Simple Golf Swing Review - How To Make The Perfect Golf Swing

How to make the perfect golf swing will be the focus of this simple golf swing review. I’ll focus on the order of the different movements in the golf swing, and explain how they need to flow together in order to make a swing the will result in repeatable, consistent shots.

Wrists, Shoulders, Hips

Let’s start with the different movements that make up a good golf swing. So there’s the backswing and the downswing, and each of these involves three areas of rotation: Your wrists, your shoulders, and your hips. Those are the three pivot points that are the sources of power in the golf swing.

It is really, really important that these movements happen in the right order. For instance, if you start your backswing by turning your hips, or your downswing with your wrists, you will never make the perfect golf swing that you’ve always wanted to.

1,2,3-3,2,1

The good news is that it’s really not that complicated. There are only 3 major movements, and each of them happens twice: Once in the backswing, and once in the downswing. And what makes it even easier is that what you do first on the backswing, you do last on the downswing, and vice versa.

So if we call the wrist cock 1, the shoulder turn 2, and hip rotation 3, the proper order is 1,2,3 on the backswing and 3,2,1 on the downswing. Any other order will cause serious problems both with power and consistency.

That means that your first move away from the ball should be starting to cock your wrists. This doesn’t mean that you pick the club straight up in the air or anything like that. It means that before you start moving your shoulders or your hips, you pull the clubface away from the ball using your wrists.

The next move will be to start turning your shoulders. And when your start the shoulder turn it is important that you keep your left arm straight (right arm for you lefties). That allows you to keep the arc of your swing as wide as possible. A wide swing arc is good because in rotational motion, the further your get away from the axis of rotation, the more speed there is. So just by widening the arc of your swing, without swinging any harder, you will have more clubhead speed and a more perfect swing.

The last move of the backswing is to load your weight onto your back leg. You want to turn your hips away from the ball a bit, but avoid over rotating them. What you’re looking for is to create the maximum differential between the rotation of your shoulders and that of your hips, while making sure that your weight is transferred to your back leg.

The Downswing

All that needs to happen at this point is to reverse the order of the backswing. And here is where a lot of people make a mistake: The downswing starts by transferring your weight to the your front leg and starting to turn your hips toward the target. Any other move from the top of your swing will result in less consistent ball striking and a reduction in distance.

I’ve found that it should almost feel as though you pause at the top, because you need to wait with your hands until your hips have turned enough to make room for you arms to swing down on an inside to outside swing path.

Swinging too hard too early will leak power out of your swing before the time of impact, which is the only place where the power is needed. Try to remember that you are looking to maximize clubhead speed at the bottom of your swing arc, not immediately from the top.

Once your hips have rotated, then your can start to swing with your arms and shoulders. And then finally, just before impact, you can let your wrists go. The longer you can keep your wrists cocked on the downswing, the more power you will transfer from the clubhead to the ball at impact.

So that’s it, 1,2,3 - 3,2,1. It’s as simple as that. Sorry for the technical nature of this simple golf swing review, but I hope it gave you a better idea of the order things need to happen in the golf swing in order to produce consistent and powerful shots.