Stand Up Tall

I’ve been re-working my swing over the past year to help deal with some back issues that I’ve had, and one of the keys for less pressure on my spine that has created more power and accuracy is this simple key.  It’s been something that several announcers have been harping on Tiger for, until this President’s Cup series, where he’s gotten more upright, and less bent over.  If you look back at pictures and video from his best golf, he was always more upright and swinging less around himself when he was hitting the ball consistently.

Since the ball is on the ground, it’s easy to get bent over, with my weight out over my toes, and from there, my head tends to go into my chest, and I tend to swing out and across the ball for the pull or the weak pull-slice.

I really like Jimmy Ballard’s idea that he got from Hogan of standing taller, with your butt more underneath you, so that your shoulders, knees and balls of your feet are more inline if you look at your stance from the side.  Butch Harmon worked on this a good bit with Adam Scott, and he shows it beautifully.

It’s also the heads-up linebacker position in football, so that with your head up, your spine can stay more aligned and steady through the swing, and you can rotate your shoulders with much less effort to get back and through the ball, with a tall finish on your left side.  And I also like the feel of having my body and chest feeling like it’s moving ‘up’ or tall to the finish, while my hand and arms are swinging through the impact zone feeling ‘down’ and through, then up to the finish—ironically, I feel like I move ‘up’ to hit ‘down’ through the ball.