What Is A Compact Golf Swing (Video) - by Pete Styles
What Is A Compact Golf Swing (Video) - by Pete Styles

Saying someone's got a compact golf swing is definitely seen as a compliment. You'll often see the commentators on the TV talk about that player there has got a lovely compact golf swing. And we sometimes refer to what’s compact is it because he's a short fellow, is that why everything is compact and how can that benefit me as a golfer and should I aim to have a compact golf swing. So let's define what a compact swing is and is it a good or a bad thing. For a lot of people a compact swing does not just refer to the shape of the swing. It almost refers to the whole essence and the feeling of the swing and then it doesn't have many moving parts. If a golfer swings all legs, arms and elbows we probably wouldn't refer to it as a compact swing.

We want a swing that has very few moving parts, effectively no wasted bits, no wasted energy. So a golf swing that's quite simple and its uniformity, the way it sets to the ball, turns back, turns through and stays balanced. We’d often refer to a swing like that as a more compact swing. There's a couple of key things we would look for in a compact swing. One would actually be quite a low right elbow. So at the top of the back swing here for the right handed golfer, we set the right elbow quite low and then nicely turn back into the ball. Anything where the right elbow starts to fly, we would sort of talk about this as a high solid, long disjointed golf swing, definitely not compact, more of a low right elbow nicely through. If you ever go back and look at videos of Nick Faldo playing 1990 to 2000, that sort of stuff, nice compact golf swing from Nick Faldo, very few extra moving parts. The key attributes of a compact goal swing, generally are the repeatability, the fact we can just consistently hit the same shot over and over again. We generally don't lose a great deal of distance with a compact golf swing. As much as it might feel like it's not as long as a full swing and you're going to lose power, generally speaking you actually gain that power back by being more consistent and having better quality strikes. So a compact goal swing is definitely something that I would encourage you to look for in your own game. And these next four videos are going to really help you out in these little miniseries to understand a bit more about the compact golf swing. 2016-08-25

Saying someone's got a compact golf swing is definitely seen as a compliment. You'll often see the commentators on the TV talk about that player there has got a lovely compact golf swing. And we sometimes refer to what’s compact is it because he's a short fellow, is that why everything is compact and how can that benefit me as a golfer and should I aim to have a compact golf swing. So let's define what a compact swing is and is it a good or a bad thing. For a lot of people a compact swing does not just refer to the shape of the swing. It almost refers to the whole essence and the feeling of the swing and then it doesn't have many moving parts. If a golfer swings all legs, arms and elbows we probably wouldn't refer to it as a compact swing.

We want a swing that has very few moving parts, effectively no wasted bits, no wasted energy. So a golf swing that's quite simple and its uniformity, the way it sets to the ball, turns back, turns through and stays balanced. We’d often refer to a swing like that as a more compact swing. There's a couple of key things we would look for in a compact swing. One would actually be quite a low right elbow. So at the top of the back swing here for the right handed golfer, we set the right elbow quite low and then nicely turn back into the ball. Anything where the right elbow starts to fly, we would sort of talk about this as a high solid, long disjointed golf swing, definitely not compact, more of a low right elbow nicely through.

If you ever go back and look at videos of Nick Faldo playing 1990 to 2000, that sort of stuff, nice compact golf swing from Nick Faldo, very few extra moving parts. The key attributes of a compact goal swing, generally are the repeatability, the fact we can just consistently hit the same shot over and over again. We generally don't lose a great deal of distance with a compact golf swing. As much as it might feel like it's not as long as a full swing and you're going to lose power, generally speaking you actually gain that power back by being more consistent and having better quality strikes. So a compact goal swing is definitely something that I would encourage you to look for in your own game. And these next four videos are going to really help you out in these little miniseries to understand a bit more about the compact golf swing.