Tiger Woods has spoken openly about the frustrating sensation of getting stuck during the downswing — a flawed position where the club path approaches the ball excessively from the inside, producing either a blocked push or a violent flip hook. It is one of the most common golf swing faults at every skill level, and understanding how Tiger solved it reveals a great deal about elite ball-striking mechanics.
Throughout his career, Tiger Woods made several targeted adjustments to eliminate this problem in his transition and downswing sequence. In this analysis, I will break down the primary move that helps all golfers avoid the dreaded stuck position. I am using tour professional Skip Kendall as the contrasting example — a textbook illustration of the wrong movement pattern that traps the club behind the body. You can see how your own swing compares to elite patterns with a free AI swing analysis.
Skip unwinds his shoulders immediately from the top of his backswing, rotating his upper body aggressively toward the target right from the start. This premature shoulder rotation generates centripetal force which, in turn, produces centrifugal force — and that is where the real trouble begins.
Here is the critical part that most golfers miss. The centrifugal force effectively "throws" the club outward, away from the body and off the ideal swing plane. In simpler golf instruction terms, he loses lag early in the downswing, as so many amateurs do. The club is cast away from the body before the hands even reach waist height.
The key to solving this problem lies in using the correct musculature during the downswing to pull the club back in front of the body, rather than creating this destructive "throw out" motion that Skip Kendall demonstrates. Observe the side-by-side comparison and notice how the swing plane and club path diverge dramatically between these two players:
At the top of the backswing, both Tiger Woods and Skip Kendall have completed full shoulder turns. The camera angle creates a slight visual difference, with Tiger's position appearing more in front and Skip's appearing slightly more behind. Regardless of this parallax, both golfers have made ample shoulder rotation to execute a powerful downswing — the difference is entirely in what happens next.
As their lead arms pass the nine o'clock position, a radical divergence in lag and shoulder rotation becomes immediately apparent. Skip has "pushed" from the trail side (watch the push vs. pull video here), and this premature unwinding of his shoulders generates the throw-out force that becomes physically impossible for him to overcome at any point further in the downswing.
As a result, Skip's lag is gone — destroyed simply by the laws of physics acting on his spinning torso. Meanwhile, Tiger Woods is actively pulling with his trail pectoral muscle, lead lat, and lead rear deltoid, along with other back muscles, to draw his arms back in front of his body. This seemingly simple motion — pulling rather than pushing — represents the fundamental difference between getting stuck and struggling on the Nationwide Tour versus winning millions on the PGA Tour. It is a golf swing principle that applies to every handicap level.
"Thank you! I finally got it after watching this and the Transition Drill videos. Oddly enough, the feeling that worked for me was trying to hit the ball with my back still turned toward the target...Obviously, this was impossible in reality, but with this feeling in mind, suddenly I started hitting my 7 irons 175 yards with a nice low flight, and the 4 iron was going over 200 again. All because I stopped turning my hips and shoulders at the top of the downswing. Hurrah! Plus I still have 3 months to ingrain it before the season starts......thanks again!"
-Steve D. | Dec 16, 2012 | United Kingdom
In this final comparison frame, the contrast is striking. Skip's trail arm remains folded and trapped well behind his torso — a textbook stuck position — while Tiger Woods has successfully worked to get his trail arm back in front of his body, allowing it to straighten naturally through the hitting zone. Skip's lead arm is still buried against his chest in a cramped, powerless position. This is precisely the downswing fault that robs golfers of distance, accuracy, and consistency. If you want to check whether your own arms are working correctly through the transition, try a free AI golf lesson for real-time feedback.
Video Transcription: How Tiger Avoids Getting Stuck
In this video, we are going to begin examining the downswing movements in detail. More specifically, this serves as the introduction to the muscles we use during the downswing and the critical sequencing that separates elite ball-strikers from everyone else.
I have two golfers up here to illustrate the right way and the wrong way. Tiger Woods is on the left and Skip Kendall is on the right. Both are talented golfers and accomplished ball strikers who have enjoyed solid professional careers.
Obviously, nobody's career looks "great" next to Tiger Woods, but Skip has earned a living on Tour for a long time. I know Skip personally — he is a great guy and I have watched him hit balls countless times out at Keene's Pointe.
What makes this comparison so revealing is how quickly things go wrong in the golf swing when you fail to move in the proper sequence and from the correct muscles. Especially within the Rotary Swing Tour methodology, where we dissect every detail of the downswing, this side-by-side breakdown will help you understand precisely why we advocate moving a certain way during the transition and why sequencing matters so much for a consistent club path.
The specific topic we are addressing today is the infamous problem of getting stuck. There are several ways the club can become trapped behind the body during the downswing, forcing you to swing excessively from the inside and then desperately flip the clubface to square it at impact — a recipe for inconsistent contact and unpredictable ball flight.
We have discussed the concept of pushing versus pulling at length in our golf instruction library, and you will see that principle illustrated perfectly here. Skip tends to open his shoulders prematurely from the top. As the downswing begins, his shoulders start unwinding almost immediately, and you can see his trail shoulder pop out from the trail side of his head far too early in the motion.
Tiger Woods — granted, Tiger has made a slightly fuller turn here, which does help — but the major difference you will notice is that when both players' arms reach approximately the same position in the downswing, Tiger's trail shoulder is still virtually hidden on the lead side of his head.
This is because Tiger Woods is not pushing from the trail side of his body to forcefully open his shoulders early. When I demonstrate this concept in the next video, you will see this distinction even more clearly and understand how it applies to your own golf swing.
When you start to unwind your shoulders prematurely from the top, you drive your trail shoulder toward the ball and the target line, and your shoulders open far too early instead of allowing the proper musculature to pull your arms back in front of your chest — which is exactly what Tiger Woods does so brilliantly.
You have probably heard Tiger Woods describe the sensation countless times: he feels as though his arms are simply falling at this point, dropping back in front of his body. That may indeed be what Tiger feels, but it is not what is actually happening biomechanically. There is no way, given the speed at which he unwinds his hip rotation, that the arms would simply fall back into position passively. You must actively pull them there using the correct muscles.
Gravity does assist slightly, but when you are rotating at that speed through the transition and downswing, you absolutely must engage the lead side musculature and the trail side to control the arms' path back in front of the body.
In the next video, we will examine specifically how the trail pec muscle works in concert with the lead lat and the lead rear delt — all of which combine to pull the arms back in front of the body so we arrive at impact with the arms connected to the chest and the swing plane intact, rather than getting stuck like Skip Kendall in the frames that follow.
I am going to advance through these frames slowly so you can observe each phase of the difference. When both players' arms reach a parallel position, Tiger Woods retains significantly more lag, while Skip has already lost his. You can clearly see Skip's trail shoulder — it has opened dramatically. His shoulder rotation is far more advanced than it should be at this stage, and a down-the-line camera angle would confirm that his shoulders are extremely open. We will examine that perspective in another video.
Notice how Skip's lead arm is truly pinned against his chest at this stage, whereas Tiger's lead arm is already starting to work back out in front of his body. You do not see the arm strapped across Tiger's chest the way you do with Skip. Skip has essentially rotated his torso directly into his lead arm, and now the club is completely trapped behind his body.
From this position, Skip's only option is to continue pushing his trail shoulder through and around, hoping the club will eventually work back out in front. Unfortunately, the harder he unwinds from here, the more the centrifugal force throws the club outward and away from the ideal club path.
This is precisely why it is so important not to spin your shoulders from the top of the backswing. You create a throw-out motion that is extremely difficult to overcome unless you possess exceptional strength, because the harder and earlier you unwind in the swing, the sooner the club gets cast away from the body. It is a compounding problem.
It is purely a matter of physics. When you start pulling from the lead side and spinning your torso rapidly while simultaneously pushing from the trail side, the center of rotation accelerates dramatically. The faster this center spins, the stronger the centrifugal force becomes, and the faster the club is thrown away from the body and off the proper swing plane.
In contrast, Tiger Woods has kept his shoulders remarkably quiet through this same phase. His shoulders are still probably thirty degrees more closed than Skip's at the equivalent point in the downswing — a massive difference that directly explains Tiger's superior lag retention and consistent club path.
I will try to draw reference lines here for clarity. It is difficult to see the shoulder angles perfectly from this face-on camera view, but I will draw a line through both of Tiger's shoulders and then a corresponding line through Skip's. Even from this angle, the difference is immediately obvious. If we had an overhead view, it would be strikingly clear just how open Skip's shoulders are at this point relative to Tiger Woods' much more closed position.
This excessive shoulder rotation is precisely why Skip has lost all of his lag. It is solely because of this premature unwinding — because you are creating enormous throw-out force. I see this exact mistake every single day in golf instruction. Golfers reach the top of the backswing and immediately spin their shoulders as fast as possible, the club gets hurled outward, and then they wonder why they are casting and flipping through impact.
The reality is that you simply cannot fight the laws of physics in the golf swing. There is nothing any golfer can do to hold that lag once the body has generated excessive centrifugal force, nor would you want to try. That is not how we produce lag in an efficient, repeatable downswing sequence.
As we continue advancing toward impact, observe how Skip's trail arm remains deeply bent and stuck well behind his body — it is not straightening because it physically cannot from that trapped position. Moving Tiger Woods to the same point in the swing, notice how Tiger's trail arm is much more in front of his body and connected to his chest. Tiger's trail elbow is significantly closer to his torso, whereas Skip's trail elbow is lagging far behind, disconnected from any useful power source.
Once again, Skip's club is trapped behind his chest. If you imagine a perpendicular line extending from the chest, Tiger Woods' shoulders are still meaningfully closed while Skip's are wide open. Skip's lead arm remains buried against his chest — a powerless, stuck position from which consistent contact is nearly impossible.
This frame captures the absolute epitome of being in a stuck position during the downswing. One more frame forward, and you can see Skip's trail arm sharply bent and trapped behind his body. Moving Tiger's club position to approximately the same point reveals another critical difference — and this is the key reason Tiger Woods can produce such low, penetrating ball flights on command.
This pulling motion — using the correct musculature to return the arms in front of the body — allows the hands to approach the ball on a steeper, more downward angle and enables the club to work back out in front of the chest. The result is a powerfully steep angle of attack, even with longer clubs like a 3-wood. Think of that famous shot at Bay Hill in 2008 where Tiger launched the ball like a missile on the 18th hole — incredibly low, without playing the ball off his back foot as most other professionals would need to do in that situation.
This is a tremendous byproduct of the proper downswing sequence. You can see that Tiger's arms are straightening naturally, positioned directly in front of his chest. Skip's chest is pointing well past the ball, so his arms and club are hopelessly stuck behind him with no recovery available.
Then, even at impact, Skip's chest is extremely open and his arms are still buried against his torso. He never successfully released the arms away from the chest through the hitting zone. Tiger Woods, by contrast, arrives at impact with his arms naturally extending in front of his body, allowing him to maximize every last bit of clubhead speed from a mechanically superior impact position.
Ultimately, every difference you have seen in this comparison traces back to how each player initiates movement from the top of the swing. Instead of pushing from the trail side — as Skip Kendall demonstrates here with his premature shoulder rotation and aggressive push off the trail leg — Tiger Woods uses the correct musculature to pull his arms back in front of the body while his hip rotation leads the sequence. In the next video, that pulling mechanism and the specific muscles involved is exactly what we will break down in detail.
Watch part 2 now to see how you're moving your body in the opposite direction of the pros!
Tiger Woods & Skip Kendall
Tiger has a lot of lag - Skip has lost his
Skip's club is trapped behind his body
Skip's shoulders are much more open than Tiger's
Skip's right arm is very bent - Tiger's elbow is closer to his torso
Skip is stuck
Impact
