Quite often a common mistake made by a lot of beginners is what we class as the reverse pivot. And at some point when you started playing the game of golf you might have felt like you had a reverse pivot or maybe even you do still have a reverse pivot. Reverse pivot is a general term used to describe the weight moving in the incorrect direction. So when we set up to the golf ball, we might feel like we’ve got our body weight 50/50 even left foot and right foot during the backswing, we’d expect the body weight to move very slightly to the rear leg and then drive back across towards the front leg. And for a golfer that reverse pivots, this is going to be a body weight that moves the wrong way in the backswing and then again the opposite direction in the downswing and ends up hanging back far too much.

Just make sure this technique isn’t mistaken with the stack and tilt, stack and tilt’s different, stack and tilt left side, to more left side, I’m inferring a reverse pivot is left side to right side, so it’s quite a big difference here. And one of the problems with the reverse pivot is often the golfer that makes the reverse pivot by locking out their right leg in their backswing and bending their left knee in their backswing as well. So we end up locking the right side and bending too much on the left side which throws me this way and then the reverse happens in the downswing, they straighten the left knee and bend the right knee and they end up with all their body weight rocking back onto the right leg.

It’s quite a destructive shot you generally find your ball striking is not great; also your distance control with how far you hit the golf ball isn’t going to be great either. So to consider how we can break the habit of the reverse pivot, the first thing we could look at is what the right leg does, and what the right leg should do. If you got a decent setup position, you should try and avoid locking out this right leg in the backswing, locking this out, bending this one is generally going to throw your body weight too much to your left side. So we’d like to keep the right side flexed, straight and slightly but I want to avoid locking it out too much and certainly you avoid collapsing the left knee too much and too aggressively as well.

Then in the downswing, we want to consider that from this side, the left side will now straighten and the right side would come around. And the right side would follow through as the left knee straightens rather than the left knee straightening, the right knee bending and throwing you back. So your left knee would straighten up you would get your body weight onto your front side. So you start with a nice relaxed knee flex, maintain that flex in the backswing, and then straighten up onto your left side, make sure this right leg comes through with you, rather than leaning back in the follow through which is the classic reverse pivot. Using that tip there, that’s how correct knee flex can help improve your reverse pivot