What Starts the Forward Swing? Watch Rickie Fowler and Thomas Pieters

One of the most debated technique questions regarding the golf swing is “what initiates the downswing?” I was always of the opinion that the movement of the swing (for a right-hander) was from right to left, and that to change direction the thrust had to come from the ground under the right foot. Thus, my instruction was to “push” off the inside of the right foot on an angle 45 degrees left of the target line, which would give the player lateral movement to shift pressure from right to left as well as rotation that would immediately begin to clear the left side. In the forum section of the website I got a few interesting comments from someone named Jeffrey Mann, who disagreed with my notion of pushing off the right foot and instead opined that it was the muscles in the right hip that rotated the pelvis that reversed the direction of the backswing to the forward swing. I did some research into Jeffrey’s own website and even went to see him in Salt Lake City to have him further explain his ideas, which as I found out came from his background in human anatomy and biomechanics as well as his extensive study into Homer Kelley’s “The Golfing Machine”. The more I studied and thought about it the more I came to agree with Jeff. I see innumerable golfers with tendencies to overdrive their right leg forward toward the ball in transition, and by suggesting to players that they push off the right foot I was probably causing more problems than I was fixing, as the term “push” as it applies to that moment of the swing invariably causes an overuse of the gluteus muscles too early in the downswing, which initiates a “standing up” movement we call “early extension” or to use the more colloquial term “goat humping”. Another popular explanation for what starts the forward swing is that the left knee and/or left hip is responsible for the change of direction. In this video, you will see two great ball strikers showing clearly how the muscles of the right side of the pelvis are twisting it from clockwise to counter-clockwise before the right foot indicates that it is pushing, and definitely before there is any noticeable movement of the left knee. This is a key element in the effort to keep both hips “deep” and “in the box” from the down the line view, a technique I have observed in almost all of history’s greatest ball strikers.
 
 

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