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.

There are two things you can do with a golf swing: learn a good one, and improve the one you have.

If you do the first one, you never have to do the second. If you haven’t done the first one, the second one won’t help you much.

So do the first one. Get lessons. Learn a swing that works. What is a swing that works? It is a swing that hits the ball where you intend.

When you have a swing that does that, practice it so you can repeat it, always referring back to its basic principles as you do. Don’t tinker or add on.

Let’s say you have learned that swing and you’re on the golf course. What do you do?

Swing with the good swing you know, and no more. Swing with the comfort that this swing will take care of itself. No forcing required.

Swing with that comfort in mind.

This is what I work on when I go to the range. Numbers 1, 5, 7, and 8 apply to everyone, in my opinion. The others are for correcting my bad habits.

1. End the practice swing at the desired finish position.
Moderates the entire swing.

2. Square up the shoulders at address.
My habit is to have them open.

3. Do the takewaway drill to make sure the clubface does not close at takeaway.
I tend to close the clubface unintentionally in the first few feet of takeaway.

4. The forward swing starts with the lower body.
…not with the arms.

5. The handle leads the swing all the way through the ball.
…so the hands lead the clubhead through impact.

6. Guard against swaying through impact.
I can get away with this with irons, but not with the driver.

7. The forward swing leads to the desired finish position.
The result of a moderated swing.

8. Tempo is set for centered contact rather than distance.
None of this works unless the tempo is right.

You might want to make up your own checklist.

You want to hit the golf ball a long way, so you let your trailing hand and arm dominate the forward swing so you can pour that side into the ball, just like you would if you were throwing a baseball or hitting a tennis ball.

But golf doesn’t work that way.

When I was in the Navy we had a saying, “You can’t push a rope,” which applied to something that was pointless to even try. Anything.

Yes, you can’t push a rope, but you can push other things. The question is, can you push them accurately?

Which is easier, pulling something into place, or pushing it into place? Just watch someone trying to back (push) their boat on a trailer into the water when they have no idea how to do it. It is endlessly amusing.

It would be easier to pull the boat into the water, but then your truck would end up submerged, so don’t try that.

We’re taking about golf clubs here, not boats, and you can’t push a golf club, either. At least not accurately, though we try anyway because the push hand is the hitting hand.

Ahh! There’s the rub! You’re trying to hit the golf ball when you should be trying to swing the golf club. To swing the golf club, you lead it through impact with the swinging hand. That’s the left hand for most of us, the right hand for you lefties.

So many of your impact errors would go away in a few seconds if you would only transfer the responsibility for everything you want out of a golf shot to the swinging hand.

Go ahead! Try a few slow-motion swings with both hands on the handle, but let the swinging hand do the work while the hitting hand goes along for the ride. Don’t these swings feel smooth? Better still, aren’t they repeatable in a way the hitting-handed stroke isn’t?

Power? Not to worry. The gain in accuracy means hitting the center of the clubface more often, and that is the PRIME source of distance.

You might think a back-handed swing doesn’t have the force that a fore-handed swing does, and you are right if you are thinking only of muscle power.

But the golf swing is not about powered-up muscles. It’s about relaxed muscles. Relaxed muscles move faster. Golf clubs swung by relaxed muscles hit golf balls farther. Especially golf balls that get hit on the center of the clubface.

To sum up: leading the club through impact with the swinging hand rather than with the hitting hand leads to a faster and more accurate strike.

Oh, yes. A swinging-handed stroke sends the ball straighter and more accurately, too. But you’ll find that out for yourself.

The most important part of the golf swing is the forward swing, of course, because that is when the ball is struck.

One thing we don’t read much about is that the forward swing must be coordinated. By that I mean that the body turn and the arm swing work in harmony to line up at impact.

If when you swing you feel that the arms get ahead of the body, or that they are late to the game, something is wrong.

The forward swing should feel like a unified motion. The feeling is that the body and arms propel each other through the ball in a complimentary way.

You also want to feel no jerks or bumps in your hands. If you do, that is a sign they are probably doing something they shouldn’t.

Try making slow motion practice swings, without a ball. When you get it right, you’ll know what I mean.

A new work, over a year and a half in the making, is now available on this blog in .pdf form and on an accompanying video on YouTube.

The .pdf and video must both be consumed. There is material on the .pdf that is not in the video, and vice versa. Together they explain the concept. Read the .pdf, then see the video.

Find the .pdf here: http://therecreationalgolfer.com/Swing4el.pdf

Find the homespun video here: https://youtu.be/YQdP6gECFNw

I hope you like it.

You might have heard that two-time major champion Colin Morikawa is more accurate with his 6-iron than most touring pros are with their pitching wedge.

Here’s the video:

https://www.golfdigest.com/story/the-open-2021-collin-morikawa-iron-accuracy

The move you might want to copy is how he powers into the ball while still keeping his rhythm and tempo in line.

NOTE: A Basic Golf Swing is now available that develops the comments below in full, and more, in both words and video.

For about a year and a half I have been working on an idea that has changed my swing for much the better. I have not mentioned it to you because I wanted to develop the idea so I understood its essence, then put it to the test to make sure it worked.

I now feel that I can let you know what this very simple idea is.

It has to do with the hands–how to keep them from turning and getting the clubface out of alignment.

Everything changed when I realized that it is anatomically impossible for the hands to turn. The hands turn because the forearms turn, and that is not a trivial difference.

I changed my grip to one that is based on the way my forearms are built. When my forearms hang down in a neutral position, not turned one way or the other, the result is a strong left-hand grip and a neutral right-hand grip.

Because my forearms are in their neutral position with that grip, there is no cause for them to turn, which means the hands won’t turn.

Then I developed a swing based on the feeling of the forearms staying neutral throughout the swing, i.e., not turning at all, and with those two things the clubhead stays square and the ball goes very straight.

That is the essence of the idea. It deserves a deeper explanation, and I will give that to you in a few weeks.

But read those four key paragraphs carefully for now.