World Class Downswing: 2 Keys to a Simple Downswing
One of the things that I’ve always prided myself on is having a simple of a golf swing as humanly possible because, quite frankly, I don’t want to work at it that much. I don’t want to sit out on the range for eight hours a day trying to dig it out of the dirt when the truth is the golf swing, it’s not rocket science. We’re hitting a ball with a stick. If you move your body to control the golf club instead of letting the golf club wag you, as in the tail wagging the dog, golf is not nearly that complicated.
However, if you are chasing what this golf club is doing and trying to manipulate it into positions throughout the whole golf swing, golf will be a struggle for you for the rest of your life. You have to learn how to simplify your golf swing.
With a downswing, really, the only thing you really need to focus on is what your trunk is doing, what your core, your legs are doing is, hands-down, the most important part of the downswing. Most amateurs do the exact opposite.
They focus just on what their club and arms and hands are doing. If you change your thinking for just a minute, I’m going to blow your mind with how little your arms and hands really need to do to have a perfect on plane downswing. Now, I’ve already talked about the takeaway in the backswing in other videos so I’m not going to talk about that here. We’re going to assume you’ve used my rotation, elevation, flexion to get your arms in a perfect spot at the top. Once we’re there, what do we need to do?
Well, if you’re like most golfers what you want to do is take your shoulders and your right arm and start heaving the club at the ball as hard as you can. That doesn’t work, as you know, unless you’re deliberately trying to come over the top and hit a giant banana. If you don’t want to do that and you want to come down from the inside, you need to understand what allows you to do that. Hands down, the most important part of the downswing that most every amateur botches is weight shift using the left side. The left leg, as you start down, has to move. The left knee moves back over the foot. The hip moves over the ankle and knee. That’s what moves the club halfway down. Just doing weight shift will move the club almost all the way into the hitting area. The only thing I’ve got left from there is to just add a little bit of hip rotation.
Watch what happens. I’m going to go to the top of my swing and I’m going to weight shift and start to post up and get my left hip out of the way. Now, look where my hands are. I didn’t move my hands down here at all. All I did, weight shift, hip rotation. That brings my hands down to the delivery area. All I have to do from here is what? Release the club. Why are my arms and hands doing nothing? They don’t need to do anything at this point. I’m just releasing the club. I’m posted up but my legs did all the work. Understanding how to stop pushing from the right side and start learning to pull from the left is the key to getting the club to come down on plane, to stop coming over the top, and start learning how to hit a proper draw.
So all you need to do, weight shift to the left, post up, and release. Now, I’ve got a three-part weight shift series on the site that will walk you through how to shift your weight going back, talking about the right hip line, how to shift to the left, and how to post up into a perfect release. So if you struggle with the downswing, if you’re coming over the top, if you’re casting, if you’re coming too far from the inside, all of these things are covered in this three-part weight shift series I want you take a look at now. So click the link you see down in the description or up on the iCard and come take a look at this bonus video series. It’s going to help you master weight shift once and for all.
