Many of the important fundamentals in golf are considered boring to work on. It is much more fun to work on creating speed with the driver than to work on your posture in the setup position and during the swing. Unfortunately, most poor golfers have poor “boring” fundamentals. If your alignment, grip and posture are bad you most likely do not hit the ball consistently or very far.
Posture may be boring but starting athletic and staying athletic is important. You would not want to start a drag race with your wheel pointed away from the target so why would you want to start your golf swing with something you need to correct in motion.
Remember for every swing “error” you make on the backswing you will need a compensating move to fix it during the swing. This will cause a lack of consistency and speed.
Go to your local driving range and take a look at some of the set-ups and swings of the golfers. You will see that most players have poor posture and have poor ball striking skills. The players that have a solid set up position and keep their posture fairly consistent during the swing are normally pretty good players.
What we are trying to accomplish is keeping the spine fairly straight in the setup and tilted away from the target about 15-18 degrees at set up. We will then keep the bend from the hips spine angle pretty close to the same until after impact. The spine will tilt away from the target more on the downswing about 10-15 degrees more than straighten at impact. This is a lot of movement but most amateurs have a ton of up and down motion killing their consistency.
Take a look at a few of these swings and notice how the body rotates around the spine. You will also notice there is nearly no lateral motion away from the target with the hips. Yes, if you want to be very technical the base of the spine does go a little more vertical with more bend at the top of the spine in the downs swing. Justin Rose is a great example of proper posture during the swing!
Various tour player swings from Bubba to Adam Scott
Ben Hogan
Tiger Woods 1999
You will notice all the players have slightly different swings and power centers but they all set up to the ball in balance and with good posture.
Work on your preshot posture and then work on keeping your posture under control during your swing and odds are that your ball striking will improve significantly!
Jim Hartnett, PGA
www.myhome4golf.com
