Welcome to Play Smart, a regular GOLF.com game-improvement column that will help you play smarter, better golf.
Swaying during the golf swing is not necessarily a bad thing, but when you overdo it, it can be disastrous. You want to sway a bit, but not so much that you’re messing up your sequencing.
A proper golf swing features a turn to the top, followed by a weight shift onto your lead side and then a turn all the way to impact. But with a poor swing, players will sway — and not turn — to the top and then slide toward the target during the downswing. Perfecting this sequencing is not easy, but it’s a must if you want to maximize the efficiency of your swing.
So what’s the right amount of sway without overdoing it? To see it in action, we turn to the CBS broadcast from this weekend as they broke down Ludvig Aberg‘s swing with Optimotion technology.
How much should you sway?
Aberg is one of the best drivers of the golf ball in the modern game. He has the rare combination of distance and accuracy, and it makes him one of the best with a driver in his hands.
When he turns to the top of his swing, you can see he sways his hips just over an inch away from the target as he gets the top of the backswing.
“That is as far as he sways off of the ball,” CBS analyst Trevor Immelman says.
As Aberg begins his transition, he bumps his hips toward the target and then begins to unwind as he swings down toward impact. When his clubhead meets the ball, his hips have now swayed 2 inches toward the target from where they were at address.
“Something interesting to note, if you take a look at the field average, they sway just a little bit more,” Immelman says. “The fact that he doesn’t, that’s what allows him to hit up on the ball so much.”
By limiting his hip sway just a touch, Aberg is able to stay more behind the ball and in position to hit up on the ball and generate a nice launch angle. However, even for average Tour pros, they only sway less than an inch more toward the target than Aberg.
This amount of sway — just about 3 inches from backswing to downswing — is not a huge amount. It is just enough to load into the backswing, bump the hips toward the target and then make a turn through the ball.
If you find yourself struggling to line up the sequencing of your swing, try taking a look at how much you’re swaying. Chances are you’re overdoing it, making it incredibly difficult to make an efficient swing.
