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Swing Motor ... Shoulders
The motion of the shoulders on the backswing side of the swing is a natural byproduct of swinging the handle of the club with both hands!
The shoulder turn on the backswing is completely different from the turn
on the foreswing. The shoulders follow the hands on the
The backswing continues moving backwards then upwards. Think of
the backswing as consisting of 1/4, 2/4 and 3/4 positions at the back knee,
the belt and the chest. Both arms are straight until the handle
reaches the back knee. As the handle passes the knee, the right elbow
begins to naturally fold. At address, your thumbs are generally on
top of the shaft. At no time, during an normal, straight shot, do
your thumbs roll to either side of the shaft. At waist high or the
2/4 position, the handle of the club is extended away from you body, the
shaft is parallel to the ground and parallel to the intended target line,
your thumbs and the toe of the club are both up, your right elbow has
continued to fold, your weight has naturally transferred onto the back foot
To complete the backswing, the handle continues to
move upwards to chest high. The right elbow continues to fold and the
shoulders AUTOMATICALLY TURN! There is NO need to control or
manipulate the club. It will go where the thumbs go and the thumbs
will go where your address posture ALLOWS them to go. This is a
critical point of understanding ... you do not have to guide the swing
motion in any way if you begin the swing from a correct posture.
The handle of the club will go where you need it to go! At the 3/4
position, ALL of the checkpoints for a completed backswing have been
accomplished ... nose on the ball, weight on the back foot, full shoulder
turn, right elbow points at the ground and connected grip. You do not
have to try. All of this just happens with a two-handed swing motion.
You may have noticed we are not yet at the top of the back
swing. In this instruction program, the swing motion is divided into
three, not two parts. Instead of back and thru, this method is
backswing, transition and down/foreward swing. The transition begins
with the cocking of the wrists to lay the club across the shoulders.
It continues with a bump of the hips and a drop of the right elbow to get
the club into the "slot".
The bump is NOT a hard lower leg drive popularized by Johnny Miller and
Jack Nicklaus. It is little more than a quite shifting of your weight
onto your front foot. The elbow moves straight down not out towards
the ball. These two movements are nearly simultaneous, but
technically the bump fractionally precedes the drop. The key
checkpoint is to smoothly accelerate into the forward swing.
Typically this means most players need to train themselves to throttle back
to 85-90% of their maximum swing speed.
From this "slot" position, the hips will begin a powerful turn and the hands will continue to fall lower towards the release position.. The lag or release position is different for every player. It is related to your hand strength. Trying to achieve a deeper lag position is a sure way to foul up your release and impact timing.