The name of the game in golf is a square clubface at impact. There are a variety of ways to achieve this goal, but all of them have the same mission in mind: hitting the ball with the center of the clubface.
With the number of components that go into your swing, sometimes things get complex. Thinking about each key position and movement can result in paralysis by analysis, and the results are rarely good.
Finding the center of the clubface doesn’t have to be so complicated, though. As GOLF Top 100 Teacher Brian Manzella explains in the video above, there’s a simple way to help you find the perfect impact position for your swing.
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“If you went to a real professional impact [position] and then you froze your arms to your body — like I’ve straightened up and I’ve turned towards the target — so I haven’t moved my arms from my body, and I take this arm, hand, and club position to the top of my swing body, it becomes pretty obvious what I’m doing with my arms at the top,” he says. “So, from the top, that’s just this movement. The rest of the downswing is just pivot.”
In other words, if you can find your impact position and then bring your club back to halfway down, you’ll feel the exact position your arms and hands need to be once you reach the ball. Take that position from halfway down and rotate to the top and you’ll feel right where everything needs to be when you complete your backswing.
“You see folks trying to go out like this and laying the club down,” Manzella says. “But really what you’re trying to do is take the bottom of the shaft from the top and make it go toward the ground.”
If you can master this move and incorporate your impact position into the rest of your swing, you’ll find the center of the clubface more consistently and play better golf.