Hand Positioning & Form
If you are an experienced golfer you may think these tips are basic and offer no value, we here at Hack Golf respectfully disagree.
Even the most experienced of golfers can fall into bad habits and need correcting from time to time.
As much as a beginner needs to learn the basics of golf to achieve any success, sometimes it can be beneficial for a more experienced golfer to revisit the simple, initial lessons so they can reacquaint themselves with things like hand positioning and form.
Hand Positioning
How you hold the club and where you place your hands should be the first thing you practice when looking at your golf swing.
A good rule of thumb is “the lower your hands the lower the trajectory of your shots”, and this remains as true as it ever was.
By keeping a firm grasp of the club and with your dominant hand lower than your non-dominant hand you should be able to strike the ball firmly and comfortably.
Grip
It is important that your grip should neither be too strong or too weak but rather comfortable, firm, and above all relaxed.
Griping the shaft too tightly will cause you to stiffen up and tense your arms, shoulders, and back and have a detrimental effect on your overall movement and form.
A shaft gripped too softly however is liable to mishit the ball, cause you to accidentally strike the ground or even worse fly from your limp fingers, it is always advisable to avoid this embarrassing and potentially dangerous situation by the ensuring your grip is correct.
Form
It is important when swinging that the positioning of your whole body is also carefully monitored.
Your posture will make all the difference when swinging so by pushing your hips back and your chest lowered this will allow for the weight to fall naturally through the balls of your feet.
With your feet spread as wide as your shoulders and your body facing towards the golf pin, you should be positioned perfectly to strike the ball.
Body Power & The Hinge
A lot of golfers’ main bugbear with their swing is the lack of power they produce when striking the ball.
Across the golfing world, you will find many different and successful golfing coaches have completely different reasons and solutions to this problem.
We here at Hack Golf will go into more detail about two potential fixes for your power problem below but just bear in mind that if these don’t work for you don’t lose hope, there are always ways to adapt the power of your swing.
Body Power
A novel and fairly innovative technique that relies on the golfer practicing striking the ball using their body power as opposed to the more commonly used backswing.
Position your body in a dead stop and place your club behind the ball, now hit the ball and try to get the ball as far and as high into the air as possible with no backswing.
If you can generate significant power from this maneuver then you have mastered body power and can now utilize the technique within your normal swing.
Hinging
By properly hinging your wrists as you move through your swing you can naturally increase the power of your swing just by slightly altering the degree of the angle of your wrists.
When initially positioning prior to swinging there should be a 45-degree angle between your arm and the club shaft.
As you move into your backswing however, the angle between shaft and arm needs to be closer to 90 degrees to get the most out of your rotation.
With this simple alteration to your game, you can drastically improve the power of your swing and hopefully be able to strike higher, longer, cleaner shots.
Additional Rotation Drills
You can of course, further increase your power by perfecting your rotation during your swing, thereby making your swing flow better and more naturally.
By focusing on your left knee and keeping it active during your swing, you will naturally come to rotate your hips and this hip rotation will make the following upper body rotation easier and capable of unlocking your backswing power.
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Elbow Slice
One of the biggest bones of contention within golfing circles in recent times has been what is the best position to have your elbow in when swinging?
There are two main schools of thought on the subject that we will explore in more detail below but it’s important to remember that each technique has its proponents and its detractors, so whatever you choose you will be in good company.
Untucked Elbow
Many golfers naturally allow their elbow to stick out when they swing, John Daly and the great Jack Nicklaus being notable examples of this.
An untucked elbow sometimes referred to as letting the elbow fly is used by many golfers who believe it provides them with a larger swing arc and conversely the ability to generate more speed and power.
Users of this technique also insist that this more natural style lends itself to improved accuracy and cleaner shots.
Tucked Elbow
Conversely, players who tuck their elbow in also say that by doing so they are afforded much more power and even greater control.
By correcting your elbow position some players believe this allows your shoulders to become level with the spine, making the downswing significantly easier and increasing power and accuracy.
That is not to say players trying out this method should glue your right elbow to your side as this would limit your natural movement and limit your power.
Again both of these methods have supporters and it is important for you to practice and find out which one suits you better.
The important point to note though is that when you have picked your choice to try and keep with it and not alternate as trying to implement both methods will undoubtedly cause confusion and lead to failure.
Wrist control
How your wrists are positioned before, during, and after the swing could be a major factor of any issues you are having.
If your body is in the correct position (as discussed above) then your wrists will have a better chance of acting correctly and not detrimentally affecting your swing.
However, if a golfer is out of position or is over eager and allows the wrist positioning to become sloppy, the detrimental effects to your swing could be quite significant.
There are a few key factors in wrist placement that we will briefly go through to help you avoid these errors.
Flipping
As your body moves through the positions of the swing many golfers find their hands instinctively flip their wrists.
This normally occurs the brief moments directly before impact and as such is extremely difficult to control and fix.
However, by training with a heavy impact bag and practicing correct hand positioning whilst having your hips slightly open, you should be able to fix this issue fairly quickly.
Elbow Slice Wrist Prevention
As discussed above many golfers struggle to overcome their elbow slice and if you need a quick way of trying to fix this then adapting your wrist positioning is one of the easiest.
By forcing the wrist flat or even bowing it a golfer is able to easily keep the clubface square all the way up and makes the downswing much easier and allows you to turn and await impact.
Tempo
The correct tempo whilst swinging is one of the most obvious errors golfers tend to make and yet bizarrely it is also one of the errors that is most easily fixed.
Most golfers, especially beginners, have a tendency to try and hit the ball as hard as possible with every swing.
Whilst releasing your inner child and letting loose may feel good the reality is when swinging like this the golfer is too reliant on power and lacks massively in accuracy and control.
There are a few easy fixes to solve this problem and once fixed I have no doubt that you will be more comfortable striking slowly than trying to hit the golf ball into next week.
Slow it down!
Many golfers believe that you can almost never hit the ball too slowly.
A slow hit is not the same as a week hit, and if you have practiced the above power and conditioning exercises you should be able to hit extremely powerfully without trying to break a swing speed record.
Slowing down allows you to focus on the shot, your positioning, and what you need to do to place the ball where you need it.
Take some practice shots at home into a net and focus on going slower than usual.
Try for a cohesive strike
Swinging at speed whilst trying to work on all the above tips will likely never work.
By slowing your strike you can focus on each individual fix to your game ensuring all of your modifications are in place prior to striking the ball.
Hitting the ball quickly will undoubtedly cause you to fall back into familiar patterns and to relax new improvements.
In reality, what you need to do is ensure all corrections remain in place all the way throughout your swing and still swing and a consistent tempo.
Frequency
The important and crucial deciding factor in all of these tips will be the frequency with Wuxi how you practice.
Consistent practicing of your tempo is no exception.
By keeping to all of your improvements and consistently practicing your tempo you can make cleaner, more accurate, more powerful shots your natural fallback style.
Summary
So hopefully after reading and digesting the above improvement tips you can see that by making very minor adjustments to your golf swing you can drastically improve your swing and overall game.
By getting the basics right and consistently working on them through diligent practice you should be able to notice a difference fairly rapidly.
Additionally, by improving your swing and achieving better results you will hopefully be more relaxed and confident in other parts of your game and be ready to apply some of the lessons on form and posture in these areas.
A more relaxed and confident golfer is more likely to be a successful and happier golfer which after all is the most important reason to play.
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We hope you have enjoyed our five tips to improve your golf swing and we would love to hear if you have any other hints or suggestions on how golfers can rapidly improve their game.
Why not let us know what you think about this piece or on anything else golf related via the comments box below.
Until then we hope you have a great day and encourage you to get out on that golf course and swing away.
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