If you want to improve your golf swing, it is essential that you understand the most common errors and how best to address them. This article focuses on four of the most frequently occurring mistakes among beginners that they should avoid making when golfing.
Position is one of the key determinants in shaping a shot’s trajectory, spin, height, and curve – so taking time to make sure that your ball is appropriately situated prior to making contact can help prevent common swing mistakes such as thin shots or slices.
1. Gripping Too Tight
One of the greatest mistakes many golfers make when swinging their club is gripping too tightly when making contact, causing unnecessary tension in arms and wrists and restricting overall swing arc. This leads to less power and distance.
Gripping the club too tight can also pose alignment problems. When your hands are placed too high on the club, this may cause a hook to occur or lead to an open face at impact which results in a slice.
To correct this error, hold the club in your strong hand and gently swing it back and forth to feel how much weight and pressure your hands are applying to it. Once this feeling has set in, try wiggling your hand around the club to see how loose its grip may be.
2. Over the Top
Coming over the top is an increasingly prevalent golf swing problem that can have disastrous results on your game. This problem occurs when arms become disconnected from body at the top of backswing and cause club to begin its downswing with too much lag, leading to either hook or slice hits on ball from hitting club with sidespin.
This kind of action typically results in an out-to-in club path at impact, leading to slices or hooks and making distance control harder than necessary. It may also make shots long and short at will – often caused by incorrect foot position, shoulder line, or hip alignment at setup. Fixing this problem can significantly improve both distance and consistency by clearing hips early during your downswing, creating more consistent contact with the ball while eliminating any over the top issues you might be encountering.
3. Not Changing Your Ball Position
One of the most frequent errors made by golfers is failing to adjust their ball position when swinging. Many people tend to line up their sternum or chin with the golf ball when hitting it; this could be too far back; ball position has an immense effect on how a shot flies, including trajectory, spin rate, height, distance and more.
Start too far back and you may struggle to shift your weight into the forward part of your stance when entering into the downswing, leading to slices or pulls (towards the left for right handers) as well as an incomplete follow through, whereby you miss your target altogether.
Your best bet for correcting this error is by aligning your left elbow with the rest of your forearms. This will help keep the clubface square during impact and further increases ball distance due to better control of clubface.
4. Not Keeping Your Hands Square at Impact
At impact, keeping your club face square can prevent many swing path issues. One of the most frequent missteps involves too much wrist activity on the way back, which twists away from its original position at address and twists it away from being square at address – often this occurs because weight shift is mismanaged during downswings.
Lead hands (for right handed players, this would be their left) control the clubface; at impact, your club should be nearly flat and pointed directly toward your target.
Obligingly point your club at your target may seem counterproductive, but doing so will ensure a more stable downswing and eliminate those pesky scoop shots. To ensure your lead hand is pointing in the direction of its intended destination, try throwing a softball from behind home plate toward third base – it should fly straight and high when it lands! If not, adjust your hand positioning.https://www.youtube.com/embed/37D4ETSc8c8