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I haven't done much fishing in my life, but I have a feeling I could get the lure pretty far out in the water if I tried. Lord knows I've had enough practice with my golf swing. I'm as over-the-top as they come, and it looks like I'm casting a fishing rod rather than swinging a golf club when I begin my motion toward the ball. "If the upper body initiates the downswing, the shoulders start to uncoil, the head gets ahead of the golf ball and the club gets pulled over the top," said Erik Horve, director of instruction at Tustin Ranch. "That means your ability to square the clubface is hindered because your club is traveling from outside in, and your hands want to really hold on to the club to stop it from going too far left." All that in less than 2 seconds? Pass the worms. Maybe I should try fishing. But I'm trying to get pumped up about golf again, and Horve said that a proper downswing should feel like a pumping motion. "This keeps your wrists cocked and ensures that the club is in position for a powerful move through the ball," he said. Before the clubface hits the ball, however, your hips need to be turning toward the target. "A lot of people think their hips need to come back to the original address position. That's not true," Horve said. "The hips are open from the original position. When the club gets halfway through the transition to the ball, you should feel a 50-50 weight distribution. That's when you can turn your right side through and your hips should be out of the way." A good drill to make sure your hips rotate properly on the downswing is to place an object, such as an umbrella, in the ground near your left heel. Position your left hip a few inches from the object at address. Make sure your left hip is the same distance from the object at the top of your backswing, just before impact and through the completion of the swing. If your hip hits the object, you're swaying too much. If your hip is farther away from the object, your weight shift is bad and you're not rotating properly. "The center of the golf swing is the right leg on the backswing and the left leg on the forward swing," Horve said. "The body is rotating around two pivot points, it's not rotating around the center." n Next month: Impact position. Erik Horve can be reached at (714) 734-2104. |
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