Two keys to elevating ball striking ability

By Kim Jeong-kyoo

More often than not, it is hard to make a slow, smooth backswing and a balanced, rhythmic downswing. You cannot always hit the ball as solidly as you want. Though this is mainly attributed to poor pre-swing preparation, it is equally ascribed to improper in-swing movements. Here are two keys to getting back your good, old swing.

A 45-degree angle of the right palm to the ground

For a fluid and well-balanced swing, you need to swing back on plane; a good way to accomplish this is to make certain the palm of your right hand is at a 45-degree angle to the ground at the halfway stage of your backswing. This encourages fluid movements during the backswing, culminating in a full body turn.

If the right palm is facing the ground, you‘ve failed to rotate your forearms sufficiently on the way back. If it's facing the sky, you've turned them too much. Either way, a smooth, graceful backswing is hard to accomplish. It means the club has gone astray and traveled along a bumpy path.

A 45-degree angle of the right palm is important because it ensures a correct wrist cock so that the butt end of the handle of the club points toward the ball-target line halfway back. This means an on-plane backswing, which encourages a proper downswing plane. An on-plane swing is a fluid swing.

Crucially, that encourages your right hand and arm to work correctly throughout the swing, presenting a better chance of hitting longer and straighter. The 45-degree angle of the right palm keeps your right elbow down, or rather allows the right arm to be in a powerful, hinged position at the top and on the way down.

It also ensures that the clubface remains square to the swing path. Keeping the clubface square on the backswing, you have a better chance of squaring it at impact with less effort. Less effort during the swing means less superfluous movements, also meaning more fluidity. The 45-degree right palm angle will present you with a better chance of swinging with the grace of your favorite golf swing icon, opening the way for solid strikes.

Move the left lat muscle at the start of the downswing

Though there's a plethora of keys to solid ball striking, one thing is for sure, you need to start from the ground up to produce solid strikes. Power springs from driving the legs or shifting the hips laterally to the left toward the target before turning the body.

It's not easy, however, to control your swing with your lower body, let alone produce consistent, solid contact of the ball in the centre of the clubface. This is particularly true when the lower body is too active. The lower body, including the hips, legs and feet, need to play a supporting role; to let the lower body do its own assisting business in a satisfactory way you need to keep it still.

To put it another way, you need to control your swing with your upper body to elevate your ball-striking ability to the next level. The real key to starting down correctly is to use the left side of the torso, particularly the left lat muscle. This, also called the latissimus dorsi, is the muscle under the left shoulder blade.

When you finish your backswing completely, you will feel the left lat muscle fully stretched at the top and yourself ready to uncoil and fire. That unwinding force is what creates an amazing surge of clubhead speed.

To tap this precious power source, you need to start your downswing by pulling your lat muscle to the left toward the target. This move is critical as it purges your swing of too aggressive or too active a lower-body movement, thus enabling you to control your power or swing gracefully.

It also helps to properly shift your bodyweight forward to the left, allowing your hands and arms to drop down to hip level so they slot the club into the downswing path.

Better yet, the lateral shift of the left lat muscle at the initial stage of the downswing provides you with sufficient room for your arms and club to swing down into the slot. Ultimately, you will whip the ball on the proper in-to-out path without extra effort.

In a nutshell, initiate your downswing with the left lat muscle moving laterally to the left toward the target once you've fully turned your torso behind the ball, so that the muscle under the left shoulder blade is taut.

From there, your only business is to unwind your torso toward the target. You don't have to worry about your lower body movement. The lower body will look after itself to support this move.

A word of emphasis here: as always, of critical importance is not to allow the clubhead to pass the left hand until well after the ball is whacked. The clubhead that gets ahead of the hands at impact is the number one enemy of a balanced, rhythmic and graceful swing.