My Magic Move Should Be Your Magic Move

I have the secret to what may be the biggest difference between your swing and a pro's. It has to do with physics and your mind being out of synch with what your body is doing. Let me try to explain. If you get it, you will see amazing changes in your swing and I mean amazing. If the explanation confuses you, don't worry. Just try to exercise at the end and you'll see the results for yourself.

First, let's go over a bit of physics - in this case centrifugal and centripetal forces which are equal and opposite. Put a piece of string in roughly the center of a 12 inch dowel and then rotate the dowel quickly by putting it between your palms and rubbing them back and forth. What happens to the string. It will rise up to a point where it's at a 90 degree angle with the axis of the dowel. The point of attachment provides the centripetal force that offsets the centrifugal force created by the rapid rotation of the dowel. I hope this isn't confusing, but it's helpful to understand the concept. There's a bit of gravity involved, but it's not relevant to the concept. Let me try to explain it another way.

Imagine a baseball player swinging a bat to hit a ball. The force generated by the bat being forced away from the body, makes the bat want to swing on a plane perpendicular to the spine and bisecting the spine through the point where the shoulders attach. To swing the bat lower requires a force to be applied via the muscles in the arms to actually force the bat down. This is most noticeable when the swing speed is great enough to counteract the force of gravity on the arms and bat. Imagine doing this with a wiffle ball bat, it should be even more apparent.

Now imagine standing erect and swinging a golf club at shoulder level. How hard is it to keep the arms at a 90 degree angle with the spine. The faster you swing, the easier it is as this is where they naturally want to be (because of centripetal and centrifugal forces). If we could tee golf balls at shoulder height and hit them with baseball bats it would be easy to make a repetitive swing as centrifugal force would be working in our favor. And this is why hitting a golf ball at our feet is so difficult.

From the top of the backswing through to the top of the follow through, the faster you swing a golf club the more it wants to rise up to a point where the arms are perpendicular to the spine. In the real world this results in physical forces moving the club head at the bottom of the swing further away from the body. That explains why most amateur golfers setup with the golf ball squarely in the middle of the club face, but actually make contact toward the heel or even worse, hit the ball on the shaft - the dreaded SHANK. When most pros miss the center they usually hit more toward the toe. You'll see why that is when you try the exercise below. (Conversely, if you actively try to swing the club from inside to outside you will only make things worse.)

OK, let's pull this together and see what the easy fix is. This is where you have to overcome the problem of your mind feeling something in your swing that isn't really happening. First and foremost, from the top of the backswing the golfer has to actively pull the club in towards the body to overcome the centrifugal force that is trying to move it outwards at the bottom of the swing. This means you have to pull the hands in towards the body on the downswing. When you do this your mind is going to think that you are hitting the ball from the outside in. I'm not sure why this is, but I suppose it's because the mind reacts to the conscious effort to pull the hands toward the body, but doesn't respond to centrifugal force. Consider this for a moment; at the top of the backswing your hands are well behind the targetline - a line through the ball pointing directly at the target. At the top of the follow through your hands are also well behind this target line. Extend this concept further and you'll see they are also behind a line parallel to this that goes through your belt buckle. Therefore, you can pull your hands in as much as you like on the downswing and you'll always end up with an inside to inside swing with the point where your hands are farthest from your belt being the point where you hit the ball.

Even if you didn't follow the above, give this a try; make a swing with the thought that you are going to pull your hands to the inside starting at the top of the backswing. You'll be wonderfully surprised at the results, I'm positive. Your mind is going to tell you that you are swinging from outside to inside, but the ball flight is going to show you otherwise. If you understand this move and put it to work you are going to see some amazing results and do away with problems that have been plaguing you for years. My apologies to the physicists out there. If you can explain it better, please add your comments to the blog. If you have some pictures, I'm sure that would help the visual learners out there. Give it a try, you're going to be shocked even if you feel you're swinging outside in. Think about why the pros finish so much more to the left on an iron shot follow through than you do. Justin Leonard is a good example. I'm convinced this is part of the reason that Jim Furyk has such a loop in his swing. He is actually giving himself a running start at pulling his hands inside.