Swing length
Towels under the armpits
Your backswing goes well past horizontal
Let the length of your backswing be decided by how far your chest turns, not by how high your arms come.
Recognise this?
- At the top the shaft goes well past horizontal and the club feels like it is running away behind you.
- You strike the ball inconsistently left, right, fat and thin, with no fixed pattern.
- More swing does not give you any extra distance.
- Sometimes a tired or painful feeling low in your back.
Why it happens
Your club goes well past parallel at the top. Some tour players do that successfully, but it demands exceptional coordination and stability in the lower body. The risk is that too long a backswing goes together with a reverse spine angle, with the chance of lower back complaints. The causes run two ways: hypermobility without the muscle strength to control it, or on the other hand restricted mobility in the thoracic spine, so that you compensate for the shortfall in torso turn with extra arm and shoulder movement. Loss of torso tension during the backswing belongs there too. In practice it comes down to swinging further than your own range of movement, which makes the clubface hard to square at impact; chasing distance, too little torso turn, too much wrist angle and too much tension are the habits behind it.
What the drill fixes
The towels link your arms to your torso: if they fall, your arms have kept going without your chest turning any further -- exactly the moment at which your backswing becomes too long. The correction that goes with it is keeping the distance between your lowest ribs and your pubic bone as you swing back.
What you need
- Two small towels, or two tees
- A mid iron
easy
How to do it
Step 1: Tuck a towel under each armpit
Tuck a towel or a tee under each armpit and set up in your normal posture.
Step 2: Stop at shoulder height
Turn to the top and stop as soon as your hands are at shoulder height. Checkpoint: both towels stay in place -- if they fall, your arms have kept going without your torso.
Step 3: Hit from that shorter top
Hit balls from this shorter top: the shaft stays short of horizontal. Then build up slowly to a little more length, as long as the towels stay in place.
How often
10 to 15 balls with a half backswing, then gradually become fuller with the same feeling.
That number is named in this form for the half-backswing exercise; the build-up afterwards has no fixed number in the source.
Safety
Shorten your swing instead of forcing your torso further: the source links too long a backswing explicitly to low back complaints.
Sources
- Stop That Over-Swing: Swing Mechanics Emphasis, TPI
- How to Stop Overswinging in Golf: 5 Easy Tips That Work, Britt Olizarowicz (HackMotion)
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