Golf: How to Swing the Club Correctly

(Music Playing) Male 1: The second tip on our list is to swing the club straight back and straight through. This one drives me crazy. At some point in our crew, we all had the impression that we have to swing the club straight back and straight through. I got this board here that represent the target line, when we try to swing the club straight back and straight through, problems are going to rise. I have never seen anyone being able to that in my career of teaching golf. If we did our golf swing would basically look like a Ferris wheel, straight up and down. And again, you cannot get very much leverage or power in that golf swing. The golf swing is three dimensional; it is going to move backward along the target line. It is going to move upwards towards the sky and of course inward away from the target line. Of those three, most people are focused on the backward and the upward. All that we want think about is the inward. And, when we take the club inward away from that target lines simultaneously the club had moved upward and backward. I have never seen anyone when I tell them to swing the club inward take the club like this in a back swing, it would not be natural. We are going to take the club away and swing as inward and also again swing as upward and backward. In the forward swing, we are pulling it back down and it comes out and touches the target line briefly at impact and then as you pull the handle through in and up to the left, it completes the arc on the other side. A good representation of that is I put the ball up here on a high tee. There is a vertical wall where the ball was, you can see there is an angle of my hands, I am not straight up and down, very similar with what we have when we dress the ball. So, taking the club there, we would not take it upwards certainly and we would not take it backward. We are going to take it again more inward and around us, so you can see how it moved away from that wall. Now, the only difference in this golf swing and when we hit a golf ball with is our posture is erect. But, you can see the shaft as a right angle of somebody’s spine. So if I took my spine forward, that is a pretty good position at the top of the swing. So again, swinging the club straight back creates problems in your golf swing, it got to swing in an arch and that arch creates the rotation of your body. Now, let us take a look at Bryan Nicholson’s swing as our head teacher and a professional here to McCord Golf Academy and examine the shape of his golf swing as far as it is swinging back up and in on the back swing, down out and forward to impact, and that up and end again to the finish. Male 2: When the student is asked what direction they are swinging the club, they unbearably say straight back and straight through. This probably makes the least sense of any as far geometrically and physically practical or possible. In the 30 plus years that I have been teaching, I have never seen anyone swing the club in this direction. The swinging plan would be completely vertical like a Ferris wheel. I witnessed many unorthodox swings but never one who was able to accomplish that. The golf swing is on an inclined plane so therefore it is on an arc. The gold club will swing back up and in from the target line on the back swing and down out and forward to impact followed by an inward on upper direction to the finish. The travel of the club along the target line is very minimal and it is only during the impact interval of the swing. The direction of the club’s path is conducive to the body’s rotation and balance in the golf swing.