Over the past several months my ball striking became poor causing too many bogies. I worked on a lot of things that didn’t help and out of frustration I called my friend Tim Mitchel at Pelican Hill and asked for help. It is amazing how many bad habits we can slip into. He noted I was too far away from the ball, weight on my toes at set up and impact and more importantly my shoulder plane was flat. This made sense rationally because I was hitting it less accurately and losing distance. I am back on the mend but it took hitting balls every day for ten days before things felt a little better.
I am not the only one with this issue. Most players, including some low handicap players, come out of their posture during their swing. Why do we do this, because this makes it physically easier to make a larger backswing. Letting your lead or left shoulder elevate in the backswing is a normal fault of many golfers and especially those who have limited mobility in their spine. If you are not flexible you probably have too flat of a shoulder plane.
The shoulders should rotate close to the setup shaft plane angle on an angle that point the line just outside the target line and close to the shaft plane at set up during the downswing.
Some players on tour are closer than set up shaft plane but most of us are not flexible enough to do this.
Here is the good news, if you correct your shoulder plane you can hit it farther and more accurately. The bad news is that this correction, at least for me felt alien when I first tried to make the correction. The good news again is you can do this, your spine is most likely much more mobile than mine so this should not be too difficult of a correction.
Get your phone, video app open and go to the practice range and take a look at your shoulder plane. If it is correct good for you. Most likely you and definitely me can make some improvement.
