How common is Swaying?

[BB28403]

I’ve noticed I am a swayer. It is really hard to self diagnose that you are a swayer.

To me this is a real problem because you can top the ball , chunk the ball. Come in too steep. It changes your whole path.

And the real injustice is that we blame another part of our swing when it is just swaying.

 

Any tricks you guys have learned to combat this?

[jut111]

Try a heavy book bag? Check with your PGA coach, or just start another thread.

[BB28403]

> @jut111 said:

> Try a heavy book bag? Check with your PGA coach, or just start another thread

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1200/0*PHdrDBeYtcSnLArw.jpg

 

[Zitlow]

Trying to take the club back really wide along the target line on the back swing is one cause of a sway.

[cleanfreak]

I have been swaying for 20 years. I finally broke down and got some lessons. When my timing is good, the ball striking is good. Any hiccup in the timing and the fats happen. I was so tired of being inconsistent.

 

The pro basically has me having the “feeling” of a reverse pivot. As horrible as it sounds, it keeps my head where it needs to be throughout the swing and stopped the swaying. It take a lot of concentration and feels really weird after 20 years.......

 

The struggle is real.

[ddetts]

I've got a sway problem here too, it's a really hard habit to break

[Fireballer]

Try an early wrist set maybe or no turn cast drill? Monte advocates that people tend to naturally turn in response to setting wrists.

[Tanner25]

> @BB28403 said:

> I’ve noticed I am a swayer. It is really hard to self diagnose that you are a swayer.

> To me this is a real problem because you can top the ball , chunk the ball. Come in too steep. It changes your whole path.

> And the real injustice is that we blame another part of our swing when it is just swaying.

>

> Any tricks you guys have learned to combat this?

 

Long time swayer here. Weight goes outside of the right foot and I am cooked. The only nice thing about a sway, it's easy on the back and joints.

[Bucken77]

Swayed for decades. If you play a lot then you can time it well and you appear to have a decent swing. Had a family and little time to practice and holy cow did I suck real quick. Took some lessons and finally got rid of the sway on the backswing. Problem is I now sway on the downswing which was just pointed out to me today. The fix feels as if I am humping a goat but when I look at the video it's a perfect swing. Sway is so tough to get rid of

[BMC]

It's pretty common even with tour pros. The easy fix is to **start your swing with your weight already 80% on the inside of your right foot**. Then take you normal swing. Take a look at Henrik Stenson's swing - he used to sway. Now he presets to right foot.

[MaineMariner]

Wedge a door stopper under your right (or back) foot. Put it so that the outside of your foot is raised up. Voila, you can't sway anymore. Best $3 I've ever spent.

 

The very first thing that I was told at my very first lesson was that I was a dancer. I had no idea how much I was swaying. He had me work with a wedge for a few weeks and the sway was gone.

[Jkinluv]

I always have had a decent swing, but was also a swayer and compensated for it in many ways.

 

I was taught by a local oldie to set up to the ball, and when going through the swing motion to feel like you keep your head back behind the ball slightly. He had me swing lots, while just concentrating on keeping my head behind the ball... Worked like a charm.

[Kevlar10]

I’m a swayer too. I’ll have a couple nice shots in a row then it comes back. Two opinions and they are just that. One, be consistent with it. Find a consistent sway and play it. I’ve seen quite a few pros who sway. The only problem is that if you don’t get your weight back inline you lose distance. The second thing; what works for me, is to take the club head back slow. It keeps my lower body quiet and I swing with better weight transfer forward. I’m sure there are better methods but it works for me.

[elthrill]

Feel like your chest faces the ground as you make your turn away. This will allow u to coil into your right leg and keep the weight on the inside of the trail leg. It works. It will stop the sway and get you feeling coiled.

[kadey]

I used to be a wicked swayer. Using the feet-together drill eliminated most of it.

[Millbrook]

> @MaineMariner said:

> Wedge a door stopper under your right (or back) foot. Put it so that the outside of your foot is raised up. Voila, you can't sway anymore. Best $3 I've ever spent.

>

> The very first thing that I was told at my very first lesson was that I was a dancer. I had no idea how much I was swaying. He had me work with a wedge for a few weeks and the sway was gone.

 

Russel Heritage uses this idea of a door stopper under the trail foot. He doesn't mention swaying but uses it to get internal rotation of the trail hip. Folks who sway won't internally rotate the trail hip - Hogan talked of squeezing your trail testicle against your trail leg.

The interesting thing about RH's advice to do this is he says it activates muscles which you need to get separation in transition. If you sway you won't achieve this and will have to sway on the downswing rather than rotate.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9Z0Sfo4GkI]

He's a bit garbled in that clip but has improved since and is worth checking out

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=0VAWtMg749Q]

 

[Millbrook]

Here's another one, but the title is a little misleading so don't be put off;

(

)

[Tanner25]

How do you create the downward pressure in the backswing? Is it just by turning and tilting the hips correctly in the backswing?

[SirFuego]

I'm a swayer, but have made quite a bit of progress to fix it recently. The big thing to keep in mind is that your brain thinks that a sway feels correct. You need to re-train your brain. That's why queues like "keeping weight on the front foot" or "feel like you are making a reverse pivot" work for a lot of people. They aren't actually keeping weight on the front foot and they aren't actually making a reverse pivot -- their brain just thinks that they are because it doesn't know any better. These queues worked for me, too, but I found the following to give me more consistent results (and it feels more natural):

 

This was the progression I went through. In other words, each step built on the other. My instructor helped me through most of it, but he needed to explain it in a bunch of different ways (which included some of the queues I mentioned above) to find a method that worked for me. In retrospect, this is what worked best for me:

1. Practice 180 spin jumps trying to land where my opposite foot was. If you can't hit those points or can't maintain balance, it's likely there was some sort of swaying. Place some tape in a circle with the diameter about the width of your stance and try to start and land on the perimeter of the circle if you can't do full 180 degree jumps.

2. Feel like my hips were turning level the entire swing. Yes, the hip "tilts" in a good swing, but if I try to manufacture that tilt, it just leads to tension in my hips, which inhibits rotation. So I end up swaying. Turning it level allows me to rotate the hips hard and any tilt just happens naturally. This ends up being a similar feeling to a spin jump.

3. Feel like the tip of my trail foot rotates around a single point on the ground. I found that I still had a tendency to "launch forward" with my right foot. This (a) maintains my posture and (b) forces my right foot to move in more of a "bug squashing" motion instead of pushing straight forward.

4. This one is really difficult for me to explain, but in the downswing feel like my chest/shoulders (NOT arms or hands) is "holding the angles" I created at the top of my backswing. If I sway, those angles will be lost. If I rotate centered, the angles will be maintained. Another way I guess to describe it is to feel like I have a pendulum wrapped around my chest and I need to accelerate it as quickly as possible. I'm sure this is a gross over-simplification, but if I relate this back to item 2, I look at it as the hips giving me "horizontal" control of my swing plane, the chest/shoulders giving me "vertical" control of myswing plane. Working in conjunction, (2) and (4) feeling keeps me more in sync.

[Roffe]

> @Millbrook said:

> > @MaineMariner said:

> > Wedge a door stopper under your right (or back) foot. Put it so that the outside of your foot is raised up. Voila, you can't sway anymore. Best $3 I've ever spent.

> >

> > The very first thing that I was told at my very first lesson was that I was a dancer. I had no idea how much I was swaying. He had me work with a wedge for a few weeks and the sway was gone.

>

> Russel Heritage uses this idea of a door stopper under the trail foot. He doesn't mention swaying but uses it to get internal rotation of the trail hip. Folks who sway won't internally rotate the trail hip - Hogan talked of squeezing your trail **** against your trail leg.

> The interesting thing about RH's advice to do this is he says it activates muscles which you need to get separation in transition. If you sway you won't achieve this and will have to sway on the downswing rather than rotate.

> [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9Z0Sfo4GkI]

> He's a bit garbled in that clip but has improved since and is worth checking out

> [https://youtube.com/watch?v=0VAWtMg749Q]

 

This is BY FAR the best tip I´ve ever seen. The pelvis movement to neutral from back, by flexing the left knee is something that makes me get solid contact with all clubs. I´ve noticed that is is´nt enough to just flex out your knee and put pressure on the foot. You must also, quite aggressively, turn your pelvis from the back position, back to neutral. The more freely you can do that, without moving your upper body, the better. Pure gold.

 

Can one say that this movemnet is related to the Sam Snead-squat? I think I´ve seen Alex Norén do this move also, while practising.

PS, I am from Sweden, English is not my mother language. ;)

 

/R

 

 

[Lodestone]

Swaying was a big problem for me when I was young. It took me a long time to get some control over it,and it would still creep into my swing now and then. Now that I'm 65, I don't try so hard to stop it, because I think a little bit of it frees me up and gives me a little needed pop, especially with the driver.

[BB28403]

> @Lodestone said:

> Swaying was a big problem for me when I was young. It took me a long time to get some control over it,and it would still creep into my swing now and then. Now that I'm 65, I don't try so hard to stop it, because I think a little bit of it frees me up and gives me a little needed pop, especially with the driver.

 

You know sometimes I feel that way too, I’m finding that the swing should be 1 fluid motion. And if you separate the swing in 2 parts and stop at the top, it hinders you.

I’m trying to keep moving the whole swing , when I reach the top my back is migrating towards target. While that is happening my knee starts moving towards target then my hip opens up and the downswing is started without ever pausing.

To your point, a bit of a sway kind of helps the rhythm of the swing. Just not too much.

[hacker49]

My last lesson I worked on not swaying. My instructor put a milk crate with a heavy bag on top along the outside of my trail leg. He then had me concentrate on turning my hips and not hit the crate and bag. It wasn't long before he took the crate away because I was no longer swaying. It almost felt like I was moving toward the target on my backswing but that was only because I was no longer moving away and was actually stationary. Once I knew the feel it was easy to know if I swayed or not.

[Golf_Goof]

My biggest issue - suspected and then verified on video. It just feels son natural to want to sway away and back to the ball for added power. Stationary swiveling feels weak but is so crucial for impact quality. Also, remaining stationary feels like a reverse pivot due to the knee bend required to stay put.

[jordan2240]

Came across this post because I was wondering if anyone swayed on purpose. The most recent of my many swing incantations is to just let my body sway naturally backward and forward (my main concentration is on keeping my front arm straight). My last few rounds, where I used this methodology, featured some of the best ball-striking and scores I've ever had (we're talking mid-80s (or low 40s for nine), which is great for me). My mis-hits have been thin, but I haven't rolled anything along the ground. So, until it stops working, I'm just gonna mildly sway. Seems to be the easiest swing with the least amount of thought for me.

[jc4birdie]

I blame Jimmy Ballard....I keed, I keed, Ballard-ites. Seriously, misunderstanding of what Ballard teaches leads lots of folks who ascribe to his methods to sway. Let me say it clearly: JB does NOT teach a sway...he teaches a coil into the SET of the right leg. Those are 2 different things. Coiling into the set of the right leg is feeling the weight go back into the RIGHT HEEL, then forward to the LEFT INSTEP/BIG TOE.

[Heckle]

This is an excellent video. Thank you for sharing.

[wickwoss]

I've been struggling with inconsistencies, and after reading this, think it may be due to sway. Hoping some of these drills/info will help.

[Zitlow]

Trying to swing back wide will cause you to sway.