Most golfers know the goal is to make a nice, big backswing turn. That’s where the power is.
But do it wrong and it can backfire.
What you need to know
The goal of a good backswing isn’t to turn. It’s to load. To put your body in a position where you can push and twist and jump as hard as possible.
Turning, obviously, is part of that. But many golfers try to turn so much that they turn past their body’s natural limitation, so they lose all that good tension they have with the ground. The leverage, in other words, which helps them push and pull for more power.
What the ‘fake’ turn looks like
When you try to turn past your body’s natural end point, it’ll begin bending back the opposite direction. You can’t turn any more, so you start bending from your upper back, creating the illusion that you have turned.
It’ll almost have the look of a building that’s about to topple over, as Golf Digest Top 50 teacher Dave Phillips demonstrates below as part of this video.
That’s a problem, because that position can put some severe pressure on your lower back, which can cause pain. It’s also an awkward position that can be hard to undo during your swing, which means it may not work so well.
A good thought
In that same video, which you can watch below, Phillips shares a good thought:
“Think about winding around this leg,” he says, pointing to his trail leg. “The feeling I like for that is that you’re trying to screw your trail foot into the ground, but it’s holding, which will help me coil and load.”
Another good thought comes courtesy of Collin Morikawa in our Swing Thought Finder tool (which you can check out here).
Morikawa likes to feel his chest winding over his trail knee in the first part of his backswing, then the middle of his chest turn towards the sky in the second part of his backswing.
Ultimately, it’s a quality-of-turn vs. quantity-of-turn thing. The less you fake it, the more quality you have, and the more powerful your golf swing will be.
We want golfers to “wind up” in the backswing, but those who have difficulty rotating through their hips or thoracic spine may compensate with excessive tilt or side bend.
It’s a fake turn, not a real turn. pic.twitter.com/HUI8PWHwK2
— TPI (@MyTPI) June 8, 2024
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
