The 5 Signs that your golf swing is malfunctioning. 1) You don’t make the ball go as far as you think you should. 2) You do not hit the ball as far as you think you should. 3) It feels like you are swinging against a wall. 4) You cannot make the same swing twice in a row. 5) Your ball will not stop on a dime after striking the green.
Names of golfers:
Name: Drew Jacobs
The golf swing is based on two things: timing and power. There is a system that tells you when you are supposed to pull the club back, and another system that tells you how hard to hit the ball. If either of these systems is broken, it can be hard to figure out what is wrong.
If your timing is messed up, your swing will feel stiff and awkward. You might even hear a click as the club hits the ball if you are hitting it with a metal driver. If your timing has gone bad, but your power seems okay, you might solve this problem by swinging harder or taking more practice swings. But that doesn’t often help.
If your timing is off but your power feels okay, there’s an even worse problem. You might have lost all sense of where the ball was going to go as you swung. Your backswing would have been too long, which means it took off too much speed; your downswing would have been too short, which means it lacked speed at the end; and so on. It would be like trying to hit a baseball with a spoon. It just won’t work.
A good swing is the one that works best for you. And it’s not a matter of how many practice swings you do. It’s more a matter of what the correct technique is that works best for you. Your best swing will work for you, and if it doesn’t, then you need to try something else until it does.
With this in mind, there are five things to watch out for when you’re looking at videos of yourself hitting golf shots.
One: You’re swinging too hard or too slowly. If you believe that the only reason your current swing isn’t working is that you aren’t swinging hard enough or fast enough, then it means your current swing isn’t working well for you. You have to find that sweet spot between too slow and too hard for you.
Two: You’re swinging your arms too far apart. I call this “the chicken wing.” The purpose of the golf swing is to use the arms as levers to help transfer energy from the body into the clubhead, which should be moving straight ahead at all times while your body stays still and stable. If your arms are too far apart, they won’t be able to do their job well because your body will start to move out of alignment with them; if
The most common scenario is to have the clubhead hit the ball and fall back, which of course means you swing the clubhead to the left. This is usually followed by a “whack” sound as the clubhead hits a tree or other obstacle.
It is not uncommon for this to happen in an entire round of golf, especially on the green where you’re only a few yards away from your ball.
The problem is often a lack of body awareness and poor control during the downswing. The golfer may swing out to far, causing him or her to land short of the target line, which causes them to compensate with extra effort in their wrists and arms so they don’t lose their balance. Usually this leads to an over-the-top follow through where the golfer swings too hard and then adds additional movement (even more wrist and arm movement) at impact.
The irony is that the most important part of your golf swing is the one you can’t see. If you’re stuck on a mediocre wedge shot, your problem isn’t a bad swing or an inconsistent release point; it’s that your head isn’t moving up and down at precisely the same time as your hips are rotating.
You might think you’re in good shape. But your swing is probably getting worse. A professional golfer will have a lot more consistency than you, because he will do everything exactly right every time. He does it because he’s been working at it for years.
So what should you do? Work on your swing mechanics; it’ll give you the most bang for your buck. But also be prepared to make some changes to get the shot out smoothly.
The problem with golf is that everyone has an opinion about it, and the more knowledgeable people are, the less helpful their opinions are. They can’t remember what they saw when they were learning to play; they don’t know that the problem you have now isn’t the same problem as it was 20 years ago; it’s hard for them to imagine what a good solution might be. Also, because golf is so complicated, many people have opinions about it. The more experience you have with something, the more likely you are to understand why people who aren’t as good at it give bad advice.
My job as a coach is to explain what people who aren’t as good at golf think they’re doing right or wrong. It’s my job not to be right myself.