The Golf Swing Is More Than Hands And Arms (Video) - by Pete Styles
The Golf Swing Is More Than Hands And Arms (Video) - by Pete Styles

Now, we’ve talked about the importance of how squaring the clubface to target is influenced quite greatly by the hands and the grip, but it isn’t solely their responsibility to do that. And I think a lot of golfers struggle with squaring the face consistently, because when they’re standing making swings it’s pretty much just the hands and arms you swing and the body is not really involved too much. So here is a couple of key tips to help the body get involved to encourage the clubface to come back square.

The first thing I’d like you to consider is how you start your golf swing and how you should start your golf swing with your lead shoulder. So as you set up I’ve got an 8-Iron here setting up to the ball face on for you guys. I’m going to start the swing with my lead shoulder, that left shoulder is going to push around underneath my chin and everything takes the club away in one piece. What I’m not doing here is using my hands, generally speaking using my hands I’m probably going to be opening the clubface too much or lifting the golf club into a closed position this way. So it’s going to be utilising the left shoulder to start the back swing, that's going to help me get a nice turn of my body to keep the clubface square on the way back and through the ball. My second element that I’d encourage you to work on is to engage the lower body correctly. We often see golfers who struggle to square the club face at impact and they trend to get their lower body a bit disengaged. So disengaged would be either doing nothing, so straight legs swinging with the hands and arms and the lower body is doing nothing here or actually doing a bit too much. So right leg locking out, left leg bending, right leg locking out, left leg bending. This sort of thing isn’t really going to encourage you to have any control to help square that clubface. So we want to be a little bit more careful that we turn the shoulders, engage the lower body and then really let your hips drive it home. So from the top of the backswing here the hips – because the lower body is engaged, the hips can drive it home and turn around towards the target and as the hips turn around towards the target they’re going to help encourage that clubface to come around square as well. Generally speaking not using the hips enough is probably actually going to cause the hands to do too much work and hook the ball down the left hand side for the right-hander, sliding the hips too much this way might encourage the face to be too far open and the ball blocks to the right hand side. But actually having everything nice and square working in unison should bring that clubface back square. So we know your hands have an important role to play here, but don’t mistake the fact that your body is still important in terms of squaring that clubface for straighter longer golf shots. 2016-09-27

Now, we’ve talked about the importance of how squaring the clubface to target is influenced quite greatly by the hands and the grip, but it isn’t solely their responsibility to do that. And I think a lot of golfers struggle with squaring the face consistently, because when they’re standing making swings it’s pretty much just the hands and arms you swing and the body is not really involved too much. So here is a couple of key tips to help the body get involved to encourage the clubface to come back square.

The first thing I’d like you to consider is how you start your golf swing and how you should start your golf swing with your lead shoulder. So as you set up I’ve got an 8-Iron here setting up to the ball face on for you guys. I’m going to start the swing with my lead shoulder, that left shoulder is going to push around underneath my chin and everything takes the club away in one piece. What I’m not doing here is using my hands, generally speaking using my hands I’m probably going to be opening the clubface too much or lifting the golf club into a closed position this way. So it’s going to be utilising the left shoulder to start the back swing, that's going to help me get a nice turn of my body to keep the clubface square on the way back and through the ball.

My second element that I’d encourage you to work on is to engage the lower body correctly. We often see golfers who struggle to square the club face at impact and they trend to get their lower body a bit disengaged. So disengaged would be either doing nothing, so straight legs swinging with the hands and arms and the lower body is doing nothing here or actually doing a bit too much. So right leg locking out, left leg bending, right leg locking out, left leg bending. This sort of thing isn’t really going to encourage you to have any control to help square that clubface. So we want to be a little bit more careful that we turn the shoulders, engage the lower body and then really let your hips drive it home.

So from the top of the backswing here the hips – because the lower body is engaged, the hips can drive it home and turn around towards the target and as the hips turn around towards the target they’re going to help encourage that clubface to come around square as well. Generally speaking not using the hips enough is probably actually going to cause the hands to do too much work and hook the ball down the left hand side for the right-hander, sliding the hips too much this way might encourage the face to be too far open and the ball blocks to the right hand side. But actually having everything nice and square working in unison should bring that clubface back square. So we know your hands have an important role to play here, but don’t mistake the fact that your body is still important in terms of squaring that clubface for straighter longer golf shots.