It’s good for your game

A model swing: after impact

This is the eighth in a series of 11 key swing positions that allow you to match your own swing to a standard model to see how it stacks up. The model assumes a right-handed golfer who is hitting a straight shot.

Position 8: Both arms straight

There is only one time in the golf swing where both arms are straight, and that occurs just after impact when the shaft is parallel to the target line. As you pose in the mirror, this is what you should see:

The right shoulder is under the chin, the spine reaches its maximum tilt away from the target and the left shoulder is even with the left ear. Almost all the weight is on the front leg with your head rotated so you look over the ball as it leaves. The back heel is off the ground and the foot is beginning to turn up onto the toe, but is still on its inner rim.

The guiding theme here is to allow momentum to straighten both arms. By doing so you minimize the destructive force of manipulation.

This position is instructive even though the ball is gone because it testifies to either excellence or malfeasance at impact -- get the swing right here and excellence reverberates back through impact.

Studies show that the average rate of rotation of a PGA Tour player's lead forearm and wrist at impact is 2,000 degrees per second, a rate that allows the toe of the club to point toward the sky when both arms are straight. This position is a signal that the correct amount of forearm rotation has occurred -- if the toe of the club points anywhere else, something is wrong.

Tomasi writes for Universal UClick.