Golf Instruction – 3 Great Tips to Improve Your Golf Game
Here are three of my best golf instruction tips that will help improve your game and hopefully take you below 80 into the realms of single figures and 300 yard drives.
Golf Instruction Tip 1 – A Smooth, Wide Takeaway
When you take the club away from the ball, you need to remember three things.
Firstly, your arms and shoulders should form a triangle and start to move and rotate in unison with each other. It is one motion to take the club away from the ball – don’t lift the club up with the wrists. Doing this will enforce good habits: It will ensure that you take the club back on the right plane (which incidentally is slightly on the outside), it will force you to take the club back on nice wide takeaway bringing your left shoulder underneath your chin for a nice shoulder turn (if you’re right handed).
The most common amateur mistake is to lift the club up too soon. This creates a swing path that is too steep and doesn’t allow a full shoulder turn – this can be a real killer for distance!
Golf Instruction Tip 2 – Straight Left Arm
The majority of the top players, professionals and amateurs alike keep a straight left arm in the takeaway right the way to the top of the backswing. This does a couple of things – it keeps the club away from the body and creates the maximum leverage possible for the downswing. If you watch the likes of Tiger Woods and Ernie Els at the top of the backswing, you’ll see that they’ve made a full shoulder turn and that their arms are pretty much perpendicular with the floor.
Some professionals do manage to swing the club great with a bent left arm, but only after years and years of practice. It is sometimes necessary for those with little flexibility to have a bent arm in order to complete the shoulder turn. If this is like you then don’t worry too much about it.
Golf Instruction Tip 3 – Don’t choke the club!
Release the club head through the ball for maximum power. I see a lot of mid to high handicappers try and choke the club to death. The consequence of this is that they can’t release properly through the ball. A common side effect of not being able to release properly is the dreaded slice – especially with the longer irons / driver.