While the golf swing might look like one fluid motion, instructor and legendary on-course reporter Peter Kostis argues it’s made of three levers that need to work individually first before they can create a successful and repeatable golf swing.
Kostis broke this down in the latest episode of “Kostis & McCord: Off Their Rockers,” a GOLF production, and also offered a drill to practice the first technique.
For starters, Kostis says the golf swing consists of three levers:
1) The wrist to the club head
“If you don’t know how to use your wrist and hands correctly, then you are missing the heartbeat of the golf swing,” Kostis says. “So you have to learn how to hinge the club properly, learn to release the club properly and learn to strike down on the golf ball to make it go up in the air.”
2) The shoulder socket to the wrist (the length of the arm)
“You have to learn how to swing this arm from your shoulder socket,” he says.
3) Your collarbone, from your lead shoulder to your sternum.
“You have to learn to rotate that around your body,” Kostis says.
A drill to nail down your wrist action
Doing all three of these things together produces the golf swing, although this is where Kostis says your beginning golfer might think it’s just one simple body rotation, but he says it’s crucial to learn how to do the three elements individually before doing them together.
The key is the starting point: wrist to club head. He practices it by chipping simple 15- or 20-yard shots. You can also make a drill out of this by placing a towel about 5 inches behind your ball and hitting chips without touching the towel (if you are a “scooper,” you’ll clip the towel).
“It may seem elementary but great players learned how to use their hands at a young age,” he says. “You must train your hands to work properly so that you can forget about them in the golf swing when you are playing, but if you don’t have good hand action, have a good grip, everything else in the golf swing doesn’t count.”
You can watch the entire video in this article to learn more, and you can watch the latest episode of “Kostis & McCord: Off Their Rockers” below.
As GOLF.com’s managing editor, Berhow handles the day-to-day and long-term planning of one of the sport’s most-read news and service websites. He spends most of his days writing, editing, planning and wondering if he’ll ever break 80. Before joining GOLF.com in 2015, he worked at newspapers in Minnesota and Iowa. A graduate of Minnesota State University in Mankato, Minn., he resides in the Twin Cities with his wife and two kids. You can reach him at joshua_berhow@golf.com.
