Head Position During The Golf Swing (Video) - by Pete Styles
Head Position During The Golf Swing (Video) - by Pete Styles

The head position during the golf swing is often one of the least understood parts of the golfer’s process if you like. And for a lot of golfers, they don’t understand what their head is doing. Now the fundamental point of this is the head is the thing that you use to see the other stuff, so your eyes are in your head, so your eyes can look at your legs, at your hands, at your arms, but your eyes can’t actually look at themselves, so your eyes can’t see necessarily what they are doing either correctly or incorrectly during the swing. That’s why having a video camera or a mate stood in front of you holding a video camera to show you what’s going on, or even a mirror is quite important as a part of your practice routine, particularly if you have a misunderstanding or a misplacement of what your head is doing during the swing. So probably the best exercise and fairly simple exercises that you could do would be to get a video camera or if you want faster instant feedback without having somebody else there just a mirror or even a window in the house and set yourself up and look at yourself face on, and then try and establish something in the background that you can see in the mirror to work out where your head is starting.

And then go ahead and make a few swings, slow swings initially watching yourself in the mirror and see what your head is doing during the backspin and into the downswing phase and try and work on keeping your head relatively stable. Now, it will allow it to move backwards a little bit, it will allow it to move back to its original position. But we have to stress, we don’t want too much swaying, we don’t want too much lifting particularly in the backswing. If the head was going up a lot in the backswing it would have to go down a lot in the downswing and that’s causing quite a bit of inconsistency for golfers. If the head is turning to the right slightly and staying level in the backswing that would be good. Now, staying level or dipping slightly in the downswing is okay, quite a lot made about dipping of heads, but generally you look at the good golfers, they are going to one way if anything, they are going to go down to the golf ball particularly McIlroy and Tiger when he is playing his best, have a little dip into the golf ball. And that’s because at set up, the body is all lined up but at impact the body is twisted. So if you’ve got a piece of rope and twist the middle, the two ends have to come nearer to each other because the middle bit is not lined up, so we get ourselves set, we turn, the head has to dip a little bit, but the important thing for yourself to notice is not massive movement either way, not massive up and downs, not massive left and rights. Now its good to watch that in the mirror as you are making your swing, but actually when you go ahead and hit a golf ball it can be difficult to see that in the mirror as well. So maybe that’s where you utilize a PGA golf professional with a camera or even just a friend with an iPhone or whatever and you can actually see how that head moves during the swing, and we want to see the head go to the right, stay to the right, not a big lateral movement, not a big sway and then certainly not a big dip down. So using mirror drills and video cameras is a great way of getting feedback on your head movement during your golf swing. 2015-10-19

The head position during the golf swing is often one of the least understood parts of the golfer’s process if you like. And for a lot of golfers, they don’t understand what their head is doing. Now the fundamental point of this is the head is the thing that you use to see the other stuff, so your eyes are in your head, so your eyes can look at your legs, at your hands, at your arms, but your eyes can’t actually look at themselves, so your eyes can’t see necessarily what they are doing either correctly or incorrectly during the swing. That’s why having a video camera or a mate stood in front of you holding a video camera to show you what’s going on, or even a mirror is quite important as a part of your practice routine, particularly if you have a misunderstanding or a misplacement of what your head is doing during the swing. So probably the best exercise and fairly simple exercises that you could do would be to get a video camera or if you want faster instant feedback without having somebody else there just a mirror or even a window in the house and set yourself up and look at yourself face on, and then try and establish something in the background that you can see in the mirror to work out where your head is starting.

And then go ahead and make a few swings, slow swings initially watching yourself in the mirror and see what your head is doing during the backspin and into the downswing phase and try and work on keeping your head relatively stable. Now, it will allow it to move backwards a little bit, it will allow it to move back to its original position. But we have to stress, we don’t want too much swaying, we don’t want too much lifting particularly in the backswing. If the head was going up a lot in the backswing it would have to go down a lot in the downswing and that’s causing quite a bit of inconsistency for golfers. If the head is turning to the right slightly and staying level in the backswing that would be good. Now, staying level or dipping slightly in the downswing is okay, quite a lot made about dipping of heads, but generally you look at the good golfers, they are going to one way if anything, they are going to go down to the golf ball particularly McIlroy and Tiger when he is playing his best, have a little dip into the golf ball. And that’s because at set up, the body is all lined up but at impact the body is twisted.

So if you’ve got a piece of rope and twist the middle, the two ends have to come nearer to each other because the middle bit is not lined up, so we get ourselves set, we turn, the head has to dip a little bit, but the important thing for yourself to notice is not massive movement either way, not massive up and downs, not massive left and rights. Now its good to watch that in the mirror as you are making your swing, but actually when you go ahead and hit a golf ball it can be difficult to see that in the mirror as well. So maybe that’s where you utilize a PGA golf professional with a camera or even just a friend with an iPhone or whatever and you can actually see how that head moves during the swing, and we want to see the head go to the right, stay to the right, not a big lateral movement, not a big sway and then certainly not a big dip down. So using mirror drills and video cameras is a great way of getting feedback on your head movement during your golf swing.