Everything You Need to Know About the Golf Swing
***Disclaimer*** This post may include affiliate links, including Amazon. This does not affect your viewing, or any pricing on the associated sites, but we make a commission on purchases. This is how we help fund this site. Thanks!
As with most sports and physical activities, fundamentals are everything. Whenever the highlight reels from the previous week’s professional tournaments are shown, it’s usually the rare shots we see: the hole-in-ones, the escape from the trees, the holed shot from the fairway. Those who play golf, however, know that most of the time, these types of occurrences don’t happen.
Golf is not about the ability to hit great, rare shots more often; it’s about setting the fundamentals that will allow your bad shots to occur less often. The better your understanding of the basic elements of the golf swing, from grip, posture, set-up, and the basic swing mechanics, the easier a repeatable golf swing will be to achieve. The following is a basic overview of how an effective golf swing is created and everything you need to know about the golf swing.
It All Starts With the Grip
Without the club in your hands, the swing never happens, which makes how you hold the club an essential element of the golf swing. There are several different ways the club can be held, but there are also several pitfalls a player can succumb to, some of them occurring before the club is ever put in your hands.
For the hands to work together, they must sit on the club well. For an in-depth description of everything you can do to make your grip fundamentally sound, check out the article about the grip here.
Posture and Alignment Are the Next Critical Piece
Setting up to your shot properly is key to creating a repeatable, predictable swing. It’s all about angles: The angles of your body, how these angles promote the correct rotation and swing plane (which is coming up soon), and how to set your body in relation to the target are all vital to golf swing success.
When you take your stance and alignment, you should feel balanced and athletic, ready to make a powerful, effortless swing and be able to see the target comfortably! Check out this article, which dissects the proper posture and alignment, utilizing simple drawings to make it easy to understand!
How Do You Start the Club Back?
A wise golfer once said that the first eighteen inches are the most important in the golf swing. Several decades later, this wisdom still holds true. There have been many questions about the takeaway: What actually “starts” the takeaway: The hands? The arms? The shoulders? Something else? What is the easiest way to initiate the backswing? What about tempo?
If you watch any kind of golf on TV, you’ll notice that many of the commentators will refer to a golfer as being “on plane”. Certainly, the swing plane is a crucial key in being able to control your golf ball. Unfortunately, understanding the swing plane can be a very confusing task; however, in this article, everything is made as simple as possible. It also explains the previous point of the takeaway. Don't miss out on it!
That’s a Basic Understanding of the Swing, but That Doesn’t Mean Everything Will Work Well at the Beginning
Like most skills one learns in life, all the knowledge in the world won’t help unless it’s applied, the safest and most effective way to apply your newly found knowledge is on the driving range.
If you’re new to golf, you may have only used the range as a way to have fun and see if it’s something you can take up as a hobby. Once you decide to improve your swing and your game, the driving range is an invaluable place to hone in your fundamentals, learn your tendencies, and fine tune your swing so that you can shoot lower scores.
However, the process is just as important as the knowledge you bring to the practice area, and having a plan that will maximize your productivity on the range, and this article has everything you’ll need to be effective in your practice, which you can take out to the golf course and be playing better golf in no time!
The Last Word
If you’re looking to understand the golf swing better, good for you. While the golf swing seems complicated, the simpler you can keep things, the better. Anyone who has played golf for any length of time knows that it can be a very frustrating game, and adding complicated techniques or swing thoughts can compound that frustration.
Whenever you find yourself feeling aggravated, take a step back and review the above fundamentals, and focus on nothing else. Remember that golf, and the process of learning the golf swing, should be fun!
Back to Top
