Golf Drill Tip: Downhill lie - What the swing does (Video) - by Pete Styles
Golf Drill Tip: Downhill lie - What the swing does (Video) - by Pete Styles

So we now find ourselves in a position where we found the golf ball on the very severe downsloping lie, so its around a 10-degree down slope, it is pointing straight to my target line, so as I set up to this, I am initially going to consider how this down slope affects my swing. Now from my set up position I can feel the hill is very dramatically trying to pull me on to my left hand side, so it could mean that in my back swing I struggle to rotate back and I struggle to get behind the ball in the firs instance. So I stay too much on my left side, I lean into the left side and become off balance stepping forwards which is going to cause me problems with the striking and the direction of the shots, the other issue that we often see from this sort of lie for golf is that they feel they are leaning too far on their left-hand side and the back swing, so they actually compensate for that reverse pivot and pull back out of the shot, lot of golfers also do that because they are desperately trying to get the ball up into the air, so the feeling is the ball will go too low, so they lean back and try and hit the ball higher because of that. All you will do that is hit the ground. If the down slope is here and you will swing trying to scoop the ball into the air, you will never get to the ball because you hit the ground first. So we have to be very conscious of body weight position in the down swing and back swing, so not leaning too far left but then also not leaning too far right and reverse pivoting out of it, so that's the effect that the downhill slope will have on your body movement and on your swing.

 2013-03-27

So we now find ourselves in a position where we found the golf ball on the very severe downsloping lie, so its around a 10-degree down slope, it is pointing straight to my target line, so as I set up to this, I am initially going to consider how this down slope affects my swing. Now from my set up position I can feel the hill is very dramatically trying to pull me on to my left hand side, so it could mean that in my back swing I struggle to rotate back and I struggle to get behind the ball in the firs instance. So I stay too much on my left side, I lean into the left side and become off balance stepping forwards which is going to cause me problems with the striking and the direction of the shots, the other issue that we often see from this sort of lie for golf is that they feel they are leaning too far on their left-hand side and the back swing, so they actually compensate for that reverse pivot and pull back out of the shot, lot of golfers also do that because they are desperately trying to get the ball up into the air, so the feeling is the ball will go too low, so they lean back and try and hit the ball higher because of that. All you will do that is hit the ground. If the down slope is here and you will swing trying to scoop the ball into the air, you will never get to the ball because you hit the ground first. So we have to be very conscious of body weight position in the down swing and back swing, so not leaning too far left but then also not leaning too far right and reverse pivoting out of it, so that's the effect that the downhill slope will have on your body movement and on your swing.