Iron Play

Bermuda Blues

If you’re planning a golf vacation this winter, be prepared to face a course element common to most tracks in Hawaii, Arizona and Florida: Bermuda grass. If you’re not accustomed to playing on this type of turf, you may be surprised at how it can affect your game, both on the fairway and the putting surface.

In the fairway, Bermuda’s inherent structure often will cause your ball to sit up. Despite the fluffiness of the lie, don’t approach the shot as if the ball is teed up and attempt to scoop the ball off the turf. Due to the nature of the lie and the scoop swing, the ball will fly high, but it also will float more than usual, making it more susceptible to wind. Make sure you play the ball back a few inches in your stance (being careful not to move your hands back as well). This small adjustment will help you achieve a more penetrating ballflight by encouraging the hands to lead the clubface into the hitting zone.

On the putting green, the situation becomes even more dicey. Bermuda grass aggressively seeks out light and, therefore, tends to grow in the direction of the setting sun. This creates a crook in its growing pattern, which establishes the tremendous grain for which Bermuda putting surfaces are known. It’s imperative to have a clear read of the grain before any putt, even a two-footer.

Before reading any putt on a Bermuda green, walk to the hole and give the sides of the cup a good look. One half will look brown and ragged; the other half will be green and cleanly cut. The brown side of the hole indicates the side opposite the grain of the grass. Your putt generally will tend to drift toward that side of the cup and green.

PGA pro Eddie Lee instructs at Wailea Golf Club in Maui, Hawaii.

Swing Extremes: Impact Position

All good players have one position in the golf swing that’s similar despite their very different-looking swings. This position is impact. Good players retain their wrist-cock through the hitting area so that their left wrist is bowed and the right wrist is flexed (for right-handed golfers), and both hands are slightly in front of the golf ball at the strike. This is often called a late hit or clubhead lag, and good players use both to create a tremendous amount of clubhead speed and power in their swings.

High-handicappers tend to do the opposite at impact. Instead of a late hit, they actually execute what’s called an early release. They scoop the ball at impact because they lose the lag too early in the downswing. Instead of having a bowed left wrist and their hands ahead of the ball at impact, they have a collapsed left wrist and their hands are behind the ball. As such, they suffer a tremendous loss of power and direction and end up with a very weak hit. Golfers with this problem tend to hit the ball better with their woods than their irons because the ball is teed up and they can get away with scooping or hitting up on the ball. In order to hit solid irons shots and better drives more consistently, however, it’s necessary to hit down with a flat left wrist that’s ahead of the ball at impact.

To create a late hit, you must sequence the swing so that your hands, wrists and clubhead arrive at impact in the correct order. This is called sequencing.

Sequencing
First, check your left-hand grip (your right if you’re left-handed) to make sure that the club handle is held primarily in the fingers as opposed to the palm. When you look down at your grip, you should see at least two knuckles on your left_Ê hand at address. The V formed by the thumbs and forefingers on both hands should point to the right side of your face.

If you can’t see at least two knuckles, your grip is primarily in the palm, and this will make it difficult for you to create the necessary wrist hinge for a late hit at impact.

Second, as you swing back, allow your wrists to hinge naturally. To help create wrist hinge, imagine that there’s a hole in the butt end of the club and the shaft is full of water. As you swing back, pour the water out of the shaft onto your right leg. The wrists should be fully hinged by the time the left arm becomes parallel to the ground. This backswing wrist hinge must be duplicated in the downswing.

Third, as you start down, feel as if you’re leading with the butt end of the club. Try to maintain your wrist cocked as long as possible on the downswing before allowing the clubhead to whip through impact. Think of impact as a finish line to a race. Your left hand should come in first place, the right hand should come in second, and the clubhead should come in third. If you let the clubhead win the race, you’ll fail to achieve the correct impact position.

To ingrain the feel of this position, practice putting yourself in the correct impact arrangement. Start at your address position, with your weight evenly distributed. Your arms and club should form an uppercase Y. Now, shift your lower body weight and hands toward your target. Your hips should be slightly open, your left wrist should be flat and there should be some angle in the back of your right wrist. The capital Y formed by your arms and club at address should now resemble a lowercase y. Hold this position for a few seconds and repeat. Next, make a full swing, focusing on creating the lowercase y at contact. With a little practice, your shots will become straighter and more powerful.

Class-A LPGA teaching professional Karen Palacios-Jansen is the director of instruction for Swing Blade Golf Enterprises (www.swingbladegolf.com)._Ê

Swing Extremes: Swing Plane

Professional and low-handicap golfers consider the swing plane to be one of the most important concepts in golf. Swing plane directly relates to how straight, high and far one can hit the ball. At the same time, swing plane is one of the most intimidating terms for high-handicappers, simply because they’re not sure what a swing plane is, let alone what a good one looks like.

Swing plane is simply the angle of your swing arc in relation to the ground. If you made a perfectly upright swing, the club would travel on an arc perpendicular to the ground, like a Ferris wheel. If your swing plane were perfectly flat, the club would swing around your body horizontal to the ground like a merry-go-round.

Your swing plane is influenced by your height, body type, posture and how you swing your arms and turn your body. The plane also differs from club to club, because of the lie angle of the club and the lie of the ball on the ground. For example, the shorter the club, the more upright your swing plane will be. If the ball is on a sidehill lie where the ball is above your feet, your swing plane will naturally be flatter.

To envision a perfect swing plane, imagine a dotted line drawn from the ball, along the clubshaft and up past the grip. This is your swing plane line. As you execute your takeaway, the club should remain on the same plane angle as your imaginary dotted line until the clubshaft is parallel to the ground, or about one-quarter through the backswing. From here, the club might move slightly above the dotted line as it reaches the top, a by-product of the required lifting action of your arms. Don’t worry, this is a natural move!

The natural change of direction from backswing to downswing should drop the club back on the dotted line so the clubhead approaches the ball on the same plane as it was at address. Through impact, the critical rotation of your forearms keeps the club on the line well into the finish. As you can see, the perfect swing plane has a few ups and downs, but adhering to a consistent plane will help you maintain balance and allow you to swing aggressively.

Plane Opposites
High-handicappers, because of poor swing mechanics or misconceptions regarding swing plane, begin their swings by rolling the club away from their bodies on the takeaway, which immediately puts the club under the swing plane or dotted line. From this position, the player can only lift the club to finish the backswing and then come over the top, or above the swing plane, on the downswing. From here, all you can do is hit the ball from an outside path, a major cause of slices and pulls.

The key: Stay on plane as much as possible, especially in the beginning of the backswing. If you’re on plane at this critical part of the backswing, you’re more likely to remain on plane throughout the entire swing.

Plane Drill
No one has a perfect swing plane, but good ballstrikers manage to keep the club on plane throughout the critical takeaway and followthrough parts of the swing. Here’s a drill to help you learn the correct swing plane once and for all.

With a short-iron, grip down on the shaft so that the butt end of the club almost touches your belly button. As you swing back, maintain the triangle formed by your hands and forearms by keeping the butt end of the club pointing at your belly until the clubhead is just outside your right foot. An early body turn or an early break of the wrists will destroy the triangle and move the club under the swing plane line. If you keep the club pointed at your belly and your triangle intact, your clubface will remain square (as it should) and remain on plane. As a secondary check, make sure that the clubhead lies outside the hands and your right arm sits above the left.

As you start the downswing, drop your arms so the butt end of the club points away from your belly. This is the correct delivery position, where the clubhead is on plane and approaches the ball from an inside path.

If you’re ever off plane on the backswing, you’ll be forced to throw the clubhead from the top and the butt end of the club will point back to your belly button. This is the exact opposite of what you want to do. From this position, you’ll slice, pull or top the ball.

To sum up the perfect plane, keep the butt end of the club pointing toward your belly on the takeaway and away from your belly on the downswing. You don’t have to be perfect, but don’t do the opposite.

Class-A LPGA teaching professional Karen Palacios-Jansen is the Director of Instruction for Swing Blade Golf Enterprises (www.swingbladegolf.com).

Make Elbow Room for Iron Play Success

Editor’s Note: Story updated May 20, 2016 — Contrary to popular belief, the arms and elbows, from address to the top of the backswing, travel only a short distance. This is a reality few recreational players grasp. Most choose to believe that the arms and elbows travel a very great distance, and this is what provides power in the golf swing. These golfers are drastically misinformed. Power isn’t generated by swinging the arms and elbows out and away from your body. In fact, just the opposite is true. Read on to learn why and how to develop a more compact, more efficient and more productive swing — to make elbow room for more iron play success.

Compact Hinge

A key concept to understand is that the arms, which are positioned in front of the chest at address, must remain in front of the chest throughout the swing. Keeping your arms and elbows in front of you begins with being able to execute a proper right elbow hinge. Most amateurs are guilty of hinging the elbow backward, an error that moves the right forearm under the swing plane, eventually trapping it behind the right hip on the forwardswing.

The right elbow should hinge up, not back. Maintain your arms’ position in front of your chest and also keep your right forearm on the plane of your swing. Your shoulder turn brings the club behind your head, not your arms. It’s true with every club but especially with iron play.

You can practice the correct elbow hinge with any club. Following the takeaway, focus on folding the right elbow up, not out behind you. Your swing should feel much more vertical than before. More importantly, it should feel shorter. That’s a good thing since, whether you believe it or not, a good backswing is only 18 inches long. From setup to the top, your right elbow should move just about a foot and a half, from the center of your torso to just outside the right hip.

Despite its smaller-than-expected length, a true backswing fuels a simpler swing, is loaded with big-time power and makes it much easier to return to impact without hindrances or compensations.

A proper right elbow hinge is paramount to creating a fundamentally solid backswing. But it’s only a small piece to a bigger puzzle. The secret to better golf is to get rightly related at the top—a requirement that involves the establishment of four key angles, all of which are 90 degrees.

The first 90-degree angle is created by the right elbow. As you fold the elbow up (not behind, remember), it should hinge to 90 degrees. This 90-degree fold is measured from the right bicep to the right forearm. The other three 90-degree angles are made between 1) the right tricep and the right side of your torso; 2) your clubshaft and your right forearm; and 3) your shoulder line and the target line. Establishing these four angles adds extension and coil while keeping the backswing relatively short, compact and simple.

Stand up where you are and assume your standard address position. With your left hand resting on your hip, bring your right arm up and fold it 90 degrees right in front of you. That’s one 90-degree angle. Now, check that your right tricep makes a right angle with your torso. That’s 90-degree angle number two. Next, hinge the right elbow so that if you were holding a golf club in that hand, the shaft would make a right angle to your right forearm. That’s angle number three.

The last step in the drill is to simply rotate your shoulders 90 degrees or as much as your flexibility will allow. As you execute this turn, don’t allow your folded right elbow to move away from its set position. The right elbow should move only as far as it’s moved by your shoulder turn. Note how simple this all feels. This is being rightly related to your turn with your arms and elbows, and something you should strive for if you’re serious about improving.

Next, incorporate both arms at the preset position and turn again. Do this in front of a mirror and take a good look at what a full, loaded golf swing truly looks like. Quickly check that your hands lie just above the right shoulder and that your left arm is even with your right shoulder. More important, notice how your arms and elbows are situated only a small distance from where they were at address. Like I said, 18 inches is all it takes. For further proof, watch any professional the next time a tournament airs on TV. The modern greats never take their hands past 11:00, and nearly all of them keep their arms in front of their chest.

Now, try the same drill with a golf club. In practice, your goal is to find the simplest move from setup to the top that relocates your arms and elbows rightly in front of you.

Moving On

If you can get correctly set at the top, all that’s left to do is to return your right elbow and forearm intact to your right leg on the downswing. The key here is to refrain from folding the elbow backward. Return your right elbow and arm to your right leg by maintaining your elbow fold and following the same route they took on the way to the top. As you reach impact, let everything unfold. You should find that, at impact, your hands, arms and elbows are in a much more forward position than where they were at address, which delofts the clubface and produces strong, boring trajectory shots. You should also find that your right elbow isn’t nearly as trapped as it may have been before because of the correct forwardswing movements. If so, you’ve eliminated a major flaw from your swing.

I’ve always felt that, once understood, the correct hinging and movement of the right elbow will accelerate improvement more than any other facet of the golf swing. Over the next few weeks, perform the 90/90/90/90 exercise and use the new motions on the range. Start small, with half-wedge swings, then progress to full swings, then to your mid- and long-irons. Suddenly, you’re only 18 inches from glory.

Got Angle?

A correct folding of the right elbow is evidenced by four key right angles: 1) between your right tricep and your torso; 2) between the right tricep and right forearm; 3) between your right arm and the clubshaft; and 4) between your shoulder line and the target line. If you can create these four angles, you’ll successfully create a more compact swing and correctly maintain your arms in front of your body throughout.

PGA professional Joe Thiel instructs at the World Wide Golf Schools in Olympia, Wash.

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This story was originally published in 2004

Hands On!

Like all sports, golf requires a high degree of hand-eye coordination, as well as advanced hand motor skills. If you don’t employ your hands correctly, you’ll find it difficult to hit quality golf shots consistently. As a golfer who’s serious about improving, it’s imperative that you learn what role the hands play in the golf swing. Once you do, you’ll have all the tools to take your shotmaking to a much higher level.

A Key Relationship
I’m sure you’ve read your fair share of instruction articles on how to grip the golf club correctly, and that you’ve been able to develop a fundamentally solid hold on the club. What you may not be aware of is how your grip affects your cocking/hinging mechanism and, as a result, the position of your clubface. This relationship is important, and if you fail to recognize its dynamics, you’ll struggle even if your grip is perfect.

A weak hold, one which features the back of the left hand (for right-handed golfers) pointing to the target and the V formed by the thumb and forefinger pointing toward the right ear, must incorporate a cocking/hinging mechanism that produces a flat left wrist at the top. Keeping the left wrist from cupping is essential to keeping the clubface on-line during the swing. If, from a weak hold, you hinge your wrists so that the left wrist cups, you’ll rotate the clubface too far open on the backswing. Only the player blessed with ultra-fast hand speed will be able to square up the face at impact from this position.

Grip/Clubface

A stronger grip, one in which the back of the left hand points more toward the sky than the target and the V formed by the thumb and forefinger points toward the right shoulder, is better able to accommodate a left wrist cup at the top, if that is indeed your preference. The key is to refrain from trying to keep the left wrist too flat as you hinge the club to the top. A strong grip plus flat left wrist at the top usually results in a laying off of the club or swinging too far to the inside. Only a serious combination of compensations can get the face and club back on plane and on the correct delivery path.

There have been as many good players with weak grips as there have been good players with strong grips. The common denominator is that a good golfer knows how to match grip type with the wrist-hinging mechanism that makes it easy to return the face to square at the point of impact. The grip is a personal entity–you should adopt a hold that feels the most comfortable. However, most skilled golfers claim that it’s easier to maintain the relationship between the weak grip and the hinging mechanism that produces a flat left wrist at the top than the converse.

Flat Practice
With a 7-iron in hand and a weaker grip, hinge your wrists upward and downward in front of you (see photo at left). As you do, check the back of the left wrist to make sure you aren’t cupping it, but rather keeping it flat, so flat that you could place a ruler across the back of your left wrist and the left forearm without there being a gap. The clubface should point toe up if the hinge is correct.

Next, hinge the club upward 90 degrees in front of you, again keeping your left wrist flat, and rotate your body so that the shaft points perpendicularly to your toe line just outside your right foot. Take that hinge to the top without allowing any additional concavity in your left wrist. At this position, check the wrinkles in your left wrist. If you’ve kept your left wrist flat, they should only be between the left thumb and the side of the left wrist. If you’ve allowed your left wrist to cup, you’ll find wrinkles across the back of the left wrist.

Strong Concave Wrist

A More-Desired Hold
Despite the fact that the weak grip/flat left wrist relationship is easier to control, I prefer that my students adopt a stronger left-hand hold. For one, a stronger grip paired with a slight left wrist cup allows for more hinge, which helps create additional lag in the transition from backswing to downswing and can generate greater clubhead speed.

If you’re looking for more power in your swing, grip the club so that the V created by the left thumb and forefinger points toward the right shoulder. The right hand should be positioned so that the palm faces the target. As expected, a stronger hold requires a completely different hinging mechanism. The hinge itself will have a much more concave type of look to it and make it a lot easier to set additional angles during both sides of the swing.

Concave Practice
To feel the correct hinging procedure based on the stronger hold, hinge the club right in front of you as before. At the top of the hinge, your left wrist should be slightly concave with the toe up and in perfect relationship to the hinge. If you took that stronger hold and hinged into the flat wrist position, you’ll discover that the face closes–now you have to find a way to open the face on the downswing so that it’s square at impact.

To understand the big picture, change to a weak grip and hinge the club so that the left wrist cups. Now, the face has opened and, suddenly, compensations are needed to bring the clubface to a squared position at impact. See how the hinge and hold must match?

Return to your stronger hold, hinge the club up, build in the desired concavity in your left wrist, and rotate your body to the right, like I asked earlier. Take that hinge to the top of the swing without adjustments of any kind. This is your top position that puts everything in ready delivery for the forward motion.

I believe it’s a whole lot easier to play with a stronger hold than it is with the weaker one. Nevertheless, my ultimate recommendation is to use a grip that allows you to employ your natural hinge and still maintain the proper clubface angle from address to impact. This requires a small amount of experimentation, but just a bit of trial and error will pay huge dividends.

Hinge Drill
Using a strong grip, hinge the club in front of you so that the left wrist cups slightly. Notice how the face remains square. Perform the same drill, but this time hinge so the left wrist remains flat. Presto–the face closes. If you paired a weak hold with a left wrist cup, the face would rotate open. The grip/hinge relationship is an important one to know and work to your advantage.

PGA Master Professional Joe Thiel has taught the game of golf for more than 30 years. He instructs at World Wide Golf Schools in Olympia, Wash.

Get Over The Tops

For many golfers, topping the ball is a serious problem. Not only are worm burners the ugliest shots to watch in golf, but they invariably put your ball into horrendous situations from which to escape.

When a student comes to me fighting the tops, the first thing I do is help him or her understand that, on all full swings with an iron, it’s crucial to execute a downward strike on the golf ball, not an upward lift or scoop. Anything but a descending blow increases the likelihood that you’ll catch the ball above its equator, a scenario that produces the top. Of course, your motion may need more help than simply to hit down on the ball. Nonetheless, the following Break The Tee drill works wonders.

Set a tee in the ground so that the top of the tee rests just above the turf. Assume your standard address position and make your swing with the primary goal being to clip the tee out of the ground. This isn’t as easy as it seems, especially for a chronic topper. The key is to really go down after it, with no lifting or flinching at impact. The proper forward shift of weight targetward on the downswing also is required to steepen the path.

After a few swings, you should be able to not only clip the tee, but to break it and send it flying from the turf along with a healthy divot. Now, place a golf ball on the tee and continue the drill. If you make the same downward swing, your top shot will be replaced by one that rises quickly with plenty of backspin. After a dozen or so solid strikes, take the tee out and continue to ingrain the feeling of breaking the tee.

PGA professional Barry Goldstein instructs at Polar Shot Golf Center in Johnson City, N.Y., and Inverrary Golf Club in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Square At Impact Is A Myth

Believe it or not, the long-held belief that the clubface must be square through the hitting zone to hit straight shots is a myth. Over the past 10 years, I’ve measured the activity of the clubface during Tour players’ swings through the impact zone, and what I’ve learned is that not a single player holds the clubface square during the hitting area. Not one! In fact, these top-level players rotate the face counterclockwise around the shaft (for right-handed players) at about 30 degrees per foot of linear motion forward.

Put another way, the clubface is 30 degrees open 12 inches from the center of the ball before impact and 30 degrees closed 12 inches past where the center of the ball was after impact. This means that the clubface is only square when it reaches a point somewhere near the center of the golf ball. It also means that when the clubface first touches the ball, it’s actually open instead of square.

If your clubface is square when it first touches the ball, and you correctly allow the clubface to rotate six degrees counterclockwise, you’ll get a six-degree hook that starts left of the target and hooks further left. In contrast, if the club touches the ball with the face six degrees open, it will apply an initial six-degree slice rotation. This will be negated, however, by the six-degree hook rotation applied during the deformation phase. The result is sidespin of net zero and a straight shot.

If you strike the ball with the face anywhere in the three- to nine-degree open range, you’ll hit a perfectly acceptable golf shot. It should be reassuring to know that a six-degree variation at impact will produce decent results. In measuring Tour players’ face angles at impact, I found a five-degree variation, shot to shot.

Put these new concepts to the test the next time you visit the range. Address the ball with the face six to 10 degrees open, instead of square. Turn the shaft counterclockwise through the impact zone and observe the resulting ballflight. If the ball flies left, you turned the face too soon. If it goes right, you turned the face too late. Keep hitting shots and observing ballflight until you have a sense of the face hitting the ball at the right time with the proper angle. Once you find the right amount of rotation for your swing, hitting accurate shots will become a lot easier.

Veteran teaching professional A.J. Bonar is the director of A.J. Golf School in Carlsbad, Calif.

Automatic Transition

A common swing error from which many golfers suffer is throwing the club from the top of the swing. This fault can produce a variety of bad shots and typically an impact position in which the clubhead is too far out in front of the hands. Throwing the club from the top is a start-of-the-downswing error, but most golfers, sensing it’s their hands lagging behind the clubhead that’s producing weak slaps at the ball, will choose to focus on correcting their impact position. Impact occurs at speeds from 80 to 120 mph and, as a result, is a tough part of the swing to influence independently. If you’re one of those golfers who throws the clubhead from the top, you can’t recover at impact. In other words, you simply have to live with what you get once you set the motion from the top. If you’re throwing it from the top, you’re throwing it! And if you’re not, you’re not! In my opinion, the most important stage in the golf swing is when your club and body change direction to start the downswing, exactly when clubhead throwaway can occur. Improving your change of direction or transition is largely dependent on a couple of things. One is the correct chain of events or, as I like to put it, the correct train of events. Second is the maintenance of key body angles, which is critical to get the train on track. Once you do, you’ll eliminate one of the game’s deadliest faults and improve your impact and ballstriking without once thinking of where you need to be at the point of contact. Make your transition automatic, and impact will take care of itself.

Right To create perfect impact, you need to establish six key angles during your transition. The majority of these angles are dependent on maintaining the angle of your spine as you move from backswing to downswing. Among other positives, maintaining the spin angle provides room for your right arm to move in front of your right hip and toward the target without straightening.

Wrong Most golfers have the tendency to stand up during the downswing. Losing the spine angle established at address creates several problems. For one, it moves your body away from the ball, facilitating the need to straighten the right elbow and wrist to reach it. This places the clubhead too far out in front of the hands at impact.

Sequencing
It’s vital that your transition become smooth and unhurried. Even the game’s longest hitters project a look of effortlessness as they change direction from backswing to downswing. A smooth transition from backswing to downswing is largely dependent on the movement of your lower body, specifically your legs. Your legs are the stabilizers in your golf swing (acting like shock absorbers on your car), providing balance and support as your torso winds and unwinds. In fact, in a good transition, your body should be moving in two directions simultaneously. As your upper torso completes its wind away from the target, your lower body should already start to unwind toward the target. It’s this sequencing that sets up the correct train of events.

Imagine that your lower body (your feet, knees and legs) is the engine of the train while your upper body (shoulders, arms, wrists and hands) is the caboose. If the engine doesn’t lead the caboose, the train will most certainly crash. The same goes if your lower body doesn’t lead your upper body into the downswing. Work on the Sequencing Drill to improve your transition and avoid any train wrecks on the golf course.

Sequencing Drill: Place and hold a clubshaft behind your back just above the shoulder blades and a soccer ball between your knees, and assume your address position. Just before your shoulders reach the top, drop the soccer ball by moving your left knee toward the target. This move will produce the feeling of a correct transition and a sitting-down look in your lower body.

Body Angles
Achieving the correct sequence of movements is vital to creating a very athletic golf swing, and this sequencing is a good first step toward hitting better golf shots. However, without maintaining key body angles throughout the swing, you’ll still suffer from very inconsistent contact. There are three angles your body should produce at impact if you wish to expect quality results. There are also three club angles. If you go three-for-three in both areas, you’ll be knocking the flag down in no time.

The three body angles that must be present at impact for quality shots are a constant spine angle, a bent right elbow and a bent right wrist. You can easily achieve these impact positions if you maintain your spine angle during the transition. Try the Chair Drill to learn how to properly maintain your spine angle.

Maintaining your spine angle as you start your downswing allows many other good things to take place. First of all, you’ll remain the same distance away from the ball, which helps you hit the ball solidly. Second, it provides the room necessary for the right elbow to move toward the target–in front of your right hip–without straightening, which helps you hit the ball with more power.

When you stand up in your downswing and lose that consistent spine angle, your right elbow will often get trapped behind your right hip. Standing up also moves you farther away from the golf ball, forcing you to straighten your right elbow and wrist to reach it. Poor contact is the typical result from this scenario.

Note: Just as losing your spine angle can cause you to straighten your right arm and right wrist too soon, straightening your right arm and right wrist too soon can cause you to lose your spine angle. Either scheme is disastrous as a constant spine angle, a bent right elbow and a bent right wrist are needed for solid contact.

Chair Drill: Place a chair behind you, whereby at address you feel the chair on your rear end. As you make your swing, strive to maintain contact with the chair throughout, especially during the transition. This will help you to maintain your spine angle throughout your swing and facilitate the creation of the other two body angles.
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Shaft Over Hands Drill: Place a headcover over the grip end of a clubshaft and have a friend hold this shaft so the headcover lies just above your hands at address. The goal is to make swings without hitting the headcover with either your hands or your club. If you keep your spine angle constant, you’ll have no trouble swinging without contacting the other shaft. On the other hand, if your spine angle changes and your rear end moves in, your chest and spine will stand up. This raises your arms and hands and you’ll bump into the shaft.

Club Angles
The three key impact club angles are created by: 1) the shaft leaning toward the target (ensuring a downward blow on the ball); 2) the shaft laying at an angle similar to that established at address (a phenomenon that aids hitting the ball in the center of the clubface); and 3) the clubface pointing perpendicularly at the target (controlling the direction in which the ball will travel).

A fundamentally solid grip invariably will help you achieve a square clubface, but as far as producing the first two club angles, a good transition is paramount.

As mentioned earlier, maintaining your spine angle while transitioning into your downswing with your lower body acting as lead will allow you to retain the bend in your right elbow and right wrist through impact. A bent elbow and wrist will help you achieve a forward-leaning shaft position. This forward lean, evident in the swings of all great ballstrikers, happens only when the wrist retains its hinge. If they unhinge too early, as they do when the club is thrown from the top, the clubhead will race ahead of the hands. This produces a reverse lean and shots that fly too high, too short and often too far to the right.

Maintaining that spine angle during the transition also fuels the creation of an impact shaft angle that mimics the angle the shaft held at address. In fact, it’s impossible to produce similar address and impact shaft angles if you don’t maintain your spine angle. If you make the mistake of straightening up in the downswing (i.e., lifting your rear end off the chair), the clubshaft angle will also straighten, becoming much more vertical than it was at setup. Expect poor contact and the gamut of bad shots. Use the Shaft Over Hands Drill (above) to better your expertise at maintaining spine angle and creating the key clubshaft positions.

Hopefully, you’ve come to realize that in order to get perfect at impact, you’ve got to be perfect during the transition. Above all, keep that spine angle intact. When you lose it, you’ll trap your right arm and force your right elbow and wrist to release too early, causing a reverse lean of the shaft at impact and that type of weak, flaring contact no golfer desires. But when your posture remains intact, and you sequence your downswing so that the bend in your right elbow and the hinge in your right wrist is held up to the moment of contact, you’ll achieve a level of ballstriking like you never have before.

Practice the drills and keep in mind the three key body angles and three key shaft angles. Soon, you’ll eliminate errors like clubhead throwaway and produce better impact.

PGA professional and Senior Instruction Editor Chuck Winstead is the Director of Instruction at the University Club in Baton Rouge, La., and English Turn G&CC in New Orleans.

Stop Shanking

Most golfers have felt the agony of wasting a great drive by shanking a wedge shot into the trees or the water. That one shank probably has even made a few of you so paranoid that you shanked the next four shots around the green.

The main reason golfers hit shanks with their wedges more than with other clubs is the steep, outside-in path it takes to use these clubs properly. Also, the clubface must be open in order to get a wedge shot to fly high and straight. The combination places the hosel of the club–where shanks occur–dangerously close to the ball.

To keep the shanks at bay, make sure that you let your arms hang naturally from your shoulders at address, with maybe a slight amount of reach toward the golf ball. Also, push your rear end back as though you’re getting ready to sit down in a chair. This will establish some room between your arms and body. If your hips and rear end pull in toward the ball during the downswing, your arms and hands will naturally get closer to the ball as well, which can easily lead to shanks.

Also, try putting three or four tees about one-eighth-inch to a quarter-inch beyond the toe of your club. When you swing, make sure that you don’t hit the tees. Avoiding the tees will keep you from extending so much that you hit the ball with the hosel.

Steve Atherton is the VP of Instruction at GolfTEC. Locate the GolfTEC center nearest you at www.golftec.com.

Turnstyle

Most golfers know that a full, 90-degree shoulder turn is a crucial element of a solid golf swing. Without it, a proper weight shift and a correct swing plane are almost impossible to achieve. A good shoulder turn not only ensures that your shoulders and chest are behind the ball at the top of the backswing, but helps maintain consistent balance throughout your motion. Before you can master a proper shoulder turn, however, it’s important to understand what it entails and exactly what it is._Ê

Simply put, a full shoulder turn is accomplished when the left shoulder replaces the right shoulder’s position in the backswing. In other words, to make a correct turn, your left shoulder should rotate into the position held by your right shoulder at address.

Another way to achieve this position is to simply concentrate on moving the left shoulder to the inside of the right foot. Both techniques will produce the same result–a left shoulder that has turned, not swayed, into the right side.

Although this move sounds simple, recreational golfers have a terrible time doing it consistently. Instead, they make a mistake that I call the fake turn. This is probably the most common backswing error, and can be difficult to overcome because it actually feels like a proper move. Unfortunately, the fake turn–in which the shoulders rotate, but don’t actually position the body behind the ball–almost always results in a reverse pivot and a lack of balance. By turning in this way, with the left shoulder beginning over the left foot and staying in that position throughout the swing, the majority of body weight is stranded on the left side, which can lead to a variety of bad shots, including pull hooks, blocks and slices.
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Another characteristic of the fake turn is a left shoulder position that’s markedly lower than the right. In contrast, a solid shoulder turn has the left shoulder maintaining the same height it held at address and simply rotating away from the target and behind the chin. You’ll know you’ve made a good turn when your head moves away from the target, not toward it. And remember, your left shoulder has to turn, not drop!

Backswing Basics
The amount of power you can potentially unleash into the back of the golf ball is directly proportional to the quality of your backswing and, more importantly, the solidity of your shoulder turn. A proper shoulder turn is one in which the shoulders rotate fully, weight is transferred to the rear leg and a constant spine angle is maintained.

Parallel Club Drill
A very simple exercise that quickly and easily instills the feeling of a correct shoulder turn is the Parallel Club Drill. To practice this drill, place a club across your chest and another club parallel to the inside of your right foot (at address). Make a backswing so the club across your chest is directly on top of the club inside of your right foot. When the two clubs are in-line, hold the position long enough to remember what it feels like. Repeat this move until you feel confident you can achieve the correct position without the reminder club being present._Ê

Turnstile
A solid turn begins with a solid setup, preferably one dominated by a wide base of support, a straight spine and comfortably flexed knees. From this position, if all you think about is replacing your right shoulder with your left while maintaining your spine angle, you’ll be well on your way toward grooving a high-quality backswing turn. If your head floats toward your rear leg during the process, don’t fight it–it’s part of the proper move.

Mirror Drill
Another great drill to help understand how it feels to correctly turn around your axis is the Mirror Drill. Stand in front of a full-length mirror and assume your address position. Have a friend stand behind you and hold a club vertically, running from your head toward the ground. This line represents your spine angle and the axis around which you want to rotate. Once you have this position set, make a backswing and take a close look in the mirror. If you only see your friend’s left shoulder, then you’re making a fake turn. In contrast, if you’re moving correctly and rotating well, you’ll see most of your friend’s upper body. Once you can consistently make your backswing and see your friend clearly in the mirror, you’ll have mastered the proper shoulder turn and will be ready for increased power.

Shift Your Weight For A Proper Turn
Since the fake turn is a major contributor to bad balance and a reverse pivot, it can be extremely helpful to pay close attention to the flexing of your right knee in the backswing. Often, making a fake turn will cause the right knee to become stiff or locked in a straight position at the top (for right-handed golfers), which places the majority of body weight in the left leg. When you swing down from this position, your weight will naturally shift to your right side, taking away all your power and pulling the club up through impact, instead of allowing it to move down and through the hitting zone. From this dynamic, expect the gamut of poor shots.

A great way to improve your turn and to eradicate the reverse pivot (locking of the right knee) is to shift your weight properly while maintaining the spine angle you established at address throughout the entire swing. To develop a proper weight shift while also working on your turn, try this drill: Assume your address position, and have a friend stand behind you, placing the butt-end of a club against your left shoulder and the end of another club against your left hip. Then, take a backswing. If your hip moves off the club, then you’ve swayed and your right leg and knee have straightened to some degree. Instead, you want the left shoulder to move off the club, to the inside of the right foot, and the left hip to rotate while staying in contact with the club. This will ensure that you’ve maintained your original spine angle throughout the backswing, while also helping retain the original angle of the right knee.

PGA pro Carl Rabito operates Rabito Golf Schools in Orlando, Fla.