Golf Lesson 3 and 4: Set it and Forget It

Moving that weight

I am going to throw lesson 3 and lesson 4 together. Because we kind of moved away from lesson 3 as we got deeper into my swing.

In lesson three, we looked at rolling my wrist through impact. We kind of moved away from this in later lessons because I think there were two other issues I was going through. One was that I wasn’t keeping my arms away from my body, and the other was that I wasn’t properly hinging my wrist on my backswing. It was taking a step too early, and we identified that as we kept working together.

In lesson four, we started to look at my takeaway and how I shift weight. One thing we have discussed through this process is getting my weight through and forward. When I would get into my backswing, I would shift entirely too much weight to my back foot, making it next to impossible to get it through when making my swing. It was a bad habit I have not been able to crack. I think I have overloaded for a while, especially since breaking my left leg playing hockey and coming back and basically playing on one leg for a bit.

The first step in correcting this was working on shifting the proper amount of weight in my backswing. Instead of bringing 80% (or more back), I tried to cut that down considerably to 55-60%. Taking a less pronounced backswing, it made it “easier” for me to shift weight forward.

The next step was to begin that shift forward earlier. If you look at videos of my swing, I do get partially through, but most of the time, it is after the ball is hit. I am not using that move forward to lag my arms through the ball; I am using my arms to get through the ball and moving my weight forward in a secondary motion. Even with these ass-backward mechanics, I still hit the ball a decent length. But this means I am NOT compressing the ball.

The implementation of this has been a massive struggle for me, and we changed the approach in later lessons because I just couldn’t get this in sync. I have no problem reducing the weight I bring back with me now, but the motion of beginning that weight shift when my backswing begins to finish has just not synced.

What do you think about your weight shift?