Here is one of my favorite drills to help you stop coming over the top. Now we understand the over the top motion is where the club comes out in front of your body too much and hacks across the back of the golf ball and we know there is no good that can come from that position.

But actually to stop you doing that, a lot of golfers almost make their problem worse, what we find people doing is they are so scared of swinging over the top, that they quite instinctively bring the club to the inside, they get the club a long way to the inside here, swing the club around themselves, thinking they are actually stopping themselves coming over the top. But actually what happens in a physical sense, if they swing round, and at this point they can’t swing round anymore, they kind of hit the buffers. So from there the club will come it’s way upwards and as the club works its way upwards, it now has forwards momentum that club is going to be start arcing this way. It is no longer going up on the up and down angle, it has gone around too much, now it’s going to start coming up and then the over the top position happens. And of course because you are quite flat on the way back, it’s foot far easier to come down in anything that’s over the top.

So we stress the golfers at the first part of the backswing, it’s actually the most important part of the swing. So if we take a white cane here I am going to lay this down on a sort of ball to target line here. And I might just take a second cane in here which is going to be level to where my toe position is. So there is my ball to target line in the second cane and here now, as I swing the club back, I am initially just going to do this with my left hand only, my right hand is often the one that’s guilty of bringing the club too much on the inside. So as I take my left hand, I am just going to let my shoulders rotate and my shoulders turn and now you can see that my club here is parallel to that line, I have placed that one down so you can see that parallel line there for like the train track idea. So you can see that my club is now parallel to this one on the ground pointing almost straight over the top of it, which tells me that I have taken the club back on the correct takeaway position.

So I am going to do this a few more times just with my left hand only, taking away nicely, turning the shoulders, bringing the club back nicely, one more time, turn the shoulders club comes away. What I want to avoid of course is this and I can clearly see because my cane is on the ground, this is too far to be inside, can’t turn anymore, starts to come over, chops from the outside, but if I could take the club back on a nice parallel to both lines here, I know I have got a better chance of bringing the club back down on the right line.

So we definitely don’t want it to swing over the top, but sometimes the golfer’s instinctive correction for swinging it over the top actually makes the problem worst. Go ahead and utilize this drill to ensure that you are starting yourself back with the best possible chance of not coming over the top.