head Movement 

The best way to stay behind the ball is to start with your head positioned behind the ball in your set-up. As you swing, keep your head from moving in front of the ball. You’ll turn through the ball correctly, resisting any tendency to lunge forward in the downswing, which can cause poor contact and any number bad shots. 

It’s vital, however, that we make sure our weight moves to our front foot to begin the downswing. In an effort to stay behind the ball, many inexperienced golfers hang back on their back foot during the downswing, the dreaded reverse pivot. The result is usually a weak push or slice.

Golf Tips; Stay Behind the Ball 

Staying behind the ball doesn’t mean limiting your rotation or your weight shift toward your forward side. Rather, staying behind the ball means keeping your spine tilted away from the ball at impact and bracing against a strong left side. 

Slice Killers! | GolfTipsMag.com

The most difficult thing for the average golfer to do, in my opinion, is to stay behind the ball. He has a tendency to move ahead of the ball with the body, and in doing so he develops an outside-in swing which causes such familiar troubles as slicing, shanking, and topping. This is particularly true on the drive, which so many players try to hit with too much power. 

Staying Behind The Ball 

The point is…you need to have tilt behind the ball at address and tilt behind the ball at impact with your weight moving toward your front side…and you need to find a feel that gets you there. 

Tilt behind the ball at impact 

If you start with your head directly over the top of your belt buckle then you must move your head over to your right shoe on the backswing. If you start with your head more toward your right shoe than your belt buckle, you won't need to move as much. 

Golf Instruction: Keep Your Head Still 

In Harvey Penick's, The Little Red Book, published in 1992, page 75 is entitled "Stay Behind the Ball" "All great golfers move their head slightly backward before and during impact, but never forward. A golfer must stay behind the ball. I mean set up with your head behind the ball and keep your head behind the ball. If you move your head forward during your downswing or through impact, you will hit a wee, ugly shot, probably a pulled slice." 

Keep Your Head Back and Behind the Ball Through Impact! Six Top Golf Pros Agree 

During the transition, his head naturally moves forward with the weight shift to the left side and his head gets further out in front of the ball by the time he arrives at impact. This forces him to release the club early just to make contact. 

How to Keep Your Head Behind the Ball in the Golf Swing 

Here's an easy way to help keep your head back and have an aggressive release. Simply focus your eyes on the back inside quadrant of the ball at address and remain focused on that spot on the ball until after impact. Doing that will guarantee that you keep your head behind the ball. 

Big Play: Ted Potter Jr homemade swing 

If you want to increase your clubhead speed while reducing tension, learn to lag―swinging the clubhead away from the ball last. Begin the backswing by rotating the upper body, while keeping the hands and arms passive. If the arms are truly relaxed, they’ll only move as a result of the torso turn. The clubhead holds its address position until everything else is in motion; once it moves, it “lags” behind the body. 

Lag Behind to Get Ahead

Forget Your Hips, Consider Your Knees

Knee position at the top.

We often hear that the downswing starts "from the ground-up." And then, we invariably hear that this means we should focus on our hips, which inevitably leads to debates about hips rotating versus bumping, ad infinitum. Amateur golfers develop all sorts of bad habits as a result of this debate.

But if we're focused on "ground up" sequencing in the downswing, doesn't that mean that we should start with the feet? And then ankles? And then the knees? Followed by the hips?

The first thing you should feel in a "ground up" transition and downswing is increased pressure in your left foot, almost as if squishing water from a sponge under that foot. This all occurs while your back is still turned towards the target (see "Knee position at the top" image).

Knee position at impact.

A few notable golf instructors and professionals have spoken or written about how weight should move in the feet. Some talk about "rolling the ankles" (which sounds painful). And a few have written about the knees' movement during the downswing. I'm proposing that you consider the lateral, "rotational" movement of the knees. Why? The knees are closer to "the ground," kinetically-speaking. And you don't have to worry over weight movement in the feet or twisting an ankle, as you haplessly try to figure out what rolling them means. It seems that, if you move your knees correctly to start the downswing (especially that right or back knee), the weight shifting sensed through the feet is correct, and the hips automatically, kinetically, perform the correct actions.

Knee position at finish.

Here's a tidbit that is not offered openly by very many teaching professionals: The knees move laterally, linearly, and "rotationally." The rotational part is an important, elusive tenet and one you may not have heard elsewhere, but the knees face the target line at address (i.e., towards the viewer in face-on view and parallel to the target line in DTL view) and turn to roughly face the target prior to impact. It's an optical illusion, or simply a misunderstanding, that leads weekend golfers to believe the knees remain in their address orientations throughout the swing; and put into practice in this way, it's a large power leak.

Note the images accompanying this post of touring professional, Jeff Overton, hitting an 8-iron in the face-on view. Using a golf swing analysis app, I drew red circles over the address positions of Jeff's knee caps to demonstrate how the knees shift and "rotate" during the swing. At or approaching the top, you can see that the right knee doesn't really move from its address position, while the left knee moves slightly toward the right knee (pointing at the ball). At or approaching impact, both knees have shifted toward the target considerably, both knees are still quite bent, and they have "rotated" more towards the target. At or approaching the finish, both knees are now facing the target. The right knee is bent, and the left is mostly straight. The right knee, though facing the target, has replaced the address position of the left knee. Both knees are nearly touching.

You may be thinking that the knees don't really "rotate" or turn, biomechanically speaking, and you'd be right. What actually occurs is that the left or forward hip joint undergoes external rotation (moving from an internally rotated position at the top of the swing), which allows the inside of the left leg to face the target line and the left knee to go from facing the target line at address to facing the target at impact.

The right hip internally rotates so that the right knee folds inward towards the left knee; during this movement, the right foot rolls to the inside but remains roughly on the ground, lengthwise, until it's finally forced onto the toe by continuing rotation. Both the "right foot roll" and the right knee "folding inward" occur together as a result of the correct lower body movement. It's possible that this "right foot roll" is the origin of the "ankle rolling" advice.

 

Regardless of which knee you choose to focus on, either knee is making specific movements and can lead the other knee to follow properly. Now, what about the knees moving laterally and linearly? If you should prefer thinking of the left knee: The bent left knee should move--laterally--out over the left foot (maybe even fractionally outside the left shoulder), separating itself from the right knee, causing the infamous "squat" look that Sam Snead made famous. It's also at this time when the left knee "rotates" to face the target, because the left hip externally rotates. This movement of the left knee forward begins WHILE the club is still setting at the top, which enhances lag on the way down.

The linear part of the movement really refers to the action of both knees. After the initial separation and lateral movement of the left knee, the right knee follows along the same line traveled first by the left knee; it appears to tuck in behind the left knee's address position when viewed down-the-line.

Not all pro golfers utilize a separated knee action and its pronounced squat move. But all of them have knees that move toward the target prior to impact and "rotate" to face the target.

Now to make a powerful transition in your golf swing from your backswing to your downswing you should transfer your weight from your back foot to your front foot.

A great way I have found to do this is to initiate the downswing by moving the front knee towards the target.

However, it’s a good idea when doing this to try and keep the back knee where it was in the backswing because this knee separation creates lag in the downswing, which helps to create the late hit that every golfer wants because it gives longer golf drives!

The Golf Swing: What Your Legs Should Be Doing To Hit Longer Golf Drives

If you're having trouble keeping your swing consistent when a match is on the line, key on your left knee to start your downswing. When you practice, remember to support your backswing with your right leg, then move your left knee and thigh laterally, then rotationally, to your left. This allows your arms to drop the club inside the target line on the downswing for long and consistent shots.

Jim Flick: Knees Are Key

Even as the wrists are completing their part of the turn, the lower body has moved into the backstretch. The left knee moves laterally into the downswing and pulls on the left hip which in turn pulls the left arm downward. At the same time, the right knee begins to drive toward the target, taking with it the shoulders, arms, and hands.

When you execute the swing properly, the leadership of the legs creates a lag of the hands and clubhead, resulting in what's commonly called a delayed release. In this position, just prior to impact, the wrists have not yet uncocked and there is a tremendous amount of club head speed ready to be unleashed.

Instruction Tip #50 - The Downswing | The Shark

Jim Furyk won the Tour Championship and the Fedex Cup in 2010—thanks to his left knee. As we show in this video, the most consistent winners in the history of golf also started their downswing with their left knee. This made them consistent winners because it helped to insure that their downswing sequence was in the right order and that their front spine angle remained fairly constant.

Furyk Wins $11.35 Million with Left Knee

Sequencing Drill: Place and hold a clubshaft behind your back just above the shoulder blades and a soccer ball between your knees, and assume your address position. Just before your shoulders reach the top, drop the soccer ball by moving your left knee toward the target. This move will produce the feeling of a correct transition and a "sitting-down" look in your lower body.

Automatic Transition

The idea is to make your backswing move, then get a real sense of 'squatting' and 'settling' in the lower body as you fuse the two halves together by reversing momentum from the ground up. Your weight shifts back across to the left foot, left knee working towards the target while left hip and left shoulder pull in that same direction. The result is a natural shallowing of the swing plane as the right arm and shoulder drop, setting up the desired inside attack on the ball.

Driving to Success

To do this the legs start by shifting both knees and ankles targetward. It is true that the head stays behind the ball, but the core of the body shifts and clears past the ball rather dramatically. This assists the hands and arms in making their initial drop to the waist high area while wrists are still fully hinged. At this stage the right wrist should still be bent back fully but the palm is now facing the ground not the sky. With the palm facing down this insures the clubface is also facing down or toward the ball and requires no scooping or manipulation to be squared up in time for the hit.

Golf Lag: Stop Casting, Lag like Tiger Woods

Use this image to check your weight transfer: Your right knee should point at or slightly in front of the ball at impact. That shows you've made a good shift. Here's the sequence: Left knee points behind the ball at the top; right knee points toward it at impact (above).

Tom Watson: Right Knee Power Key

As I transition my weight from my right side to my left side, I begin the necessary move of the right knee toward my left knee. You can see that happening here as I drop the club on the downswing and rotate my hips open. As the right knee gets closer to the left knee, the left knee straightens out.

Quick Tips To Play Better

 

Torso Turn

You know...I've made several faux pas on this blog, and if you read through carefully, you'll no doubt find contradictions and errors (because golf instruction is full of contradictions and disagreements), and I've fallen prey to my fair share of fixes and tips, only to change my mind about them later. Remember, the ultimate purpose of this blog was to document my discoveries and breakthroughs, and some of those, unfortunately, turn out to be dead-ends (though some of them may not be dead-ends for you).

Torso Turn in the Backswing

But here's something I've stated a lot on this blog in numerous posts: "shoulder turn." What's the big deal? They turn, right? Well, yes. But we have to be careful, because each shoulder is capable of independent movement with respect to the torso (the rib cage and abdomen). The hips can also make a good deal of movement. The mid-spine (thoracic) and high-spine (cervical) have a wide range of rotation, while the lower spine (lumbar) is mostly limited to up-down movements. Yes, it's possible for you to FAKE a good turn by moving your arms, hips, and shoulder joints. This fake turn doesn't feature a lot of mid-torso movement, which is what we actually need. In other words, the mid-spine should turn the most, with the hips turning to complete the turn. The shoulders and arms MOSTLY go along for the ride.

Henceforth, when you read this blog and see the phrase "shoulder turn," please understand this is really synonymous--and actually more correctly descriptive--with an upper "torso turn." Is it a big deal? Yes. Because the shoulders will turn PASSIVELY when the chest and abdomen rotate back and through. Those muscles in the ribcage, back, and abdomen are the ones to focus on when conducting the takeaway, backswing, downswing, and finish. The shoulders, arms, wrists, and hands (and thus club) just go along for the ride MOSTLY (see gotchas below); there's no real need to consciously move them.

Actually, with just a torso turn, the arms are automatically brought to chest height during the takeaway. All that's necessary for the full arm motion from that point onward is a lift of the hands and club that amounts to about six inches of vertical movement above their address position! The torso turn provides the in, back, and up motion for the arms (i.e., depth), while a slight lift due to the right elbow bending provides the remaining up (i.e., width); no more is needed because of the posture (left shoulder low, right shoulder high). Yes, the arms lift, actually, very little in the backswing, and they DO NOT pull the body back at all! They merely lift up slightly. The hands should feel very wide and far away from your head and shoulders, but there should be no tension in getting there: Swing the hands away wide using your torso and let your arms stop moving when your torso stops turning!

I love to think of the torso as a large cylinder that juts out at an angle from a bulky bipod (legs). Using that analogy, it's much like a large reflecting telescope, pointing approximately 45-degrees into the sky (i.e., forward flexion or spine angle), sitting on a two-legged stand. Now for the backswing and downswing motion, just think of the telescope cylinder itself rotating IN-PLACE clockwise (back) and counter-clockwise (left) [something a real telescope would never do], while maintaining that 45-degree tilt!

If that’s difficult to envision, imagine a large dowel, rod, or pole that runs through the mid-back and through each latissimus dorsi muscle, about 3 inches below each armpit and extends out from the body about a foot on either side. The focus here is to first point the “lat dowel” at the ball and then “hit” the ball with the other end of the “lat dowel.” On the backswing, point the left side of the dowel down towards or even behind the ball for a big windup. Midway through the downswing, the dowel will be roughly parallel with the ground on both sides. Just after impact, the right side of the dowel will point down towards the ball, indicating that you have used lateral bend. At the finish, the right side of the dowel will point forward and to the right of the target, depending on your flexibility. At all times the imaginary “lat dowel” has rotated around on a tilted plane, which is ironically the visual analogy that is often used for the shoulder line. But remember that each shoulder has a generous range of independent movement in multiple directions, which makes it easy to fake a good torso turn by moving the shoulder joints. Moving the “lat dowel” eliminates the cheating. The "lat dowel” analogy is a very effective swing thought for the short game: chipping, pitching, greenside bunkers, and putting too.

A swath of golfing problems will disappear when you learn to maintain your posture or spine angle and simply turn the upper torso back and through (i.e., use the torso muscles to turn). Many of the aspects of the swing that are taught independently are suddenly addressed, automatically. I've found more power and consistency with increased lag, because the wrists are less likely to flip. I've found that my hips don't move as much in relation to my upper body. Posture or spine angle maintenance is reinforced, such that the shoulders rotate perpendicular to the forward flexion angle. The tension in the left lat muscle--the sign of a good backswing coil--suddenly shows up. Because the arms, wrists, and hands are passive, the angle of the club face stays in the correct position in the takeaway, mimicking the spine angle. I've found the same torso motion is used, more or less, in every golfing stroke, including chipping and putting.

As the shoulders turn in response to the torso turn, forget the "left shoulder to right foot" tenet; focus instead on the right shoulder and ensure that it gets as near as possible to the RIGHT foot (i.e., the sternum should be over the inside of the right foot), which automatically creates the necessary tilt behind the ball and prohibits reverse pivoting while preserving a proper coil. This thought is especially important for the driver, but a more centered pivot might be the ticket for irons, pitch shots, and chips.

The gotchas (at least for me): Ensure the arms are lifting at the same rate your mid-torso is turning to keep your arms in front of you. You should be able to--during rehearsals--look at the club head during the takeaway and notice that it's still well outside the hands and the club face angle matching the spinal posture. If you just let the arms go and focus only on turning the mid-torso, you may suck the club inside early and then lift the arms late; the left arm ends up too far behind you and pinned too much across the chest, when the hands and club should stay in front of the chest. This error can cause some plane shift problems (e.g., laid off) and waywards shots. Also, a subtle bump into the left leg (weight shift) should be sandwiched between the torso turn back and through to help ensure an inside-out swing. Be aware of the tendency for the arms to collapse at the top; the arms should stop moving when the torso turn is complete; the arms should be relatively straight and tension-free; and the hands should be well away from your head, signifying a wide swing arc with no possibility of a collapse.

The turn away and back to and through the ball is accomplished by turning your torso. It is so often referred to by teachers and players as a shoulder turn, that many people believe that is the part of the body that should turn. This is confusing for new players and causes both new and experienced players to make the wrong move.

When you consciously think of making a shoulder turn, instead of rotating your torso, your move will be to force your left shoulder back. When you do that, your left shoulder comes up or flattens in golf terminology.

Quit Calling it the Shoulder Turn!

Mistakes occur when the hands or wrists initiate the first movement. Start to bring the club back using your torso and shoulders, not your wrists and forearms.

3 Keys for a Smooth Takeaway

The arms can be the culprits [of posture loss] if they initiate the swing by pulling the turn of the torso. The torso starts the backswing by rotating to the right, maintaining the address spine angle and the arms following.

Pinewild Country Club of Pinehurst

The first move away from the ball is absolutely essential. The hands, arms, stomach and chest must all turn together, as a unit. If you can't manage that, well, good luck, you've got very little chance to hit a good shot. But if you do manage it, you then have only to hinge the wrists and turn the shoulders to complete a perfect backswing. It's as simple as that. I've eliminated the complexity. I sincerely believe that anyone who masters these three easy backswing steps will have a rock-solid golf swing for life.

The Backswing - Nick Faldo

To turn more, you need to turn your torso during the backswing. As you swing back, try to turn your bellybutton 45 degrees to the right.

Backswing Shoulder Turn: How to Turn More

What is the pivot? The pivot is a blend of weight shift and a circular turning of the body. Or said another way, the pivot is both a lateral and a rotational movement of the hips, and the rotational movement of the torso and shoulders.

The Pivot and a Flat Left Wrist

One of the most confusing terms in golf instruction is "shoulder turn". Instructors that talk about shoulder turn to describe the amount of body turn during the backswing are hurting their students. What this means is if you start your backswing by pulling the club away with your hands, you may be hurting your swing right at the start of the backswing.

Instead of pulling the club away with your hands, push the club away with the turning of your chest. It will maintain the arms/body geometry and increase your chances of an on-center strike.

A Golf Backswing Mistake to Avoid

Early arm lift to line the left arm up with the turn and keep the hands in front of the chest…GOOD!!!!!!

[L] ate arm lift because the left arm is across the chest and the hands and club are way behind the turn…BAD!!!!

The left arm must lift

Getting the right shoulder over the right foot (lefts for lefties) helps you keep tilt behind the ball, gets you into position to have a shallow AoA [angle of attack] and no room for your arms to over run your turn.

Guess what…lag city.

Monte Scheinblum's Blog

So, summing up, for the production of power, a golfer should have a neutral (comfortably straight) spine at address. During the backswing, the thorax should rotate a lot relative to the hips; and the shoulders should rotate perpendicular to the spine angle which was set up at address. During the downswing, the spine should remain in its forward flexion, at least until impact, and the left hip should rise at that stage.

Anatomy of the Golf Swing – The Trunk/Torso

"While the arms do swing up and down and the wrists hinge and set, these motions are secondary to torso rotation," Parees said. "That is what creates the majority of speed in the swing."

PGA Golf Instructors | Golf Tips To Improve Your Golf Game

From a physics standpoint, a longer coil has more power, so in the back swing you might try to turn back from the mid-section to lengthen your torso coil rather than thinking of turning with only the shoulders.

Hip Sway in Golf - How to Add Club Head Speed

The term "shoulder turn" is misleading. You can easily make what looks like a full turn by pushing your left shoulder under your chin and lifting your right shoulder behind your head. That’s a full shoulder turn, isn’t it? Maybe, but it’s far from what you need to make a great golf swing.

What you really need to do is to make a full chest turn, turning your whole upper torso a full 90 degrees so that your back faces the target, and your sternum faces directly away from the target. When done correctly, this will create a high degree of separation (the "X-factor") between your hips and your shoulders, stretching the large, powerful muscles of your core, generating lag and putting you in the correct position to execute a fantastic transition and downswing sequence.

Drill 302. Backswing: Making a Full Shoulder Turn

Core Rotation: A big part of Sam’s [Snead] power comes from the core rotation of his body and flows through his arms and hands, down the shaft and into the clubhead. Shoulder turn? Yes, it’s important. However, without core rotation you’ve only got about 50 – 60 percent of your normal power. Imagine throwing a baseball without turning your core. Not much power there. Look at how far Sam turns his core especially in his hips.

5 Swing Keys to Consider in Sam Snead’s Swing – and Yours!

One of the more frequent mistakes I see golfers make is to stand up or lose their body angles through impact – the "stand and deliver" move! The loss of body angles or posture causes the body to stop rotating and as a result the hands now assume the responsibility of squaring the clubface. Remember – if the body does not rotate to clubface square, then the hands will help out. This move is very difficult to time, especially under pressure, and often leads to the hands overworking or flipping through impact. If the hands rotate the clubface too early the shot misses left and if they’re a touch late, then the shot misses right.

Hands Flipping

As you stand to the ball with the wrists slightly up, there is a straight line practically from the club head up the shaft and along your arm to the left shoulder, and as your hands are already waist high it needs only the inclining of the shoulders as we turn (on the pivot) to bring them shoulder high, without having altered their relative positions at all.

They [the arms] have not been lifted. They have gone up in response to the shoulder movement. This accounts for the curtailment and the control of the modern swing.

The Controlled Golf Swing

Finishing the backswing with a turn of the body, instead of a lifting of the arms, makes it easier to match up the timing and peak speed sequence of the arm swing and body rotation throughout the downswing to impact.

Golf Swing Synchronization

If the elbows bend, we shorten our radius and are not consistent with the position and length of our arms/club. Makes it much more difficult to return back to impact in the same position that we started (the goal). Also, elbow bending lends to "arm lifting". Having the arms take over and lift on their own, is the worst move for the golf swing. No power or repeatability. Lifting is a very weak move and the shoulders will stop rotating.

Move Less … Get Good!

Left Shoulder Lag Secret

Flipping. Casting. Club head throwaway. The opposites of lag. Not fun. Flipping ruins a good backswing and adds loft to clubs when we don't want to add loft; thus, we lose distance. The pros don't flip or cast; some of them look like they're barely swinging and hit a 7-iron 170 yards or more (think of languid, slow-rhythmed Freddy Couples and his Boom-Boom distance). They achieve this through physics...not strength or necessarily through some exclusive ability. The lagging club head is the key to effortless power. How does one stop the club head from catching up with the hands too early? For us amateur golfers, a little lag can go a long way, especially when we haven't had any.

The club head naturally wants to extend out to the furthest point from where it's being swung--the left shoulder. Yes, some instructors (e.g., Shawn Clement) argue that the swing center is the notch above the sternum, but when you're coming into impact, the right arm is still bent while the left is straight, so the club wants to seek an alignment with the left arm and left shoulder (i.e., the fulcrum of the club is actually the right wrist). For most hacker golfers like myself, this occurs too early--way behind the ball. We come through with the club head passing the hands to one extent or another (the more the flip, the worse the shot). So, we have been taught any number of silly things to counteract this--hold the lag, drag the mop, aiming point, etc.

Torso in the Downswing

For an industry that's struggling to grow, the Jedi Masters of the game need to stop holding back information, if they are, in fact, doing that on purpose. If hackers could learn the correct movements, they would all start lagging the club and handicaps would drop. But so would the number of lessons taken. It's not in a teaching professional's interest to give it all away early; one wonders if they don't have a need to keep things esoteric, vague, and mysterious--slowly giving up the real game-changing information, once a regular student has forked over enough dough. But I digress...forgive my conspiracy theorizing.

When the club head reaches the point where it is aligned with the left arm and left shoulder, the club head is moving its fastest; from that point onward, the club head is slowing down, no matter how hard you push with the right hand. For the flip to occur, something else must be slowing down too much. And I believe that's the left shoulder for most (i.e., the torso rotation is slowing or pausing). If the left shoulder keeps turning up and back before and after impact, and forward flexion over the ball is maintained, the club head CANNOT pass the hands early. Or, it's, at least, a lot harder to achieve.

Still images of pro swings fool us a bit; we usually only see these great swings from two views: DTL (down-the-line) or FO (face-on). We rarely see them from the target's perspective, and usually never from above, back-on, or from other angles. And swing sequences in magazines often omit images between "positions" that relay useful information, simply because they don't have the print space to show it all. There's a lot of missing information from which the careful observer could learn. At impact, we see a still image of shoulders that appear square to the target line, but that's just a brief moment located within the space of a second; the camera captures that moment, but we don't see that the shoulders (actually, the torso turning the shoulders), which began rotating briefly after the hips in the downswing, continue turning all the way through and past impact. They shouldn't tilt backwards. They shouldn't stop or slow down to stay parallel to the target line, forcing the arms out "to right field."

Slow motion video has, fortunately, removed some of the mystery, for those who observe closely. You will notice that the left shoulder keeps turning up and back, without pausing, though impact, when looking at the swing of a touring or good teaching professional. As the torso continues turning, there is a moment after impact when both shoulders are perpendicular to the target line, with the right shoulder lower than the left. Continuing the rotation into the finish position, the entire left side of the body is facing away from the target, with the left shoulder back towards the right foot, and the right shoulder is pointing target-ward and over the left foot. And the great player maintains their posture (forward flexion or "spine angle") over the ball into the finish--torso flexed towards the target line; they don't stand up out of their swing (i.e., sometimes distastefully called "goat humping").

Lightbulb! This is where you've heard the vague advice to move the left shoulder away from the chin as quickly as possible. It's one of those little tidbits that gets a brief mention but is never expounded upon very much. Sometimes it's those little tips or advice that are glossed over that have the biggest impact on changing your golf swing for the better.

This is also useful for chipping, as a chip is a smaller version of a pitch, which is a smaller version of the full swing; even the putting stroke has a minute bit of this movement. To keep the club head from passing the hands (i.e., flipping), the torso must continue turning while staying in forward flexion. Many chunked and thinned chips are caused by swinging the arms at the ball, overusing the wrists and elbows, and trying to keep the shoulders parallel to the target line through impact, which is what intuition tells you to do. Intuition and instinct in golf are usually wrong!

Now there's an inverse to this, obviously, since we're bilateral human beings. Just as the left shoulder continuously rotates counter-clockwise and up during the downswing, the right shoulder continuously rotates counter-clockwise and down--the reverse of the torso's backswing movement. After all, the torso is actually doing the turning, with the shoulders merely following. This is what teachers refer to as "firing the right side through," which is the antithesis of "clearing the left side."

Whether you think of it as continuously "clearing the left side" or continuously "firing the right side through," you must be shifted first into your left leg, left knee aligned over the left ankle. And you MUST maintain your posture (i.e., forward flexion) throughout--no standing up! See which swing thought gets you through the most and practice that one; you should immediately notice a more piercing ball flight, and your finish will have your shoulder line roughly parallel with the target line but mostly facing away from the target line!

The "feeling" of extending the left side of the body and elevating the left shoulder has been described by Brian Manzella (New Orleans golf instructor) as a "throwing a drunk off one's back" maneuver. Imagine being at a party and having a drunk partygoer draping himself over your left shoulder, and imagine the "feeling" of "throwing the drunk off one's back" by abruptly elevating the left shoulder in a sudden left shoulder shrug maneuver. If that left shoulder shrug maneuver is incorporated in a smooth manner into one's swing action, then it can produce smooth parametric acceleration of the hands/club without any need to "jump-up" after impact, and without any need to elevate the upper swing center.

Learning to perfect the i) timing of left shoulder socket elevation and ii) also the exact amount of upward movement of the left shoulder socket during the late downswing is an absolute requirement if a golfer wants to consistently strike the ball solidly with the sweetspot of the clubface.

Downswing

A golfer should ingrain the "feel" that the right shoulder is moving [down plane] at the same speed as the right elbow/RFFW (right forearm flying wedge) in the early downswing.

How to maximize wrist lag

The sustained rotation of the left shoulder is critical to squaring off the clubface at impact. [T]he beauty is you don’t have to think about pulling the grip up through impact. Swinging to a properly architected and balanced finish is the most simple and best means to keep the left shoulder ["to" removed] moving upward and rearward.

[In a balanced finish,] [t]he left shoulder should compress back towards the right heel and settle directly over the right heel.

WaddenGolf - Why the Finish to the Golf Swing is so Important

Here’s a secret golf tip Ernie El’s gives about the shoulders in the golf swing. At the start of your downswing, get the left shoulder moving away from your chin as soon as possible.

Perfect Golf Impact Position