The Downswing

The most important and critical area of golf is the first movement of the downswing.
 With it we uncover the most common and at the same time most devastating flaws.

The golf swing itself is probably the most difficult and certainly the most elusive action in all athletics.

Beyond question it is the most frustrating, and nowhere more so than at this very point, where the club and the body make their first moves down toward the ball.

The peak of frustration is reached here because, no matter what has gone before it, this one move can make a greater difference in the result of the swing and the shot than any other.

We can have a perfect grip, start back from the ball properly, reach the top in faultless position and then ruin it all by the next move we make.

 Not only can the swing be ruined by this move, it is ruined about 95 per cent of the time.
Here are some fatal flaws to avoid:

The deadly moves, the most fatal flaws, are these:

(1) Spinning the hips without moving the weight laterally,

(2) With this spinning motion turning the right shoulder high toward the ball,

(3) Trying to move the club head or slowing down the hands.

These moves bring quick disaster by causing two things.

 They make us hit too soon and they make us hit from the outside in. The first robs us of distance, the second of direction and what else do we want from a full shot?

Because we hit too soon, the drive that might have gone 220 yards goes only 190, and into that trap that juts out into the fairway.

Because we hit from the outside instead of from the inside, the ball is pulled, and, if the face of the club is not square, it will be hooked or sliced, or perhaps smothered or even shanked.

 The best we can hope for is that we will slice it only a little and that, after starting to the left, it will curve back into the fairway. Even if we are that lucky, we will know we have hit a weak and sloppy shot.

These are the actions and these are the shots that we see on every private course in the country, every public course.

continued...
 

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