Put a golf bag outside of your lead foot, and practice extending your arms to the right of it.
GOLFTEC
There are two crucial things that highly skilled golfers do than the rest of us, and they both occur milliseconds after impact.
As GOLFTEC outlines as part of its SwingTru study, professional golfers have their hips shifted more towards the target at impact than higher handicaps, which then allows their arms to be straighter through impact for a more compressed shot. When your hips don’t shift towards the target, your arms have to bend in order to salvage contact with the ball. It’s a move that can leave you struggling with consistency and leaking power.
And it was exactly what this golfer was struggling with.
Her solution, though, was actually quite simple.
During her GOLFTEC lesson (which you can book for yourself right here, or below), her coach had her hit punch shots, with her driver, with a golf bag 3 feet outside of her lead foot. Her goal was to feel like her hips were getting closer to the bag, while her arms extended to the right of it. She’d practice this by hitting punch shot, ending with her arms and club pointing at the target.
After a few swings to get acclimated, she started building speed, and eventually returned to hitting full drivers without the golf bag. And when she did, her golf swing was in better shape: Her hips had shifted about an inch-and-a-half closer to the target, and her lead arm went from 15 degree bent to completely straight, as you can see below.
Hips forward arms straight; it’s a swing thought that gave this golfer a quick power boost, and might work for you, too.
Luke Kerr-Dineen is the Game Improvement Editor at GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com. In his role he oversees the brand’s game improvement content spanning instruction, equipment, health and fitness, across all of GOLF’s multimedia platforms.
An alumni of the International Junior Golf Academy and the University of South Carolina–Beaufort golf team, where he helped them to No. 1 in the national NAIA rankings, Luke moved to New York in 2012 to pursue his Masters degree in Journalism from Columbia University. His work has also appeared in USA Today, Golf Digest, Newsweek and The Daily Beast.