swing thought in downswing

[mkirby]

Hello everyone,

 

I am currently taking some lessons at my local range. From the video that the instructor took, I can see that I have a bad habit of coming over the top. Looks like I start the downswing with the shoulders and arms. The instructor hasn't moved to the downswing in my lessons yet, because we are working on other things, but in the meantime I was wondering if anyone could offer a swing thought I can use in transition starting the downswing that would keep my in the proper position and on plane. A couple of swing thoughts I have heard in the past are:

 

1) start the downswing with the lower body.

2) the club should line up with the right forearm at the halfway down position

 

Thanks a lot for any feedback you can provide.

[jportz]

The hips lead the way is a good swing thought....a lot of people use that. For me I think about everything working in the proper order, starting with my left knee.

 

If you were to look at a good swing from face on you should see that everything is moving towards the target in order....your left foot is the farthest ahead, then the left knee, then the left hip, then the left shoulder and last in line is your head. Like a leaning tower...everything should be lined up. If your hips get ahead of your left knee in the downswing you're in trouble (that means your sliding). If your left shoulder gets ahead of your left hip in the downswing you're in trouble (that means you're lunging). If your head gets ahead of anything in the downswing you're in trouble (sliding and lunging).

 

Hope this makes sense....it makes sense in my scrambled brain :golfer:

 

Once you get into a good setup position with your shoulders slightly tilted and spine angled to the right you can look in a mirror and see how everything is lined up in order (foot, knee, hip, shoulder, head)....it is critical that you maintain that order when you start your downswing.

 

I've done well to think about starting the downswing with my left knee...just a slight move forward and that helps my hips "bump and turn" before my shoulders start moving....this gets the club on plane and prevents the over the top move.

 

Just do a lot of work in front of a mirror. Practice your setup and then go through your swing in slow motion paying attention to the order that everything moves. The mirror has helped me tremendously over the years.

 

Good luck....hope I didn't confuse you more with my ramblings..... (cool)

[mkirby]

Thanks for the tips. I will definitely try some of these and see how it goes.

[ultra45]

another thing you can try as long as you're not alone on the range is learning to pull the downswing.. and what i mean by that is to set up as if you are going to hit the ball and stop your backswing about half way back.. then have someone else hold on to the shaft and then you pull down as if you are going to hit the ball.. (note.. you're not swinging all the way through but just getting the feel for initiating the transition) if you do that correctly you'll be able to feel how much harder you can pull if you initiate the lower body first as well as feel the difference of using the upper body only vs starting from the ground up... after you try that the first few shots usually feel like you are swinging faster with less effort.. then it's a matter of repetition

[unomizuno]

I had good luck with Jim Flick's suggestion to start the downswing with the arms...pulling down on the club to start the downswing. Granted, it's not the end all be all of downswing thoughts, but it did teach my arms how they're going to go when I finally learned how to let them relax and come down naturally.

 

The other nice thing about this tip is it didn't get me caught up in weight shift thoughts. He recommends that the student simply think of weight shift as something to keep you in balance in response to the upper body, not generate power. When I was a higher handicapper...he was right on.

 

Weight shift is one complicated subject, and the tips to 'shift your weight' got me into a flaw that took two or three years to completely undo. But, now I can use a controlled weight shift and hip turn as the driving force of the downswing.

 

Baby steps.