The start of the golf swing is absolutely crucial for making solid contact. You’ve got to nail the takeaway if you want to have any sort of consistency in your swing.
One adage commonly thrown around in regard to the backswing is to be “low and slow.” The theory goes that if you groove your backswing slowly and low to the ground, you’ll be less likely to make an error and ruin your swing from the start.
The advice is great in theory, but in practice, the term is largely misguided. In fact, according to GOLF Top 100 Teacher Jonathan Yarwood, the term low and slow is a huge golf swing myth.
“If you swing low and slow, what happens is all the components end up going at the same speed,” Yarwood says.
Yarwood goes on to explain that in the golf swing, each component (hands, arms, body, clubhead) must move at different speeds. Because each component has a different distance to travel around the swing arc to get to the proper positions, every piece has to move at a different rate.
For example, the center of your body moves less than a foot from address to the top of the backswing. The clubhead on the other hand travels several feet on an arc from its address position all the way to the top of the swing.
“We’ve got to coordinate those two so they kind of arrive at similar times,” Yarwood says.
If you use a “low and slow” move to the top of the swing, the sequencing of the swing gets out of wack.
“It’s not low and slow,” Yarwood says. “It’s high, fast and then wind your body.”
Don’t obsess too much over being “low and slow” as you take the club to the top. Instead, focus on getting all the components moving at the correct rate to keep your sequencing intact. If you can, you’ll hit the ball better than ever.
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