The impact position is the moment of truth in the game of golf.

If you are going to strike quality shots, you need to be in a great position when your club contacts the ball. You only get one chance to get this right, of course – impact lasts for only a fraction of a second, meaning you have to be positioned nicely if you want to send the ball in the right direction. One of the keys to a great impact position is fully extending your arms at impact, and that subject is going to be the focus of this article.

If you are a casual golfer, you may not have thought much about this point previously. Most likely, you’ve been too busy working on things like balance, head position, shoulder rotation, grip, and more. And, of course, those are all valuable elements which do require your attention. However, if you are going to reach your potential as a golfer, you should not overlook the importance of finding an extended position at the moment of impact.

In this article, we are going to discuss why it is important to extend your arms at impact, and we will also offer some tips to help you make it happen. As is always the case when talking about making changes to your golf swing, you shouldn’t expect progress to come too quickly as a result of your efforts. Never forget the significant challenge that comes along with anything you try to do in this game. It’s hard to make good swings, and it’s hard to shoot good scores. Be patient when you start working on your technique and trust that the results will show up in the long run.

All of the content below is based on a right-handed golfer. If you happen to play left handed, please take a moment to reverse the directions as necessary.

The Benefits of Fully Extended Arms

It would be silly to work on something in your golf swing that didn’t actually have much to offer in the end. You have limited practice time available, so you want to make sure to spend that time on things that are going to offer a meaningful benefit when all the work is done. With that in mind, we’d like to take some time in this section to talk about the benefits of fully extending your arms at impact.

This is going to serve a couple of purposes. First, by understanding what you stand to gain, you will have the necessary motivation to get down to work. If you didn’t have a clear picture of how your game might improve, it would be easy to skip over this point in favor of other things you can work on at the range. Also, learning how this part of the swing can help you understand where your current swing is coming up short. For instance, if a couple of the points in the list below sound familiar with relation to your game, you may quickly realize that your extension through the ball is not what you thought it was.

Without further delay, let’s take a look at some of the ways in which fully extended arms at impact can benefit your golf swing.

• Added distance. This is usually the point which gets golfers the most excited, so we may as well start with it here. When you manage to extend your arms fully through the hitting area, you will be able to unleash all of the potential power you have available in your swing. You’ll be using a big swing arc, which helps in the production of speed, and you won’t be holding anything back by guiding the club through the ball. There are other important keys that you need to hit in order to maximize your swing speed, of course, but getting great extension is a nice start. When everything in your swing comes together just right and your arms extend powerfully through impact, the ball will shoot off the face of your club with a newfound energy.
• The ability to release the face. Many amateur golfers struggle to release the face of the club properly through the hitting area. What does that mean? Simple – the face hangs open and points out to the right at impact, causing the shot to miss to the right of the target. The miss to the right could be in the form of a push, or it could be a slice. Either way, extending your arms properly will help to improve your release and bring the ball back onto the target line. Without good extension, you’ll likely be left to drag the club through the hitting area, pulling your bent left arm away from your body along the way. Don’t let yourself wind up in that weak, ineffective position. Work on your extension and make sure the club can rotate through the hitting area with authority.
• Proof of a job well done. In many ways, you can think of extended arms at impact as an indication that you have done a good job with the rest of your swing. The moment of impact arrives and disappears too quickly to take any intentional action with the club – your impact position is simply going to be a result of what has led up to that point. So, if you get through impact with your arms extended you can feel good about what you did to make that happen. Most likely, you did a nice job of turning your shoulders on the way back, and you used your lower body effectively on the way down. There are certain parts of the golf swing which can be used as a checkpoint to evaluate the rest of your technique, and extended arms at impact belongs in that category.
• Worthwhile ball flights. This last point probably isn’t one that is mentioned as much as the others, but it can be a big deal for some players. When you extend your arms nicely, you’ll be likely to strike the ball with an impact that produces a quality ball flight. These kinds of shots tend to launch low with plenty of spin, meaning the ball will climb higher as it travels. In the end, you can cover great distances with these kinds of swings, while still bringing the ball down softly when it lands. Should you happen to shorten your arms at impact and scoop the ball up off the turf, it’s unlikely you would produce anything close to the same kind of ball flight. Your shots would launch higher and with less spin, creating a shorter overall shot that is harder to control.

The average golfer stands to benefit in a number of ways by improving his or her arm extension at impact. If you do manage to take a step forward with your technique in this regard, don’t be surprised if you start to hit shots that you didn’t think were possible previously. It’s not going to be easy to get there, but arm extension through the hitting area has the potential to change your game in a dramatic way.

Preparing to Succeed



If you don’t yet understand the importance of the address position, we hope this section is the wake-up call you need to get down to work on this critical part of your technique. By building a great stance, you will be putting yourself a big step ahead of the game before the club even goes into motion. Remember, the golf swing itself only takes a couple of seconds, at the most. You don’t have time to make many corrections during the swing, because it happens so fast. To give yourself the best possible chance to hit good shots, you need to start from a good address position so that mid-swing adjustments simply aren’t required.

As it relates to extending your arms through impact, there are a few things you can do to set yourself up for success. First, you need to stand a comfortable distance from the golf ball. This is a big point, yet it is one which is ignored by many players. When standing over the ball at address, you don’t want to feel like you are reaching out awkwardly with your arms – but you don’t want to feel crowded, either. If you are standing too close, it is going to be particularly difficult to extend your arms through the shot. As a good rule of thumb, your arms should be hanging roughly straight down from your shoulders when you are in your stance and the club head is placed behind the ball. Work from that point and do some experimenting until you settle on a distance from the ball which is just right for your game.

In addition to standing the right distance from the ball, you also need to make sure your chin is up away from your chest. This one is crucial, and again, it is one that is missed by many golfers. If you were to push your chin down into your chest at address, you would struggle to make a full backswing by turning your shoulders away from the target. Your chin would get in the way of your left shoulder, your rotation would be cut short, and you probably wouldn’t be in a position to extend your arms through the hitting area. Make sure to keep your chin up, both before and during the swing, so your shoulder turn can live up to its potential.

So far, we’ve touched on two key elements of your address position that you need to watch – standing a comfortable distance from the ball and keeping your chin up away from your chest. The one other point we’d like to touch on in this section is the fact that your arms should start out fully extended when getting ready to swing. Sure, that might seem a bit obvious, but it is important nonetheless. If you stand over the ball with either of your arms bent dramatically, it’s going to be nearly impossible to find your way into an arms-extended position when impact comes around. You don’t need to stand over the ball with your arms locked out rigidly, but you also don’t want to have much bend in your elbows. The key is to find a comfortable position which is going to lead you right into a quality golf swing.

We understand that working on your address position probably isn’t very exciting. It is extremely important, however, so putting in the time necessary to improve your stance is one of the best things you can do on the range. Dedicate yourself to building a better stance and your game is likely to improve across the board.

Methods of Evaluation



One of the challenges you are going to face when trying to improve your extension at the moment of impact is the fact that you can’t actually see how you are doing in real time. After all, your arms swing through the ball much too quickly to actually see if they are extended properly while hitting the shot. You might be able to guess based on feel, but you won’t be able to know for sure whether or not you have done a good job of extending your arms all the way through the ball.

With that in mind, you need to consider some methods of evaluation to make it easier to see how you are doing. In this section, we are going to present two specific options. Either of these two options should help you easily obtain the information you need with regard to your arm extension.

• Using video. Do you have a smart phone? Most likely, the answer to that question is ‘yes’. If so, you have a video camera you can use to record your golf swing during a driving range practice session. You can either prop your phone up to take the video while practicing alone, or you can ask a friend to record a video for you. If you do ask a friend for help, be sure he or she is safely out of the way when you are hitting your shots. To get the best possible view of your arms at impact, try to have the camera positioned to shoot from the ‘face-on’ angle. As the name would indicate, this angle is obtained by positioning the camera directly in front of your face (if you looked up from address, you should see the camera a few feet away). Once the video has been taken, you can sit down and watch it back. It should be easy enough to pause the video at the moment of impact, so you can evaluate the position of your arms. If they are straight, you will know you’ve done a good job of getting extension. If not, you’ll be sure there is still work to do.
• Take a lesson. Your other main option here is to take a lesson from a golf professional. Obviously, this is not a free method, but it is one which comes with a number of potential benefits. For starters, the pro will be able to tell you confidently whether or not you are getting good extension through the hitting area. He or she may be able to tell by watching your swing live – it becomes quite easy to break down a swing when you do it for a living – or they may choose to record you on video for more in-depth instruction. Beyond learning how you are faring from an extension standpoint, working with a pro will also give you the opportunity to pick up some valuable tips. The pro may be able to spot the specific reasons that you are falling short with your extension, so your progress on this point may be accelerated in the end. Sure, you’ll have to invest a bit of money and time in this process, but the serious golfer is likely to feel that it was a good investment when all is said and done.

You never want to guess in golf. You don’t want to start making changes to your swing simply because you think you might be making a certain mistake. For instance, you don’t want to start working on changes to your swing mechanics because you feel like you might not be extending properly through impact. Instead, you want to make those changes only when you are certain that extension is a problem. Deciding to fix problems that don’t exist in the first place is only going to get you further into trouble. Take the time to objectively evaluate your technique and then move forward once you fully understand the state of your game.

A Softer Approach



It might be surprising, but in this last section we are actually going to talk about some situations where you won’t want to extend your arms fully through impact. While getting great extension is a good idea on most of the shots you play, there are times when you’ll want to soften things up and use a slightly bent lead arm to alter your ball flight. This is a bit of an advanced technique, but it is one which can greatly benefit players who successfully add it to their bag.

The first example of this kind of shot is a wedge approach that you want to keep low to the ground. For instance, picture a situation where your ball is resting in a nice spot in the fairway, only 90-yards from the hole. With a full swing, you normally hit your pitching wedge right at 100-yards. So, you are going to need to take something off of your pitching wedge to place the ball near the hole with your approach. To do so, try swinging through impact with a soft left arm and a bit of flex in your left elbow. This method is going to accomplish a couple of things. First, it is going to reduce the overall speed of the swing slightly, which is what you need to dial back the distance of the shot by a few yards. Also, you should hit a lower shot, which is exactly what you want to do on a wedge approach. Most golfers hit their wedge approach shots too high, and they struggle to control the distance of the ball as a result. Try this soft-left-arm wedge shot and you might be surprised to find how well you are able to control the outcome.

Another situation where using a soft left arm is an appealing idea is when you need to flight your ball down off the tee. A common example of this situation is when you are hitting a fairway wood or hybrid club off the tee on a narrow par four. This kind of tee shot is all about control, rather than distance, so keeping the ball down a bit is going to improve your odds of finding the short grass. The idea is the same here, in that you’ll allow your left arm to bend a bit through impact to hold the face steady and send the ball perfectly down the target line.

It should go without saying that these shots are going to take some practice to execute effectively. If you fail to practice these shots on the range, you certainly don’t want to try them on the course. Add a few of these kinds of swings into your regular practice routine and you’ll get comfortable with them before long.

We hope the information in this article will help you make meaningful improvements to your swing in the weeks and months ahead. Getting great extension through the ball is one of the keys to playing golf at a high level. The players on the professional tours tend to handle this point successfully swing after swing, and you can do the same if you are willing to practice. Good luck!

Natalie Adams – PGA Teaching Pro

Here we're going to look at why and how you should have extended arms impact as a golfer. So the reasons that you want to achieve extended arms, when you start your golf shots, you're starting with your left arm in the extended position. And that setting the distance between your upper body and the club head. If you come back into impact and you haven’t got an extended position because the left elbow is bended, the club heads moving up away from the ground and also you're going to hit the top of the ball causing you to thin the shot or top the shot out to make it difficult for you to consistently strike the ball well.

Okay also as you're swinging back, we need to work on keeping the left arm extended through the back swing and through the down swing because it's allowing you to make the widest arc possible. So the club head to move in as widely around you as it possibly can, and that's giving you time to pick club head speed up so you accelerate and deliver more speed into the ball. The other reason that we want to get the left arm strike is becoming to impact from these reasons because the only power of the speed stored up so as we coming to here we keep the left arm straight and the right arms bent. As we strike the ball if we allow the right arm to extend into the shot it really works the lever off the wrist. It really hinges that wrist, and really gets that lever working for us to deliver a very powerful shot back into the golf ball.

So really important to extend the arms to impact the left arm especially as you're impacting with the ball, and then both arms extending just after the ball to create consistency in the strike because of the height you bring in the club head back to the ball, and for the power and the club head speed that you're delivering into the ball. So how can we get you to achieve that and create this straight left arm as you strike it and then the right arm becoming straight and extended and taking over that extension on the follow through. You're struggling with pulling the left elbow, and bending the left elbow. One of the best things you can try and you can do this and actually swing with this on as you're hitting golf shots.

Get an old belt. I'm just going to use some resistance tubing here and just place it around your forearms as such. So as we do that it's creating a loop where we just physically cannot pull the arms or bend that left elbow away from the right arm. So as you're swinging back and as you come back in, it’s really going to encourage you to keep the arms nice and extended and straight to keep the elbows close together. I just physically cannot pull that left elbow away unless I drop the loop off my arms so that will give you the feeling to have of how to successfully get that left arm straight and then allow the right arm to extend through the impact position.

Another really good drill you can try as well is the right arm trail off drill. So what we're going to do with this is swing back, swing back down and as you get to impact just let you trail arm, let your right arm come off the golf club. The momentum and the speed in the golf club will allow the left arm to extend out through the shot, a impact so you create this straight arm position so just allow the right arm to come off and then the left arm will straighten out and extend the impact. Now, two really good drills for you to do and to start to get the feeling of how to fully extend your left arm impact and then allow your right arm to extend after impact for full power.