Knee motion in the golf swing

Your left knee or forward knee is critical to a proper, efficient golf swing.  If your knees don’t work correctly your foot work, balance and other parts of you swing get thrown off.  There are many swing faults in golf that keep people from making repeatable, powerful swings but bad foot and leg work makes golf difficult.

A few of the most common knee and swing faults

1.  Lifting the left heel in the air on the backswing. isn’t alway bad but it is for most players.  If you can lift your left heel and put it down in the same spot you might get away with this.  For 99% of us keep your left heel on the ground.
2. Right or back knee bending away from the target is a normal poor mechanic.  Most bad players move their right knee away from the target on the back swing aligning the right knee over the right foot or ever moving the right knee outside of the right foot.  This makes hitting good shots at the range difficult but hitting consistently good shots on uneven lies on the golf course almost impossible.
3. Straightening the right knee on the back swing is also a common bad move.  It is OK to lose a little flex in the right knee but you should feel like you don’t lose any flex.
4. The left knee flexing too much towards the left toes is a killer move.  I see this in good players even at the tour level along with beginners.  I used to notice a lot of players that worked with Mac Ogrady made this move.  Stack and tilt students also have a tendency to make this knee motion moving the weight to the left toes.  There are a few problems with this and an easy fix.
   1. Flexing the knee towards the toes
      1. Makes your weight go towards your left toes on the back swing.
      2. Can keep your wieght from shifting to the right foot in the back swing.
      3. Can make your head move towards the target on the back swing.
      4. Can cause the hips and spine to tilt towards the target.
      5. Because of all these can cause a lack of power and consistency.
   2. See the video below for a look at good leg work.  You will see a little flex in the left knee on the backswing to allow the hips to turn but not too much flex towards the target line.  You should not see between the players legs viewing from behind the player on the target line.

Proper Leg motion video

Your left knee should move towards your right knee on the back swing to allow your hips to rotate.  Your left knee moving towards your right allows the right hip to move off the target line which is the proper move.

Best of luck

Jim Hartnett

www.myhome4golf.com