Pete Finch – PGA Teaching Pro

Generally speaking, if you have an over the top golf swing, it will greatly come out and it will be more noticeable with longer the club, you notice people who swing over the top quite readily with the driver because this is a longer club, because they are putting more speed into the entire action, they are moving through the ball and swinging it massively off to the left-hand side, normally resulting in that nice big slice. But how does it affect the short game? And how does it affect shots around the green?

 
Generally speaking, people who swing from over the top during the full swing can actually improve that path by working on this area of the game. But if you are still swinging from out to in, there are a few things that you need to pay attention to. Firstly, if you are getting yourself set up in a nice neutral manner and you are also swinging from out to in, this could start to present a little bit more of the heel to the ball first, also often causing the dreaded lateral shot that will not be mentioned. So, actually improving path will make quite a big difference.

Often what you find is people who do swing from out to in on chip shot, they are actually better closing their stance to get a more improved strike. The only problem is as you move more and more open, the other thing that will encourage you is more than out to in swing path. So, really going down the avenue will not be advisable. So, getting yourself slightly closed and then swinging over the top can really help straighten our ball flights on the straight shots.

However, generally speaking, to get the most control that you can out of the path to get the most control you can out of the club face with the short game, you want to be trying to make a little bit more of a neutral swing path and therefore if you do want to work on your over the top movement, here is a very, very good place to start.