Golf Swing Tips

By Barry H. Nolan

Here’s the best tip of all: disregard any tips. 

Instructional tips rarely do any good.  That’s because they’re being hung onto a faulty framework. 

If someone’s swing is basically flawed, no tip is going to provide a remedy.  Much golf instruction is misleading because it is based on a superficial look at the swing.  The typical face-on view of a swing appears two-dimensional, certainly on a tv screen or on a magazine page.  And the motion looks to be dominated by back and forth movements. 

However, a more accurate view of what the body actually is doing when it hits a golf ball is from above.  From this view, everything (clubhead, hands, arms, shoulders, hips) seems to be whirling in circles, first clockwise, then counter-clockwise.

‘Around’ flits in and out of much published instruction.  But it deserves front-and-center attention.  It is the dominant feeling you want to have when you hit a golf ball.  It helps form a solid framework.

Competing with ‘Around’ for center stage, is another prominent sensation: looseness.  Clubhead speed is created by turning the body into a whip.  This is achieved only through a loose, supple upper half of the body.  Think of the suppleness of the strand of a whip.  When a whip cracks loudly, it’s breaking the sound barrier.  You may not break the sound barrier with your clubhead, but you will be maximizing your clubhead speed if your upper body is as loose and floppy as a leather strand.

“Power” should be dumped from golf-swing vocabulary.  It connotes tense muscles being employed forcefully.  Rather, you want to have a feeling above your waist of loose, fluid motion.  This, too, is part of a solid framework.