As your swing approaches impact, there is a detail you must attend to that I don’t see mention of in books or online videos. And that is the tilt of your torso.

When you address the ball, you are bent forward from the hips to a certain degree. You retain that tilt when you swing the club back.

But when you swing forward, retaining that tilt feels like the right side is collapsing, so you straighten up.

But now, realizing subconsciously that you are out of position, you try to rescue the shot with your hands, but are seldom successful.

All you have to do is retain the forward tilt as you turn and swing through impact. I know it feels funny if you haven’t been doing it. But trust me, it’s the right thing to do.

This video shows you what I mean.

It’s how you make your swing bring the club into the ball shallow and in line to your target. You know, those good things you want leading into impact.

Be careful, though, not to create this feeling deliberately by dropping the right shoulder (left shoulder, for lefties) or increasing the spine angle. This will force the clubhead to approach the ball from too much inside, with an open clubface. That’s how you hit a monster push-slice into the adjoining fairway.

Find a way to get used to retaining the tilt at address all the way through impact. You might be surprised how easy the game just became.

Unless we have practiced so much we could hit the ball with our eyes closed, we have a tendency to use our hands to make sure the club hits the ball in somewhat the right way.

Big mistake.

That introduces too much variation in the clubhead’s impact positions because you will never be able to train your hands to bring the clubhead into the ball the same way every time, which is what we want to do.

Not only that, but you slow the clubhead way down. Your hands can swing only so fast. I will mention your arms in that regard, too.

By hitting the ball with your swing, that is, letting the overall swing bring the clubhead through the ball, you introduce consistency because is not that hard to train big muscles how to do something over and over again the same way.

In addition, you get maximum clubhead speed because nothing is holding back the two-lever system from letting the clubhead fly through impact.

Before I go, I want to be clear that I did not say to hit the ball with your big muscles. Use them only as a means of bringing the clubhead into the ball consistently so you have the confidence to let the clubhead free-wheel through the ball, as Bobby Jones once described it.

Keeping the clubface square depends a lot on your particular swing, so I can’t provide a complete and universal solution to the problem.

I can identify four places where you can get the clubface out of square that do apply, regardless of how you swing the club.

Grip. Use the grip that conforms to how your forearms are structured. See A Basic Golf Swing. If your grip isn’t right, nothing else matters.

Takeaway. The first foot you move your hands away from address is a danger zone, where it is so easy to get your clubface out of square that you will never notice you have done it. You think it must be happening somewhere late in the backswing, but it happened at the very start. If you get your clubface out of square consistently, check that it might be happening here.

Transition. When you start the club back down to the ball, if you try to hit with your hands from from up there, an easy mistake to make, there goes the clubface.

Just before impact. The urge to hit the ball, instead of swinging through it, makes you barrel into the ball with your right hand (left hand, for lefties). There goes the clubface.