How to Trouble Shoot Your Swing

To maximize your potential as a golfer you need to do three things: [1] figure out what you do best and preserve it, [2] know what you do poorly and get rid of it and [3] you must know what to ignore. This is important because there are so many things going on in a golf swing it’s easy to get side tracked.

In order to trouble shoot your swing you must set aside some time then with the help of your instructor and a video camera, progressively scan the 11 swing positions: 1] address, 2] take away – lead arm 45°, [3] lead arm parallel,[4] top of the swing, 5] the transition, 6] lead arm parallel returning, 7] lead arm 45°, 8] impact, 9] both arms straight, 10] the pre-finish and 11] the finish.

Please remember that this is a general model and that because of variations between body types, there are variations among swing types, for e.g. to facilitate a better swing plane a player with a big chest bends over more at address than someone with a thin chest.  Also there is much deviation from this model depending on the desired ball flight, i.e. a player who is drawing the ball will set up and swing differently than a player who is fading the ball. But for the serious student interested in systematically analyzing his or her golf swing, the 11 positions is a viable way of checking how well you are doing at each position.

The Bane of Consistency

 

 As you will see as our weakly series unfolds, it is possible to have error in any particular swing even though there may not be error in the ball flight. This occurs when the compensating errors that infect your swing, match up and all is well for a while.  Unfortunately swings that feature balancing errors are untrustworthy. This is why golfers periodically lose their swing – compensating errors are the bane of consistency. Here is an example: at the start of the downswing [position 5] you spin your shoulders too early and the club is pushed out toward the ball in an error called over-the-top, the result of which is a cut-across swing that creates a pulled shot. To stop the pull you hold the face open by jutting out your front elbow in position 9 [the chicken wing].  One error compensates for the other – and it works but since it’s so hard to time, it only works sometimes.

 

Thus there is a difference between a matchup that makes the swing stronger and a compensation that weakens it. The failure rate of compensations is why I say that ‘the best golf swings require the least timing’ and that the swings with the most compensations, require the most timing.  Thus to max your performance it’s best to purge your golf swing of its error in order to assure that it will hold up under pressure -- and as we will see, this requires a competent analysis.