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The Perfect Swing Posture Practice Routine

The posture you use at address is important to your chances of knocking a decent shot, simply because it will determine the shape and quality of your body motion during the swing.

Falling into bad swing habits is easy, so when you practice take some time to go over this “perfect posture” routine:

1) Stand perfectly straight with your feet about shoulder width apart. Your hands should be placed firmly on the grip and the arms extended with comfort, near chest height.

2) Now bend from your hips slowly until the club is resting on the turf.

3) Flex the knees so that you can feel some tension in your thighs, keeping your back relatively straight. Hold your chin up high.

4) Before you swing be sure not to remain too static. A good golf swing should be in fluid motion, and it is hard to make a decent start on your swing from a totally stiff position.

Variety Is The Key To Great Practice Sessions

When working around the greens, variety during practice is the ingredient for staying fresh and hitting all of the points you need to cover. For example, if you typically putt first during the beginning of your practice sessions then start today’s session with a few chip shots.

Not only should you vary shots made during each session you should also vary the location as well. Send a few chip shots one way, then chip the ball another direction.

Do not make the same putt from the same spot over and over again. Knock a few bunker shots from the inside of the slope, both uphill and downhill, including the middle to spice it up a bit. And pitch the ball towards various targets.

Stay Relaxed

Last weekend I went to knock a few practice balls on the green with my neighbor, Jim. I had always avoided playing golf with Jim because of his high-tensed attitude. Even on the practice greens this guy would take very shot as serious as if he were shooting to win the U.S. Open.

Do not be like Jim. Practice sessions are for fun and you are not going to make every shot turn out the way you want it to. That’s the point - to keep yourself guessing and getting used to the surprise. In a real game you will never have the same shot over and over again so why practice this way?

When it comes to the mastering your golf grip there is one important factor involved that I do not see too many golf enthusiasts talking about: How the thumb should be planted on the shaft.

Many golfers think that over-swinging automatically creates more power, that there is a direct ratio between the size of the swing and the power it generates. But this thinking is wrong.  You get maximum power only by swinging within the confines of your feet. There are two basic rules governing this:

1. You do not want to let your weight to be on the outside of your right foot during the backswing.

2. You do not want your weight on the outside of your left foot until after you make contact with the ball.

Here is how you should work with your knees, ankles, and feet during a swing:

Start with your weight evenly distributed on the balls of your feet. As you shift your weight to the inside of your right foot on the backswing, roll the left foot in. The knee turns in naturally, but the right knee remains fairly stationary.

Now, as you come into the ball, your right knee should turn and your weight should move off the ball of the right foot and onto your left. Meanwhile, the right knee is moving straight at the hole. After impact the weight moves farther, until it is on the outside of the left foot. Eventually your weight will be far off to the left and your right heel off the ground.

There isn’t a single golfer in the world that would not like to add more distance to the ball. Ask Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, or Steve Stricker if they want more distance and I guarantee you they would all say yes!

 Here Is A Tip 

A very simple tip on helping you get that extra yardage out of your drives is to learn to turn your shoulders during the backswing.

You will have a much better chance of hitting the ball longer if you learn to turn your shoulders during the backswing. Stretch your torso and make it a goal to get your left shoulder to be positioned over the right foot when you have reached the top of your swing.

 If You Are Having Trouble 

For those if you who have tried this and are having trouble moving your shoulders through enough on the backswing, you can turn your left knee clockwise, just enough so that it is pointing behind the ball during the backswing. This will help free up the hips and aid in turning your shoulders enough.

 Consider Your Grip 

To help increase the flexibility needed to extend your shoulders during the backswing, pay attention to your grip. Too much tension with your hands can cause the chest and forearms to tighten up, which lessens the speed of your arms.

Do you want to know a common trademark of golfers who have the knack for sending the ball flying with phenomenal distance? It’s the turning of the hips to the left during the downswing, while at the same time extending the right arm through the swing.

Here is a quick drill that can help you accomplish this:

1. Start by teeing up the drive in your normal stance.

2. Now set the ball down off of your left heel (and/or opposite of the left armpit).

3. Without moving your stance, reach down and slide the ball towards your target at approximately the same distance of the grip.

4. Tee up your ball at that very spot, which should be 10 to 12 inches closer to the hole. Your address for the ball should be back where your normal position was at.

5. Now to finally hit the ball you will have to move the hips to the left so your arms will be able to “reach” the ball. This will invariably cause your right arm to extend.

This drill should be practiced at least 30 times before hitting the ball in its normal position. By that time you should have made significant improvement in your distance.

Pitch Shots During Downhill & Uphill Lies 

The tricky part about hitting a pitch shot from a downhill lie is hitting the ball with the clubhead before it strikes the ground behind the ball. Make no mistake, this is indeed a tough shot!

When you come upon a downhill lie, put most of your weight on your front side at address and keep it there throughout the swing. Because the hillside tilts you to your front, you naturally de-loft the angle of the clubface. The ball will come off the club flying lower and perhaps longer, so you may want to take a more lofted club or shorten your backswing accordingly.

For uphill lies, you want to let the clubhead follow the ground contour, just as you do with a downhill lie. Because the ball lies on an uphill slope, the angle effectively increases the loft of the club, causing the ball to fly higher and shorter after impact. Choose a longer club than you would normally use and also lengthen your backswing to account for the lost yardage.

The angle of the hill, depending upon its steepness, also affects your balance by forcing your weight onto your backside and perhaps causing you to pull up or even fall back out of the shot. Guard against this by keeping your weight on your front foot and keeping the ball in the middle of your stance.

A Simple Drill To Eliminating Those Nasty Shanks Of all of the miss/hit shots in golf, the shank is probably the most dreadful. The shank happens when you make contact with the ball using the hosel of the club. One of the main causes of the shank is standing too close to the ball at address as it crowds you. The second reason for a shank is shifting your weight forward on your left foot before making impact, causing the hosel of the club to hit the ball. The key is to set up evenly, and when you hold your club, be sure that there is just over a fist’s length of space between the end of the grip and your body. A Practice Drill The second thing you can do is practice with by using a shaft. Place the shaft 3 inches in front of your leading foot and then back 3 inches. Check your distance so that a fist is perfectly measured between your body and the grip.  Now take a few practice swings, making sure that the left hip brushes against the shaft (right handed players). Now hit a couple of shots and put it all together: proper setup, distance, and left hip hitting the shaft. By following this advice you’re sure to get rid of those dreadful shanks.

A Quick Drill For Consistent Shots Creating consistent shots in golf is a must. What happens with a lot of players is that, as you look from down the line, the golf club has a tendency to get too vertical on the downswing. It leads to taking too much turf, steep divots, and a ball spinning off to the right.  All of this is influenced by your setup. For example, if you have too much bend in the upper body, and the arms are extended far away from the body, there is a lot of tilt. This causes the golf club to get too vertical on the backswing, which will also create the steepness in the downswing, sticking the club into the ground, and the arms tend to reverse rotate.  So by standing taller at address and getting the end of the golf club pouring more toward your belt buckle, that will put you in an ideal position from address. However, this doesn’t mean that your swing will get more rounded to produce a consistent shot, so a simple drill can help. The 15, 10, 5 Drill First take a practice shot with the ball 15 inches above the ground. By swinging so high you have a nice rounded swing, almost like a baseball swing, and after swinging through, it allows you to square up the clubface. Next move to 10 inches above the ground, around and through, then 5, around and through, then on the tee, making sure the end of the golf club is pointed at your belt buckle.

It is obvious that you can hit a good shot even if you follow through awkwardly, for nothing you do after the ball leaves the clubhead is going to influence where the ball goes. But a sound follow-through is still a vital element in a golf swing because it helps insure that everything that went before was done properly. 

What is a good follow-through?

In general, there are three important elements to look for:

1. How the hands finish.

2. How the right shoulder finishes.

3. The position of the head.

Ideally, the hands should finish high. This indicates that you have brought them straight through the impact area and out toward the target. If the hands finish past and below the left shoulder, it usually means the swing has been too flat or the wrists have rolled over excessively at impact.

At the same time, the right shoulder should stay down and underneath the left. This indicates that you have hit straight through the ball with all your power, and not pulled the face of the club across it.

Finally, the head should be kept down but slightly tilted, to the point where you watch the flight of the ball almost entirely out of the corner of your left eye. This means you have maintained a steady position throughout the swing and stayed down on the shot.