The Undone Golf Swing

A few days ago, I was taking to a former teaching pro about the swing. We got into the idea of coiling in the backswing.

In most of what you read about that or hear about that on YouTube videos, the pro is talking about winding up as you swing back to create and elastic tension that snaps the hips back to begin the forward swing.

Sounds good, but muscles don’t work that way. You can coil up all you want to the finish of your backswing and sit there all day without any feeling of resisting a strong pull to uncoil you.

Coiling is still a good idea, but we have to think about the meaning of that word in a different way.

Think of unscrewing the lid of a wide-mouth jar a half turn. Then screw it back to where it started. The path it takes when you screw the lid back on that half turn IS THE SAME PATH IT TOOK WHEN YOU UNSCREWED IT. Let’s bring that to the golf swing.

We start at an address position and wish to bring the clubhead back to the same place with the same orientation at impact.

We start the process by taking the club back to a stopping point, then we reverse the direction of the swing. All we have to do to achieve the goal stated above is undo the things we just did.

Whatever you do when you take the club back, undo that exactly when you swing the club forward. This means when you turn your body back in a certain way, turn back in that same way. Coil, uncoil.

I’m thinking of your torso here. You legs will do different things naturally.

Develop a golf swing in which what you do going back is easy to undo going forward. The less you do taking the club back, the less you have to undo when swinging it forward, making it easier to bring the clubface back to where it started.

(We’re talking about coiling your body, but as well if you do things with your wrists going back, you have to undo those things coming forward, and that won’t always be easy.)

True that when you watch the professionals on TV they don’t always follow this advice. Jim Furyk. Miller Barber when I was learning the game.

But you’re not a pro. You don’t have hours to spend every day to grooving an unorthodox swing.

Do, undo. Build a swing that does that.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.