To create solid contact and beautifully flighted shots requires the club face to not only be traveling rapidly with the toe and heel of the club traveling at the same speed (square contact), it also requires that the club head be travelling straight down the flight line while the ball is on it.
This final requirement is the cause of many poor golf shots and if it is your problem, it is a sign of a serious problem with the swing itself. With this method, as shown in the 21st. Century Golf Swing book, the path of the club is controlled by the pivot. Any error in this path can be identified either as being too much in to out, meaning that the club head is coming from inside the flight line before contact and traveling across the flight line after impact. This creates a push if the ball goes straight (without curvature) to the right of the target. it can also cause a ball flight with either curvature.
The opposite situation of too much out to is a much more common occurence, and is best described by the words \”over the top\”. This condition creates a too steep down swing and at best a shot that is pulled dead left about 20 degrees if the club head fully releases. If it does not a push, block, or slice is the result. The single most common cause of a slice is this out to in swing path condition.
Both of these conditions can easily be solved by a full understanding of the following words. The rotation of the body must not start until the weight of the body has shifted on to the forward post (the left leg). This must happen before the hips rotate left. If this does not happen either of the 2 above conditions can happen, although they will happen in entirely different ways. The out to in (over the top) problem is discussed first because it is the most common.
If the hips begin to turn left before the weight has shifted, the turning hips by using the spine as a driveshaft, rotate the chest and shoulders too early in the down swing. The left hip instead of acting like a post, instead rotates left away from the line of flight and the ball. Due to this the swing is thrown outward and over the top. The body has thus rotated while the weight is on the wrong leg. Instead of the right side of the body rotating in toward the ball, the left side of the body has instead whirled away from it. Once the error is started no one can recover from it, this is why trying to swing in to out after that initial fatal error only makes the situation worse by causing the arms to swing in a different direction than the body takes them. For optimum power and control the arms must be turned by the axel of the spine exactly the way an axel would turn the spokes in a wheel attached to it, rather than in an independent manner. If the spokes do not turn with the axle the wheel wobbles.
The opposite problem, too much in to out, is commonly called the push. It is also caused by faulty leg and hip action, but the error occurs a bit later in the swing. In this situation the weight shift back to the left leg has occured properly, but the rotation of the pelvis on top of the now posted left leg has stopped too early, thus it has not completely turned the chest to square. The right leg must rotate the pelvis in toward the flight line and around. Done this way it turns the entire right side of the body powerfully into the ball. This error can easily be solved by using the right calf muscle to push the right knee and with it the hip through the hitting area. To assist this the right heel must rotate out to parallel to the flight line thus completing the hip turn.
To this end the information on how to do this can be found in visual form on several of my DVDs.
