What Should Your Head Do During The Swing (Video) - by Pete Styles
What Should Your Head Do During The Swing (Video) - by Pete Styles

I often think that when you watch golfers on the TV, they make the game look very, very simple. And I think for a bit of a misunderstanding really because a lot of people come to the game of golf and think, “Well I’ve seen it on telly, it looks that easy, where is that ball? Let me have a whack at it.” And they miss it, and they think, “How can it be so difficult to hit a stationery ball? Its not moving, I am not moving, no one is going to come and take it off me. The golfers on the TV they just stand still and they just turn and hit it.” But actually standing still, keeping everything still as a golfer is an incredibly difficult skill, because we are trying to move some of our body without moving other parts of our body, particularly the head position, we’ve got the head still here, we are trying to make a massive turn of the shoulders to one side, a huge shift of the body weight and accelerate a club to 100 miles an hour and we are trying to keep the head in a very still frame floating up in the air with no reference points, that’s incredibly difficult to do. And you’ll find golfers from when they were very, very small kids have worked incredibly hard on keeping that head stable as much as they can during the golf swing and restricting its movement to a certain degree. So it doesn’t go flying around and I think for golfers who sort of look at the game and think, “Well it must be easy because nothing really happens.” They misunderstand how hard a golfer has to keep everything still and we are using a lot of our body energy, a lot of body power on resisting motions.

Because if you turn your shoulders and relax you’ll probably end up over here somewhere, but as golfers we are restricting that turn and we are keeping the head still, we are letting the head move a couple of inches to the right, driving back to the left with the body weight, trying to keep the head still and then allow the head to come up to a nice big finish. Don’t misunderstand the fact here that I am telling you to keep your head down, at no point should you really feel like you’ve got to keep your head down all the way to the finish. Its keeping the head steady and then allowing the head to come up to a nice finish position and let yourself stand up at the end. So we are not fixing the head in the position in the swing throughout, but when you watch golfers next time on the telly you’ll see how stable they keep every part of their body, but they are working hard to do that, it’s not an easy thing to do. And you can spend some practice time yourself down on the driving range with a video camera or in front of a mirror trying to keep things nice and stable and don’t let that head bounce around too much. 2015-10-19

I often think that when you watch golfers on the TV, they make the game look very, very simple. And I think for a bit of a misunderstanding really because a lot of people come to the game of golf and think, “Well I’ve seen it on telly, it looks that easy, where is that ball? Let me have a whack at it.” And they miss it, and they think, “How can it be so difficult to hit a stationery ball? Its not moving, I am not moving, no one is going to come and take it off me. The golfers on the TV they just stand still and they just turn and hit it.” But actually standing still, keeping everything still as a golfer is an incredibly difficult skill, because we are trying to move some of our body without moving other parts of our body, particularly the head position, we’ve got the head still here, we are trying to make a massive turn of the shoulders to one side, a huge shift of the body weight and accelerate a club to 100 miles an hour and we are trying to keep the head in a very still frame floating up in the air with no reference points, that’s incredibly difficult to do. And you’ll find golfers from when they were very, very small kids have worked incredibly hard on keeping that head stable as much as they can during the golf swing and restricting its movement to a certain degree. So it doesn’t go flying around and I think for golfers who sort of look at the game and think, “Well it must be easy because nothing really happens.” They misunderstand how hard a golfer has to keep everything still and we are using a lot of our body energy, a lot of body power on resisting motions.

Because if you turn your shoulders and relax you’ll probably end up over here somewhere, but as golfers we are restricting that turn and we are keeping the head still, we are letting the head move a couple of inches to the right, driving back to the left with the body weight, trying to keep the head still and then allow the head to come up to a nice big finish. Don’t misunderstand the fact here that I am telling you to keep your head down, at no point should you really feel like you’ve got to keep your head down all the way to the finish. Its keeping the head steady and then allowing the head to come up to a nice finish position and let yourself stand up at the end. So we are not fixing the head in the position in the swing throughout, but when you watch golfers next time on the telly you’ll see how stable they keep every part of their body, but they are working hard to do that, it’s not an easy thing to do. And you can spend some practice time yourself down on the driving range with a video camera or in front of a mirror trying to keep things nice and stable and don’t let that head bounce around too much.