Wednesday, November 24, 2010

How To Develop a Balanced Golf Swing

By Justin Landry


If you look at a good golf player swing, one thing you see, more than likely without being aware of it, is how nice they finish. They've completed a dramatic swinging movement that accelerates the club to speeds of 100 MPH or more, and yet they stand at the finish like they just stepped into a pose. How do they do that? One word. Balance.

Balance is a neglected basic, but it is an important key to good ball striking. If you lose balance during the swing, it will be only by chance that the clubhead returns to the ball centered, square, and on line to the target.

Getting good balance is definitely easy. It's a cooperative effort between the feet and the suspension point, located at the big bone in the nape. Address the ball with a club in your hands. Feel your weight evenly distributed on the soles of your feet from front to back, side to side, and feel light on your feet, as if you were floating. Then feel as if you were suspended from a string attached to that huge bone inside your neck. The cooperative support you obtain from those two places makes the balance you are searching for.

The trick is to keep that balance during the golf swing. It's not hard to do.

When you take the club back, weight that was evenly distributed between each foot now moves to the right foot (left foot, for left-handed golfers). Keep this weight on the inside of the foot it is shifting toward. Don't allow any other weight to move over to the outside of this foot.

On the downswing, weight must shift to the other foot. Leaving too much weight on the back foot will make you fall backward when you swing through the ball. You do not need to look very far the next time you play to notice examples of that on the golfing course.

All the while, though, you must maintain the feeling of suspension and floating as you swing back and through.

At the end of the swing, 100 percent of your weight should end up on your front foot. There must be no weight on the back foot. In fact, a good balance drill is to swing the club and as you move into your finish position, pick up the toe of that back foot off the ground. To stand there without falling, you must have great balance during the golf swing.

Another drill is to swing with your eyes closed. You'll make the necessary adjustments required to maintain balance from start to finish.




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