Every year Canadians shake the winter doldrums off their golf game, and head out to the fairways. Those early weeks in the season as we whip the rust off our games can be a challenge. With that in mind, each week in April, Golf Town Instructor Franco Sirianni will share a tip on how to prepare for the season.
Consider this your Golf Town Spring Tune-up.
Set-Up & Proper Impact Position
The concept: A faster clubhead means longer shots. Faster is important, but it doesn’t mean that you need huge muscles. Rather, you just need proper technique.
We don’t need a launch monitor to tell us that if we move the ball faster or that a faster swing increases our potential for hitting the ball further. Boosting your distance needs to be done through proper speed and strength training, coupled with better technique.
The drills in this tip cover elements like setup and proper impact position and are designed to help your technique in order to gain clubhead speed. The second thing to consider is that strength and speed are often connected, and there are drills you can do to create power through impact.
Address for power: Your setup influences how power is transferred to the ball. A good address position creates the correct attack angle and club loft, optimising ball speed.
Eye View Behind Ball: Push your hips slightly forward towards target and your spine will lean back away from the target. This gives you the feeling of setting your chest behind the ball—and create the space and time to build speed coming into impact.
Shoulders Angled Up: The proper spine tilt promotes a fluent upward sweep through the ball. This allows you to find the middle of the face, while also allowing you to swing up on the ball, a key to distance with a driver. Think of this as a way to efficiently transfer energy to the ball.
Better Support: In the backswing, hold a sharper angle in your back leg. This creates more support for your backswing, allowing you to rotate deep into your trail hip with less risk of swaying. This allows you to deliver more torque and powerful rotation, which translates into extra speed on the way down.
The “backward K’ Position: To optimise impact efficiency, push your hips towards the target. Exaggerate the feel so your lead hip seems like it sits slightly higher. Do not allow your head to move with the hips—it should maintain its position, helping you keep your weight 50/50 through impact.
WATCH THE INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEO.
Stay tuned for next week, when we’ll share tips on how to train for strength in your golf swing.
A Class A PGA of Canada Professional, Franco Sirianni teaches at Golf Town’s store in St. Hubert, Que. He can be reached at fsirianni@golftown.com.
When using my irons (and more so with my long irons), I tend to start my divot in front of the ball instead of after making contact with the ball. What can I do to correct this?? I’m a lefty.
Hi Clyde,
If you are producing a divot before the ball this means that you are probably swaying back in your backswing and in the return swing to the ball, you are late in your weight transfer to your front hip side, causing to hit divots behind the ball. If you are producing a divot after the ball this means that you probably have to much weight on your front side in your backswing and in the return swing to the ball, you are to far ahead yourself in your weight transfer to your front hip side, causing you to hit divots in front of the ball.
We all need a spring tune-up in Canada. Looking forward to implementing suggestions. (Course still not open)