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Many golfers check their feet to see if they are aligned, but this is a mistake. Lots of golfers have had success from stances that were not "square" (or pointing at the target. It's more important to make sure that your shoulders and forearms are in the correct alignment than your hips. Use this drill to understand how to check it.
Tags: Set Up, Beginner
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This drill is the help you with your alignment, which is one part of the fundamental
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about setup posture or the layer about setup posture.
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So in addition to learning how to hinge from the hips and kind of have the arms hanging
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and grip the club from the right way, you can use this as a check with your alignment to
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make sure that you're in a good setup position for starting the ball for whatever direction
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you want.
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With the golf smart academy swing, we're tending towards a bias of either a draw or
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a straight shot or a slight fade.
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We teach you how to adjust that to hit big hooks and big slices, but for the most part,
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it's going to be a very neutral, controllable shot.
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In order to set up for that, you're going to take your normal hip hinge posture with your
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arm hang and you just want to use a mirror or a camera and you can check a few things.
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The closer the alignment is to the clubhead and your hands, the more impactful it's going
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to be on the starting direction or the pat.
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So if your feet are a little bit off like so, but your shoulders are aligned pretty close
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to this yellow line on the ground and your forearms, which is virtually impossible, but
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you can see right so that if you had a line through my forearms, they'd be pointing just
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right.
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This would be a fine setup for hitting a draw as so with this.
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So I don't want you to get too picky about your toe lines and exactly how square they
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are, but you do want to make sure that your forearms are relatively square and that
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your shoulders are relatively square.
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Those are the big two that I look at when I'm double checking aligned.
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As we get better and more advanced, you can start looking at the pelvis and possibly the
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feet, but the feet are the last thing to look at for alignment.
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So don't even worry about putting the club along your heels or anything like that, just
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make sure your forearms and your shoulders are aligned and you'll be set up for having
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the proper path on the downswing.
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The problem is if you were to set up where see how this position makes my shoulders
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point to the left and my forearms point to the left.
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Now when they come into their natural position, based on this setup, the club is going
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to be wanting to come steep and across the line.
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Same thing if I set up kind of like so, the club is going to want to have the tendency
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to want to swing very, very much from the inside, which is going to make me prone to blocks
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and pull hooks, or sorry, blocks and snap hooks.
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So very quickly, you can check your forearms and if you're looking from the down
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the line, you should see a very slight amount of the left forearm above the right forearm
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as opposed to you this.
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You see the difference between the two, but your shoulders will be relatively square
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to this yellow stick on the ground.
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The way that you'll accomplish having the forearms in that position is essentially when you
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take your grip, what the 3D shows us is that this arm is going to be relatively close
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to straight, or let's say only, you know, 10 degrees bent, where this arm is going to
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have about 15-20 degrees bent.
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What that's going to do is put this right shoulder slightly lower, but the bend makes
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sure that even though this shoulder goes lower, it doesn't point in the wrong direction.
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I'll show you what I mean.
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So if I were to bend this right arm slightly, see how that gets my shoulders pretty
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square.
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If I had them both straight, now in the exact same spine position, my shoulder blades are
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going to be out of alignment.
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So by having a little bit more bend in that right arm, it gets your right arm closer to
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where it's going to be going in delivery position, which will help make transition and
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release, which are going to learn down the road much, much easier to execute.
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So double check your alignment of the forearms and the shoulders when you are working on
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this hip hinge and getting in good setup posture, and that will help you control the path
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when we get into the downswing.
