Your right and left arm move in unison when you swing, but they have very different roles and motions. The left gets off easy: It swings across your chest in the backswing, loads a little in the transition, then returns to impact without ever really losing its basic shape. Hey, even a pure novice can make a fairly respectable left-arm-only swing.
The right arm? It’s trickier. It needs to go from relatively straight at address to noticeably bent as you swing back — so that your right arm and hand can position themselves under the club at the top — then work even further under the club during the transition so that, eventually, your right elbow can lead your hands toward impact. Tricky stuff, like I said.
Luckily, if you have any athletic skill at all, you can pull it off. You’ve thrown a football, right? Copy the same right-arm load-and-throw motion you use when tossing a pigskin in your backyard and you can launch powerful drives and iron shots on the course.
When you toss a football, you instinctively lift and bend your right arm, getting the nose of the pigskin behind your right ear. That’s the ideal L-shape you see Tour players make at the top of the backswing!
To hurl the football forward, your natural motion is to lead with your right shoulder and elbow — nobody throws passes by merely flicking their wrists. Same goes for your swing.
