By Martin Robinson, Head Professional at The Address, Montgomerie Dubai
You cannot achieve a strong and effective golf swing without good movement patterns in your lower body. Although the torso, arms and hands are crucial to a good golf swing, they are rendered useless without the correct shifting of pressure through the backswing and into the follow-through. SAM Balance Lab pressure sensors built into the ground in our Troon Golf Academy give us real-time bio feedback and is a fantastic tool to measure and improve body motion, let’s take a look at how it relates to some of the key stages in the swing.
Top of the backswing
As you get to the top of the backswing you should aim to have more weight going through your right foot, ideally between 60 – 80%. Swinging with an iron should see the balance remain closer to 60% whilst moving through the bag up to driver we should see the distribution stretch to around 80% as you load fully into your right side.
A common error in this position is to sway too much weight off to the right, resulting in the weight rolling off to the outside of the foot and losing torque and balance. Notice in the heat map that more of the pressure in my right foot is situated towards the inside edge rather than the outside edge. The extra torque and elastic energy generated offers a stable platform from which to unwind during the downswing.
Impact
By the very short time it takes to get from the top of the backswing to the moment of impact with the ball, we should see a dynamic shift in pressure across to the left foot. Again, a bandwidth of between 60–80% now onto the left foot should help to achieve the best possible impact with the ball, increasing power and consistency. This should be achieved through lateral and rotational motion through the hips. Look at any tour player’s hips at impact and you will see how they are opening hard towards the target. Jordan Spieth is a fine example of this movement. This rotation of the hips is represented in the heat map by the majority of the weight moving towards the left heel at impact.
Post Impact Drill
Halfway to the follow-through is a great position to recognise how well you have moved your weight through to your left side. If you can hit shots with a clean hip turn and full weight shift to the left without swinging the arms too hard or too far into the follow-through, it will allow you to focus on letting your big muscles and good body motion do most of the work and should feel efficient and easy. Try hitting punch shots with a 7 iron between 50–100 yards, finishing in the position shown above to get control of your body.
