What do you look like at the end of your golf swing? Are you guilty of any of the following? You swing the club violently with your arms. Your shoulders and hips show minimal rotation in your backswing. Your feet are virtually planted on the ground on the downswing, like they’ve taken root! To top it off, you never get to a finish where you can maintain your balance for more than a nano second☹. Guilty as charged! Your follow-through is more of an afterthought than a commitment to finish a motion. Sure, you might make OK contact with the ball occasionally, but you’re sacrificing power and accuracy, because you’re always off balance. That’s why you experience such inconsistent results! The root of the problem stems from thinking that hitting the ball is one act…followed by a separate act called “follow through,” which you may or may not get to! Your mindset is…the ball is already launched and gone, why should any further action matter? IT MATTERS!
Watch golf on TV and you’ll admire how TALL, ATHLETIC and BALANCED the Tour Players look at the FINISH of their swing. To get your Finish/Follow-Through to look like theirs, there’s a major belief you must modify. YOU MUST STOP TRYING TO KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN! It’s the main culprit in preventing your body from moving your weight to your front leg. Tour players have 80-90% of the weight on their front foot AT IMPACT. You don’t! After you make contact with the ball, your body, still in motion, must leave the position it was in and naturally flow into a tall, balanced finish, CLOSER to the target than you were at the start!
Have a look at Tiger Woods in these pictures. He starts his motion within the pink bars, with his head in the pink box. Bet you guessed he would still be there in his FINISH! But he moved more towards the target than you predicted he would! His legs are fully extended, his torso has completed a graceful rotation, and his spine is stretched and extended. HIS HEAD MOVED UP and towards the target (yikes!), as did his body. This isn’t about just looking good for the gallery. This position is a sign that the swing is powered by the big muscles—legs, hips, and core—all working in harmony. You’ll be using your entire body to generate power, not just your arms. This full-body engagement will give you more distance and keep your swing consistent.
 |
 |
Next time you’re on the course, give your follow-through the attention it deserves. Imagine you’re locking in a finish pose for a magazine cover and hold it 3 seconds for the cameras to zoom in for a close-up! Stick your FINISH like a gymnast, ending in that tall, balanced position, with your legs extended and your torso and back fully extended and arched. Your scores will drop, and you might start looking so much like a pro that people will start asking for your autograph!
