Weight Transfer

So I’ve seen that some of the current in-vogue teachers aren’t really into the weight transfer –back onto your right foot in the takeaway (I am right-handed, as I’ve mentioned), and transferring weight onto the left foot in the downswing.  I don’t really get it when Hogan, Sneed and so many of the other greats were really good with their footwork, and adamant that it was central to the way they used the ground for leverage to swing the club.

I was taught that you had to be on top of your left hip to throw something right-handed, or hit something like a tennis ball with top-spin down the line, or throw a punch that’s more than a jab, or chuck a javelin down the field, or kick a ball for that matter.  Hogan talked about the golf swing feeling like the short-stop who’s just picked up a ground ball stepping and throwing an under-handed or slightly side-armed throw to the second baseman.  There is weight-transfer, hips opening and the right-handed throw.

I think if you combine that with our earlier conversation about golf’s “great optical illusion” and needing to swing out to the right, or toward the second baseman, then you have:

a coil, or turn into your right side where the top of your swing puts weight which is felt in your right heel

and then the downswing beginning with a change of direction as you push off your right toe and instep, onto your left foot

with the sense of your right elbow falling down towards your right pocket in a throwing motion, while your left arm moves, elbow toward the ground and then into your navel, across your body as your hips are opening and you are throwing hard with your right hand and hip towards that second baseman

with your weight finishing on top of your left hip– and in a full and balanced finish.

Of course, I realize that many of you feel this naturally, and would not ever want to articulate these things to yourself.  But since this order or ‘sequence’ as it is so often called in golf-speak, is the single most important part of power, distance and accuracy, I thought maybe it would help some of us to see it in print and articulate it.  And while I realize that on shorter irons, there is less of this weight transfer, and you stay more centered, I still think it is the fundamental move of the golf swing.

Happy Throwing : )