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In this lesson I am going to try to answer Terry’s specific questions that you see in his email:
“I feel like my backswing is on a pretty good plane, but I have two specific questions having to do with 1) my hip turn and whether they turn too much at the start of the swing and i.e. is the right knee okay and I know I have a little lift around the top, so I would like your thoughts on those two things specifically. Second, the little vertical drop at the start of the transition is not a conscious or on purpose move, but I don’t know how to not do it. So, I am for whatever reason not able to get my hips/shoulders rotated open near enough, so that’s where I am at the moment. Thanks”.
The first question about the amount of hip turn at the start of the swing is a common one. My answer is usually that it is ok to feel that the hips move with the upper trunk simultaneously to initiate the swing but that it would be a mistake to try to start the swing with the hips. If I see hips moving too early, I suggest a slight delay or a counter rotational trigger, but in most good players there is no discernable delay. His second question is much more key to his problems. Terry tends to roll his left arm in the takeaway, which flattens his shoulder turn and helps him get his right arm too far behind him. To add to the issue, he then pulls his right shoulder back even more in transition and drops his hands and arms behind him. This pattern in most cases discourages lower body rotation (the upper body is still turning clockwise as the lower changes direction) and when the arms pull back and down the entire upper trunk is staying closed, making it quite difficult to reverse the direction of the pelvic movement with the right-side pelvic rotator muscles in a timely fashion. The answer to Terry’s transition problem is upper right arm adduction. He needs to keep the arm in front of him more in the backswing, then move it forward and down in the forward swing. Since he now pulls the arm backwards by retracting his right shoulder blade he needs to keep the shoulder protracted and drive it more horizontally, adding right forearm supination and right shoulder external rotation to affect the proper sidearm motion.
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