Pete Styles – PGA Teaching Pro

If we've got a feeling now and an understanding of how important is left hip movement is into the golf ball we want to be driving forward and turning through this idea of this lateral rotation. It's also important to look after what could go wrong with this, what would be the bad habit if a golfer was to get this wrong and for a lot of golfers it's the left hip moving upwards during the downswing phase. So, coming in towards the golf ball the left hip is coming up to high here and we often say a golfer that does this ends up on that front tiptoe with their front heel way off the floor and instead of jump up through the ball it's going to be quite a big issue particularly when you're hitting your irons.

Now you know golfers might say well, I've seen the best players in the world and they jump [indiscernible] [0:00:51] Bubba Watson and the real good long drive guys specializing in long driving. They do jump up a little bit through the ball to maximize power that took about ground force reaction where they’re driving down into the floor and then coming up and they will have that left hip rising.

The difference is that generally hitting drive is off a tee peg. When the ball is in the air we can come from low to high and hit upon it. It's a slightly different case when we've got a golfer he is trying to hit an iron off the ground. We know that iron on the ground, we can't hit up because you'll hit the ground, you’ve got to hit down, you've got to strike down and it stands to a reason that if I'm trying to hit down this way and this part of my body is going up there’s going to be quite a lot of conflict. There is going to be some conflict in the golf swing.

So a golfer really needs to focus on the fact the left hip is not coming up, but is moving across and around and if the left hip is coming up what might you see as a fault. Well, the first thing it's going to be probably leaning back. So as the left hip comes up this way the right hip is down we’re going to end up leaning back this way, potentially causing issues of hitting the top of the ball or hitting the ground too much as well and so you'll get an inconsistency in your ball striking and if everything is inconsistent through here with the body weight going this way the ball is just not going to fly consistently. Particularly not when you're in bad lies; you know if you're on a good lie, you're on a tee peg we get away with the inconsistency that might be all right; but on a bad lie or a wet lies I've got today that left hip going up is really going to cause problems.

You might also actually lose a bit of power because as your left hip comes up your body weight gets thrown back, you know driving forwards right well. So there is going to be issues there, so the key to focus on is the left hip does not move up during your down swing, but it moves forward slightly in the backswing that it laterally rotates and the impact with your irons you should really feel like you're heavy on your left side, left leg is straightening, left hip is turning back, but it's not moving upwards and we’re definitely not seeing the left heel leave the ground during the golf downswing.