A common swing fault many average golfers have is that they mistakenly try to emulate a Tour Pro’s back-swing. Seeing Tiger Woods wind himself up to pull the golf club back and around so that the club is in a parallel position at the top of the back-swing and then unwind in a powerful downswing unleashing a massive 310 yard drive is truely inspiring but may be misplaced if you’re trying to replicate it.
First off, most golfers don’t have the flexibility of a Tiger Woods. Nor do they have the strength. Nor do they have any sort of proper swing mechanics to bring the club head back into position for a square hit. In order to compensate for these ‘don’t-haves’, but still wanting to emulate the full back-swing of a Tour Pro, the average golfer ends up ‘faking’ a back-swing.
What I mean by this is that, lacking the flexibility of a Tour-Pro, the average golfer can only turn his (or her) shoulders slightly to try to generate coil, then continues on in the back-swng by lifting their arms as far as they can go and then, this not being good enough, continue on to fold, or collapse their arms in the final attempt to get the club head back as far as it will possibly go. All this does is to sap power from the golf swing and is a poor imitation of a proper, power inducing swing.
Instead, the average golfer should focus on two things in the back-swing.
1. When your shoulders stop turning, that’s as far back as you should go because that’s probably as far back as you can go! Don’t continue lifting your arms up after your shoulders stop turning thinking this will generate power or a proper swing. All this will do is suck power out of your swing and create more problems with your swing because you’ll tend to spin out or fall back.
2. Once you’ve hit the ‘top’ of your back-swing (wherever the ‘top’ may be for you), your right arm (for righties), rather than folding back onto itself with your hands close behind your head (like you’re scratching your head), should form an ‘L’ at the top with plenty of space between your head and your hands with your right elbow pointing down toward the ground rather than flared out towards the horizon.
Both of these things should be easy to do and will provide you with a more powerful and consistent swing.
So instead of trying to emulate a Tiger Woods swing, the average golfer should maybe look to Fred Funk or Rocco Mediate. Fred Funk is 52; 5 foot 8 inches tall and 165 pounds. He ranks second in Driving Accuracy (77%); 200th in Driving Distance (a paltry 267 yards); and last year won $1.239 Million dollars on the tour.
Tags: golf swing, power, swing speed, Tiger Woods
You are so right. This lifting and folding of the arms in the backswing only serve to shorten the swing arc limiting power rather than adding power.
Hard to convince someone that a shorter, slower golf swing will go farther than a longer, faster one.
Yet we try.