LESSON: Swing Shift

Transferring weight to your left side improves everything.

Nathan Morris | GolfTEC

One of the biggest issues golfers have is favoring their right (or trail) side too much during their swing. Staying on your back foot often results in your swing bottoming out too early. This leads to fat shots (ground first) as well as topped shots(wormburners). Hanging back also makes you more likely to swing over the top or outside in causing slices and pulls.

To remedy the problem, you must transfer your weight to your front foot to start your downswing and then swing through with your arms and shoulders. This helps you move the bottom of the swing arc forward so that you get that nice, ball-first contact. Picture a baseball pitcher throwing a fastball. He can generate 90 mph of speed by taking that big step first (weight shift), and then turning his chest to home plate and throwing. If he didn’t shift first, he could never throw as fast.

After shifting your weight forward, tilt your right shoulder down (for a right-handed golfer) to drop the club on plane and keep your head behind the ball. At impact you should look like a backwards letter K. Your hips should be over your left shoe and your head still back where it started. If done correctly, your left arm and club should align with your left leg just after impact, making the vertical bar of the backwards K.

DRILL: Shift. Tilt. Punch.

From the top of your swing, shift first, then tilt and hit a punch. Stop as soon after impact as you can. Look for that backwards K. Weight left, head back, left arm and club in a straight line. After you do many of these, you can speed up and slowly lengthen the swing.

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