Approach Shots
What The Heck Happened Series: Maintain Your Posture To Hit More Solid Shots
Welcome to the second edition of What The Heck Happened, where we take your swing problems and give them to our teaching pros to fix. (Send us an email with your swing problems to editor@golfdigest.com)
This week, we received a plea for help from Elliot Hodges, one of our readers who’s having trouble maintaining his posture. Between the loss of posture and swinging hard at the ball, he’s hitting a slice.
Don’t worry, Elliot. We’ve got you covered.
We spoke with Gia Bocra Liwski, one of our Golf Digest Best Young Teachers who instructs out of Hamilton Farm in Gladstone, NJ.
Her first piece of advice is to narrow your stance. It will limit the amount that you can shift and sway.
Next, make sure you’re swinging smoothly, not hard. To instill this idea, do three smooth, connected swings in a row before your shot. That’ll help bring back your natural tempo, and take away that feeling of swinging down hard at impact. That move, though it may make you feel like you’re generating more power, is only for the pros. They can aggressively accelerate through the ball and stay in posture. The rest of us are likely popping up at impact. And that’s going to generate bad ball striking.
Here’s a drill to help keep you in posture:
Tee up the golf ball, and drop your right leg back a couple feet (left leg if you’re a lefty). Try to swing by turning into the left leg. Since you’re trying to stay on balance with the split stance, you’re going to naturally stay in better posture.