Breaking Down the Golf Swing

Let’s try to break down the golf swing by using a clock. We—our arms, hands and legs—are going to become the long second hand of this clock. Imagine your triangle (see photo)

Your grip and the club are the second hand of the clock. At address position we have the second hand (triangle, grip and club ) pointed at 6 o’clock.

As we rotate our torso and move the second hand in the back swing, we will get the clubhead to about 8 o’clock when we start hinging or setting the club on the toe line. As we continue our rotation of the triangle and our grip to the 9 o’clock position the club head has moved at a much faster rate, The clubhead may already be at 11 o’clock depending on how much wrist cock we have. ( we should have the club at least at 90 degree angle to the left arm ) see photo here:

From here as we finish the wind up to the top we want our hands to get to 10 o’clock or shoulder high only; anything higher than that will probably make you change your spine angle.

So we are at the top of our back swing coiled up tight. Now how do we get the second hand to get back to 6 o’clock fully extended as a straight second hand? First move in the transition or change of direction, as we set our left heel or feel the weight go to the left side we also start to unwind the arms, so the grip at the bottom of the triangle must start to move back towards 6 o’clock.

When the hands start to move it is possible for more angle or wrist cock to occur. The triangle starts to unwind from 10 o’clock to 9 o’clock to 8 o’clock to 7 o’clock. As this happens the left hip is clearing. That means it is rotating back not sliding to the target. The left shoulder has started to rotate back away from the ball, with the grip racing towards 6 o’clock. Here we need to let the club head catch up so that we have the triangle, our grip and the club back together as the second hand ( we call this being fully extended at the bottom of the swing ) at 7 o’clock so that when we rotate into 6 o’clock we come back to the ball square to target.

If your hands go past 6 o’clock and the club face is still at 8 you are going to slice the ball, unless you have the fastest hands in the world.

So the second hand will be fully extended through the swing at the bottom let’s say from 7 o’clock thru 6 and 5 o’clock possibly to 4 or 3 o’clock as we extend or fire through the shot. But think about cause and effect: if your hands are winning the race back to 6 o’clock with the clubhead dragging behind the result is a clubface open and the ball going right. When we set up at address position we are telling the computer in between our ears that this is the position I want to be in at impact. The clubface square to the target….my left hip and left shoulder will have rotated slightly past address position but my triangle, grip and club are going to be at 6 o’clock with the second hand fully extended as one piece. This get’s me square at impact for maximum distance and straight shots. Just this one correction to your swing can do a lot to eliminating the tendency to slice.

Next we are going to follow through to 3:00 o’clock. Notice that the club shaft is parallel to the target line and toe line.

To finish up we are going to release through to about 1:00 o’clock as illustrated in this photo:

Think about this drill while practicing. By far the best device for developing a consistent repeatable golf swing that gets you back to 6 o’clock is the Automatic Swing Trainer. It teaches the feel that address is impact and helps ingrain the correct feelings. The AST will help you accomplish perfect practice that you will feel and see on the course.