Track it back to correct error

By T.J. Tomasi

Fixing your golf swing sounds easy — all you do is identify the fault and fix it. But there is one more step you can't leave out: Find the cause. Below is a common problem called the chicken wing, where your lead elbow juts out in an attempt to prevent the club from flipping over through impact (see bottom photo).

In this case, since I know the player's swing, I can tell you that at address, his grip is too strong. And when the club slows down at the top, you can see the result — the clubface is shut in the hook position (see the top photo). There are good players such as Dustin Johnson and Graeme McDowell who play with a shut face, but most golfers don't do well. And it doesn't take but a few snap hooks before anyone with an ounce of talent chicken-wings to keep the face open.

Being able to identify and then fix the cause of a problem is why a good teacher gets the big bucks.

The takeaway: the chicken-wing error occurs through impact, yet the cause is far away at address. If you can't fix your problem, maybe you're looking in the wrong place.

Tomasi writes for universal UClick.


At the top of the backswing, the clubface points at the sky in a shut position, a harbinger of the pulls and pull hooks.

You fix the fault by tracing the chain of error back to the root of the problem — otherwise, it will never go away.