A Guide To Golf Swings

‘A Guide To Golf Swings’ is an article by guest author Linda Parker where she outlines some hints and tips to improve your golf … whether you are a beginner or wish to become a better golfer whatever your handicap.

Introduction

As important as your golf equipment and knowledge are, it would all be of little value without the proper swings. Being able to make decent to excellent golf swings is what separates the beginners from the true players of the game.

This is why it comes as a shock to no one that professional golfers spend hours upon hours a day working on their swings. With drill and practice, they work to build the muscle memory and experience needed to make consistent shots and achieve the desired height and distance every time.

As a beginner, you should be working on your golf swings as soon as possible. It isn’t enough to simply hit the ball though. Making a proper swing relies heavily on your ability to aim, maintain proper posture, and calibrate the force you use to ensure the ball gets where it needs to go.

But practising your golf swings is not something you have to do alone though. Here, I have put together a quick and easy guide that gets you started on improving your golf swings. Read on to learn more!

The Grip

The road to improving your golf swing starts with the grip. Your hands are the only things that come into contact with the golf clubs and knowing how to hold them properly can greatly help your chances of making contact.

Be sure that you don’t hold the grip too tight or too loose. It helps to imagine that you’re holding a tube of toothpaste upside down with the cap off. Hold it just tight enough to have control without squeezing the toothpaste out.

Keep the following in mind when gripping your golf club:

1. If you’re right-handed, place the grip diagonally across the fingers of your left hand. The grip should be on your fingers, not your palm.
2. To check the grip of your first hand, hold the club like a hammer and move it up and down in the air. If it’s easy to control then your grip is correct.
3. With your right hand this time, grasp the grip of the club in such a way that it looks like a hotdog in a bun.
4. For the proper positioning, both your thumbs and the base of your pointer fingers should create a letter “V”.

The Stance

Now that you have a good grip on your golf club, it’s time to work on your posture. For the proper stance, bend over at the waist with your back remaining straight. A straight back is important and you can check its straightness by placing a golf club on it. You’ll know it’s straight if the golf club is touching three places, your head, shoulder blades, and tailbone.

While gripping the club, allow your arms to hang straight down from your shoulders. Since you’re bending over at the waist, you should not be reaching out for your golf clubs.

Aiming

A good aim is just as important as posture. You want to aim your clubface towards the target with your body positioned parallel to the left of that, or the right if you’re left-handed.

Keep the following in mind when making an aim in golf:

1. First, stand behind the ball so that it’s positioned between you and the target.
2. Survey the ground for something like a patch of discoloured grass or dirt that’s in line with your ball and target. This will be your secondary target.
3. When the ball is in place, set the clubface directed towards your secondary target and set your body up to be parallel with the clubface.
4. It helps to imagine two straight lines starting from your feet and going towards the horizon. The lines should be totally parallel. The same applies to your shoulders, hips, and forearms.

Making a Golf Swing

With the preparations in place, it’s time for the hard part – actually making the swing. Don’t be frustrated with yourself if you don’t get it right away. Good swings take a lot of time and practice to perfect and, even then, there’s no such thing as perfect.

Backswing

When it comes to the backswing, many amateur golfers believe this is where the power behind the swings comes from. This is false.

The backswing is only something to get you in place to make a good downswing, the true source of force behind the golf swings. That’s why I do not encourage you to rush too much while making the backswing.

1. To begin, keep in mind that your back and core muscles should be doing all the work, not your arms and wrists. Begin your swing by turning your spine, waist, and torso away from the ball. Once your hands and clubface reach about waist-level, use your hands to rotate the club enough that its toe is pointed up in the air.
2. Once you’re approaching the top of your swing, you want to see that the club is over your head and parallel to the ground. It should also be pointing towards the target.
3. Your front arm (left if you’re right-handed) should be relatively straightforward but the elbows should not be locked. Your other arm will bend throughout the motion of the backswing.

(To find out more about the backswing then please watch The Perfect Backswing on YouTube as explained by 2005 U.S. Open Champion Michael Campbell)

Transition & Downswing

With the club over your head, it’s time to transition into a downswing. The next step is to twist your hips back in the direction of the golf ball. Your torso, spine, and arms should follow quickly after that.

The elbow of your right arm, if you are right-handed, should be close to your side at all times. This will maintain the power of your downswing and let you hit the ball from inside.

Another key element of your downswing is the shifting of weight to your front foot (the left one if you’re right-handed). This allows the turn of your torso to generate enough force behind your arms.

Hopefully, all this will lead to your club making contact with the ball. A mistake that many amateurs make when making contact with the ball is that they try to lift the ball into the air. This is a wrong practice that ends up hurting the ball’s distance and speed. Experienced golfers know to hit the ball only and generate enough lag to get the ball into the air before finishing their swing.

Finishing

Even when impact with the ball has been achieved and the ball is in the air, you still need to finish your swing. Finishing the swing ensures the proper distribution of force and weight is channelled into the club. It also helps when building muscle memory since simply stopping the swing once you’ve hit the ball feels too abrupt.

The proper finishing position should look like you’re resting your hands on your shoulder. Your weight should be on your front foot and the back heel of your other foot in the air. Your belly button, shoulders, and waist should also be facing the target.

Tips For Fast Improvement

• Your left (or right) hand should be in control. Although the force down does not come from your hands, that doesn’t mean their only purpose is to grip the club. If you’re right-handed, then you can use your left hand to rotate the clubface and control direction.
• Hit down on your iron shots to get the ball up. Although this tip applies mostly to irons, the same can be said for woods and hybrids too. Instead of trying to lift your ball into the air like most beginners do, try to strike down and let the loft on the golf club help the ball up into the air. Though trying to pick the ball cleanly off the turf can be done, it requires great timing.
• Count to improve your tempo. As a beginner, counting the steps is a great way to internalize the swing and build muscle memory. There are, of course, a lot of moving parts when making a swing and it can be hard to keep track of it all. Try counting ‘1’ when you start your swing, ‘2’ when you reach the top of your backswing, ‘3’ at impact, and ‘4’ when you reach a balanced finish.
• Always pick a clear target. Many golfers make the mistake of simply hitting the ball in the target’s general direction instead of aiming. Though achieving a perfect swing is essential, taking aim first can help you get the ball into the hole in as few shots as possible – the whole point of golf!
• Master your golf swing. Golfers love to trade advice and give their own take on the golf swing. Though all are valid, keep in mind that each golfer has his or her own variation of the golf swing. Try not to get caught up on all the details. No matter what your swing looks like, at the end of the day if it works it works.

In conclusion

Our final tip would be to practice, practice, PRACTICE! There’s no way around it. If you want to have a golf swing that’s similar to that of professional golfers, then you’re gonna need to spend hours and hours on the course playing as they do.

If you keep at it and put in the work, things will all just fall into place.

Acknowledgement

Many thanks to Linda Parker for the first, but hopefully not the last article as a guest author for Golfing Herald.

If you wish to read more excellent articles by Linda Parker then please visit the SunriseGolf website.