Maintain Forward Bend Throughout Swing, Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles
Maintain Forward Bend Throughout Swing, Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles

If you're struggling with some wild inconsistencies in your ball striking particularly when you're having problems with the vertical ball strike, hitting the top and the bottom line of the golf ball too much, you could consider whether your spine angle is altering during your swing process. So I start by setting up to the golf ball correctly if I turn from this side and just make sure that your posture and your spine angle is correct to start with. We need to be tilting forwards from the hips and not from the waist. We need to be making sure that we've got a nice tilt forwards. Somebody far cleverer than me tells me it's 36 degrees for a tall professional so a nice, straight up 36-degree tilt forwards. Then the angle of the shaft should sort of dissect the posture by about 90 degrees so I’m not standing up like this. I’m not tilting over too much, just a nice, solid setup position.

Then try to maintain that posture in setup throughout the swing. A good way of imagining that would be imagine there’s a brick wall built right in front of here and if you were to dip your head forwards or pull your head back during the swing, you would change your relationship to that brick wall. If you've got an opportunity to do this at home, you can actually try this. It works quite well actually. Put a baseball cap on and then rest the peak of the cap against the wall. It stops you actually head butting the wall yourself but the rest peak of the cap against the wall and just practice making dummy swings. You want to have room for any club but a dummy swing here and you'll feel whether you're losing your balance or whether you're inclining or declining your head positioning, your spine angle. So try and help that spine angle maintaining one position by getting good, solid balance and a good setup. That should help you to swing through and be at exactly the right height or impact because if you stood up during the backswing, you won't reach the floor and if you drop during the backswing, you'll smash it into the ground so a good, solid spine angle to start with and then maintain that spine angle as if there’s a brick wall in front of you. That should encourage you to keep the same spine angle throughout your swing and that will improve your consistency.

 2012-09-17

If you're struggling with some wild inconsistencies in your ball striking particularly when you're having problems with the vertical ball strike, hitting the top and the bottom line of the golf ball too much, you could consider whether your spine angle is altering during your swing process. So I start by setting up to the golf ball correctly if I turn from this side and just make sure that your posture and your spine angle is correct to start with. We need to be tilting forwards from the hips and not from the waist. We need to be making sure that we've got a nice tilt forwards. Somebody far cleverer than me tells me it's 36 degrees for a tall professional so a nice, straight up 36-degree tilt forwards. Then the angle of the shaft should sort of dissect the posture by about 90 degrees so I’m not standing up like this. I’m not tilting over too much, just a nice, solid setup position.

Then try to maintain that posture in setup throughout the swing. A good way of imagining that would be imagine there’s a brick wall built right in front of here and if you were to dip your head forwards or pull your head back during the swing, you would change your relationship to that brick wall. If you've got an opportunity to do this at home, you can actually try this. It works quite well actually. Put a baseball cap on and then rest the peak of the cap against the wall. It stops you actually head butting the wall yourself but the rest peak of the cap against the wall and just practice making dummy swings. You want to have room for any club but a dummy swing here and you'll feel whether you're losing your balance or whether you're inclining or declining your head positioning, your spine angle. So try and help that spine angle maintaining one position by getting good, solid balance and a good setup. That should help you to swing through and be at exactly the right height or impact because if you stood up during the backswing, you won't reach the floor and if you drop during the backswing, you'll smash it into the ground so a good, solid spine angle to start with and then maintain that spine angle as if there’s a brick wall in front of you. That should encourage you to keep the same spine angle throughout your swing and that will improve your consistency.