Natalie Adams – PGA Teaching Pro
During this swing tip, we’re going to have a look at what the correct head movement is during your golf swing. I think one of the biggest errors that beginners or higher handicap golfers can make, is listening to people who tell them, keep your head down. Keeping your head down you would never hear PGA professional saying that during a lesson. If we look at the movement of today’s leading top players, we can see that they do allow their head to move. So keeping your head down, it restricts your golf swing, it restricts your movement, it slows your speed down and you’re never going to deliver the maximum power and club head speed into the golf ball. So looking at what the leading tour players do, at a address position they’re working on getting a well balanced set up. And as they swing back they are working on trying to maintain a relatively static and stable head position. They’re not moving their head left or right, the head is maintaining quite a static stable position. Some of the tour players that we see, maybe move their head, half ahead to the right, but generally the head stays very entered over the golf ball.
When we’re talking about allowing head movement in the swing, it’s more to do with what’s happening on the downswing in your follow through. So very stable with the backswing position, the head staying over the ball very centered between the feet. But on the downswing what we’ll see is that is that better players start to squat into their golf shot. And this will actually create a dropping action in their head. Now they’re not dropping their head by losing that spine angle, so they’re not dropping like this, the spine angle is remaining constant from how they set their posture, what’s happening is the whole of the angle is just squatting down as this is a compressing movement where the players are compressing into their legs.
Now one of the main reasons for this, is to generate power you need a compression action. If you think how a tennis player would serve, if you watch a tennis player serving they would throw the ball up into the air and then squat down before they explode up. If we think about how a javelin thrower for example would throw a javelin, again they’d be running in and just before they throw, they squat down and then explode up as they release the javelin. So it’s the same for the tour players in the world at the moment. On the downswing, the top players are starting to squat and compress into their legs as they’re rotating their lower body, so that as the club starts to approach the ball, they’re able to explode up and then we see a lifting movement in their head action so they can explode and deliver full power into the golf shot. So from a very stable position on the backswing, you’re going to compress down, rotate in the lower body and compressing into the legs and then as you get to impact exploding back up where we see the head starting to lift, and the head continuing to rise into the follow through position. On the follow through, we’ll also see that the head rotates, it doesn’t remain fixed.
So hitting your golf shot and really keeping your head down and your eyes looking at the target will restrict your follow through. And again slow you down and this can cause you to hit shots to the left because your body is not able to rotate through the shot correctly because of your head position. So once you swing through, allow your eyes to follow the golf ball, allow your head to rotate to the left, and finish in a much higher position with the head than you started. That’s the correct movement for your head during your golf swing and if you start to use that during your practice sessions, you should see that you get a lot more power, a lot more accuracy.
2013-08-09 Natalie Adams – PGA Teaching Pro
During this swing tip, we’re going to have a look at what the correct head movement is during your golf swing. I think one of the biggest errors that beginners or higher handicap golfers can make, is listening to people who tell them, keep your head down. Keeping your head down you would never hear PGA professional saying that during a lesson. If we look at the movement of today’s leading top players, we can see that they do allow their head to move. So keeping your head down, it restricts your golf swing, it restricts your movement, it slows your speed down and you’re never going to deliver the maximum power and club head speed into the golf ball. So looking at what the leading tour players do, at a address position they’re working on getting a well balanced set up. And as they swing back they are working on trying to maintain a relatively static and stable head position. They’re not moving their head left or right, the head is maintaining quite a static stable position. Some of the tour players that we see, maybe move their head, half ahead to the right, but generally the head stays very entered over the golf ball.
When we’re talking about allowing head movement in the swing, it’s more to do with what’s happening on the downswing in your follow through. So very stable with the backswing position, the head staying over the ball very centered between the feet. But on the downswing what we’ll see is that is that better players start to squat into their golf shot. And this will actually create a dropping action in their head. Now they’re not dropping their head by losing that spine angle, so they’re not dropping like this, the spine angle is remaining constant from how they set their posture, what’s happening is the whole of the angle is just squatting down as this is a compressing movement where the players are compressing into their legs.
Now one of the main reasons for this, is to generate power you need a compression action. If you think how a tennis player would serve, if you watch a tennis player serving they would throw the ball up into the air and then squat down before they explode up. If we think about how a javelin thrower for example would throw a javelin, again they’d be running in and just before they throw, they squat down and then explode up as they release the javelin. So it’s the same for the tour players in the world at the moment. On the downswing, the top players are starting to squat and compress into their legs as they’re rotating their lower body, so that as the club starts to approach the ball, they’re able to explode up and then we see a lifting movement in their head action so they can explode and deliver full power into the golf shot. So from a very stable position on the backswing, you’re going to compress down, rotate in the lower body and compressing into the legs and then as you get to impact exploding back up where we see the head starting to lift, and the head continuing to rise into the follow through position. On the follow through, we’ll also see that the head rotates, it doesn’t remain fixed.
So hitting your golf shot and really keeping your head down and your eyes looking at the target will restrict your follow through. And again slow you down and this can cause you to hit shots to the left because your body is not able to rotate through the shot correctly because of your head position. So once you swing through, allow your eyes to follow the golf ball, allow your head to rotate to the left, and finish in a much higher position with the head than you started. That’s the correct movement for your head during your golf swing and if you start to use that during your practice sessions, you should see that you get a lot more power, a lot more accuracy.
