Correcting The Inside Golf Swing Path (Video) - by Pete Styles
Correcting The Inside Golf Swing Path (Video) - by Pete Styles

So if we’ve established what a square and straight through and back swing path looks like, we now need to look at the faults that might surround that swing path issue. And one of those faults would be a swing path that is too much to the inside. So I lined up towards my target down on the range here. Everything is set up nicely, the club is back on a nice line, but then the club drops to the inside too much and attacks the golf ball to aggressively from the inside. Now from a FlightScope or a Trackman, we’d be looking at a number here sort of bigger than five. So five from the inside, you might get away with a draw shape. 10, 11, 12 from the inside, that’s too aggressive a number, we’re probably going to have issues with trying to control that shot. Now the two bad shots associated with being too much on the inside attacking the golf ball, would be too much of a block or a push out to the right, where we don’t square the face enough, and the face is too far to the right as well. Or we could hook the ball where the club face gets too far left in relation to the swing path and the ball might start slightly right and then hook over, it might start straighter, or it might even start left, but it will be definitely turning left. So if the swing path was too flat from the inside, club face was too far left. This ball would over draw effectively and end up looking a little bit like a hook.

Now that main issue really with dropping the golf club too much on the inside is that we got a bit too lateral in the lower body. So from the top of the backswing here, if I swing up to the top, if my lower body shifts out of the way too aggressively this way and I kind of lunge my left knee into the golf ball. For the right handed golfer, that club falls too much from the inside and then attacks too much from the inside and I have to kind of catch it up with my hands and fish for it, and it gets a bit flippy with the hands. So often quite a good player’s fault, there’s a lot of good players get into this habit, this fault because they are trying to draw the golf ball. So particularly if you’ve been a slicer in the past and you’ve been swinging, and you’ve been coming over the top, the coach or the lessons you’ve been taking should have involved trying to bringing the club down flatter. But there is an endpoint to that motion, and if you end up getting too flat, too much from the inside, too much lateral hip action, you will block it if you don’t release the face. And if you do release the face more left there is a risk that you could end up sort of pole hooking or snap hooking in the golf ball. So you need to make sure that from the top of the swing, the lower body rotates and turns, rather than slides and drops too much. Too much lateral hip action, makes the club fall too flat from the inside. That can result in blocks and fast hooks. 2015-10-08

So if we’ve established what a square and straight through and back swing path looks like, we now need to look at the faults that might surround that swing path issue. And one of those faults would be a swing path that is too much to the inside. So I lined up towards my target down on the range here. Everything is set up nicely, the club is back on a nice line, but then the club drops to the inside too much and attacks the golf ball to aggressively from the inside. Now from a FlightScope or a Trackman, we’d be looking at a number here sort of bigger than five. So five from the inside, you might get away with a draw shape. 10, 11, 12 from the inside, that’s too aggressive a number, we’re probably going to have issues with trying to control that shot. Now the two bad shots associated with being too much on the inside attacking the golf ball, would be too much of a block or a push out to the right, where we don’t square the face enough, and the face is too far to the right as well. Or we could hook the ball where the club face gets too far left in relation to the swing path and the ball might start slightly right and then hook over, it might start straighter, or it might even start left, but it will be definitely turning left. So if the swing path was too flat from the inside, club face was too far left. This ball would over draw effectively and end up looking a little bit like a hook.

Now that main issue really with dropping the golf club too much on the inside is that we got a bit too lateral in the lower body. So from the top of the backswing here, if I swing up to the top, if my lower body shifts out of the way too aggressively this way and I kind of lunge my left knee into the golf ball. For the right handed golfer, that club falls too much from the inside and then attacks too much from the inside and I have to kind of catch it up with my hands and fish for it, and it gets a bit flippy with the hands. So often quite a good player’s fault, there’s a lot of good players get into this habit, this fault because they are trying to draw the golf ball. So particularly if you’ve been a slicer in the past and you’ve been swinging, and you’ve been coming over the top, the coach or the lessons you’ve been taking should have involved trying to bringing the club down flatter. But there is an endpoint to that motion, and if you end up getting too flat, too much from the inside, too much lateral hip action, you will block it if you don’t release the face. And if you do release the face more left there is a risk that you could end up sort of pole hooking or snap hooking in the golf ball. So you need to make sure that from the top of the swing, the lower body rotates and turns, rather than slides and drops too much. Too much lateral hip action, makes the club fall too flat from the inside. That can result in blocks and fast hooks.