Why posture is the key to a successful golf swing — especially for women
Kellie Stenzel
While posture is certainly a key component to success for every golfer, I would be willing to debate that it is much more important for women.
Why? Improper posture often leads to a high percentage of topped balls, shots where the ball flies too low or a significant loss of distance.
The most effective way to combat these tendencies is to create a consistent set-up routine that repeats with every club, allowing each and every female golfer to get into perfect posture over every shot with every club.
While all of us are built completely differently, the general rule for women when it comes to posture is that we need to be more bent forward from our hips, so that our hands can hang below our shoulders with our chest over our toes and our weight favoring our center foot, or even slightly in our toes.
The reason this is so important it that our center of gravity tends to be a bit lower than men, and in an effort to counter balance a good swing we need to bow forward from our hips.
This bow will not only allow our arms to hang, but also get us into an athletic position. From here, when the proper backswing is made and our shoulders are allowed to turn, the club moving behind us will not pull us off balance.
Here’s how to make sure your setup is picture-perfect every time:
Set your club behind your ball and then bend forward from your hips to set your grip onto the club. By building your set up around the bow — and using it set your hands on the grip — you establish great posture by allowing your arms to hang.
Once your club and hands are set, then you should step or shuffle your feet as many times as necessary to find the location where your hands hang below your shoulders and your weight is relatively centered in your foot so you feel balanced.
Repeating this routine will allow you to get into good posture with all of your clubs. If your grip and posture are correct, the golf ball will try really hard to get in the way of your swinging club, which makes it so much easier to create speed, distance and most importantly, confidence!