Shoulder and hip rotation are essential components of your golf swing.

An inadequate turn reduces your clubhead speed and impacts your swing path. Rotation is required from takeaway until impact for optimal results.

Your upper body and hips should rotate through impact until they are open to your target line. Failure to reach this position decelerates your clubhead velocity and leaves the clubface open through contact. As a result, you produce fewer yards and more slices.

In this article, I break down how to clear your hips in a golf swing.

What Clearing Your Hips Means in Golf

Clearing your hips means you get your lower body and shoulders open to the target through impact and follow through. This motion gives you the space to accelerate the clubhead into contact and keep it on plane.

The ultimate goal with clearing your hips through impact is to start your ball on the intended line and generate the prerequisite velocity.

The next time you are at the driving range, try and hit a shot where your hips stop rotating when they are square. In other words, when your hips are square to the ball, cease rotating. You will notice how your arms take over and guide the clubface to the golf ball.

This reduces your clubhead speed drastically and restricts your ability to square the face up at contact. As a result, you produce a weak, inaccurate strike. Now hit another shot, clearing your hips on the downswing, and notice the difference in distance and accuracy.

How to Properly Clear Your Hips: Step-by-Step

Step 1: Alignment

I will start with the basics to ensure you employ the correct address position. This sets you up to produce optimal shoulder and hip turn for more powerful golf shots.

Identify your target, and ensure that your front foot is parallel to the intended landing zone. In addition, your clubface should point directly at the target. This setup ensures that your golf ball starts on your target line for improved accuracy.

Step 2: Ball Position

The position of a ball in the stance impacts a golfer’s angle of attack. This is the difference between striking the ball cleanly and topping it a few yards ahead of you. In addition, ball position can hamper your ability to clear your hips.

If the ball is too far back in your stance for a longer club, you are left with minimal time to clear your hips. That causes you to strike the ball when your hips are square, imploding your clubhead speed. Plus, you have limited time to get your clubface on path for an accurate strike.

Those struggling in this department should review our tips on achieving the perfect stance.

Step 3: Shallow the Club at the Top of the Backswing

Shoulder and hip turn on the backswing is a breeze for most amateurs. However, the implosion starts at the top of the backswing. Players tend to prompt the hip turn too early in their downswing, sending the club over the top. An inside path is the only route to the ball from that position.

An inside path typically causes the clubface to stay open to the target at impact, prompting left to right sidespin. The outcome is numerous and lower clubhead speed.

Top Speed Golf provides a simple exercise to overcome this challenge. If you are right-handed, they suggest that your left elbow points directly ahead at the top of the backswing. It is easy to shallow out the golf club shaft from this point to transition to your downswing:

Shallowing out the club from the top of your backswing helps keep the shaft on plane and the clubhead on path. In addition, you accelerate your swing speed with increased wrist hinge achieved from this motion.

Step 4: Shoulders and Hips Rotate In Sync

Clay Ballard explains that your shoulder and hips must work in sync to achieve maximum clubhead speed and square face at contact. However, many amateurs lose their rhythm and tempo on the downswing.

Because we are constantly reminded to clear our hips on the downswing, it is the first motion that springs to mind. This causes golfers to activate their hips immediately from the top, separating the upper and lower body.

Ballard suggests that this brings the hips square early in the downswing and keeps them there through impact. That requires your shoulders and club to try and catch up, leading to a disjointed strike.

The reason for this jerk reaction from your upper body is that the muscles are stretched compared to the lower body. Therefore, it needs to play catch up and obliterates your rhythm,

You overcome this disparity by feeling the rotation of your upper and lower body working in unison.

A trick I use when I feel the disconnect is to stop at the top of my backswing. I don’t suggest doing this on the golf course, as it will impact your clubhead speed. However, this position allows me to feel the transition and flexibility of my body. It makes it easy to determine if one part is separated from the other.

When you reach the top of your backswing, pause, then start turning your hips and shoulders.

Step 5: Open Your Hips to the Target

The previous 4 steps built up to this point. Clearing your hips on the downswing. The momentum you generate from your lower and upper body rotation thrusts the clubface down and towards your ball for a powerful strike.

Since your clubhead lags behind your hips and shoulders, you must continue rotating through the upswing. This provides sufficient momentum to keep your club on plane and accelerating through impact.

When you stop rotating and keep your hips square at contact, you rely on your arms to guide the club into the ball. Naturally, this slows down your swing speed and may cause you to leave your clubface open to the target at impact.

Clay Ballard suggests that the shoulders and rib cage of PGA Tour players are open to the target by 20 degrees through impact. Optimizing their rotation on the downswing helps them swing faster and boost the consistency of their shots:

I have a basic exercise that you can do to help you improve clearing your hips through impact. Address the golf ball with your club in hand, and set up as if you are hitting your shot.

Next, start your takeaway and step back with your trail foot. That is your right foot for right-handers and left for lefties. The movement helps you feel the rotation of your upper and lower body on your backswing. Pause in this position, and take a step forward as you follow through. Do not hit the ball yet.

Repeat this process for five repetitions, and feel how your weight transfers from front to back and back to front. You will feel increased power and control from takeaway to impact.

Finally, employ your standard swing without taking a step back. The motion of clearing your hips through the downswing should be more natural at this point, allowing you to optimize clubhead speed and square face at contact.

Matt Stevens

Matt Callcott-Stevens started playing golf at the age of 4 when Rory Sabattini’s father put a 7-iron and putter in his hand. He has experienced all the highs and lows the game can throw at you and has now settled down as a professional golf writer. He holds a Postgraduate in Sports Marketing and has played golf for 28 years.

Source link

As the LIV Golf League does its best to integrate with other top leagues and golf organizations globally, it continues to receive pushback from the most powerful people in golf. The PGA Tour has banned all LIV Golf players and is currently embroiled in a lawsuit with a handful of them (including the league itself) to allow them back into the Tour. On the European side, the DP World Tour has allowed golfers to play, though it is unclear what the long-term solution will be there.

That brought up some bitterness last week at the BMW PGA Championship from players like Jon Rahm, Shane Lowry and Rory McIlroy, who did not all believe that LIV Golf players should be taking the spots of regular DP World Tour players. McIlroy reiterated his stance on LIV golfers when he was asked about whether they should be on the Ryder Cup next year in Rome at Marco Simone Golf and Country Club, where he is playing the Italian Open this week.

“I have said it once I’ve said it a hundred times, I don’t think any of those guys should be on the Ryder Cup Team,” McIlroy said.

The DP World Tour is in a difficult position. It was legally forced to allow LIV golfers into its events this summer, but given its depleted state and the fact that it is not nearly as strong as the PGA Tour, some big-name LIV golfers playing might actually be enticing for the tour to draw interest and attendance (even if it’s based around a bit of drama).

Then there is the matter of the Ryder Cup, which McIlroy has mentioned multiple times over the last few weeks. At a player-commissioner meeting at the BMW PGA Championship last week, Sergio Garcia, a LIV defector, asked DP World Tour CEO Keith Pelley whether he and others would be allowed to play in the 2023 Ryder Cup. Here’s how it went down, according to Golf Digest.

“Pelley’s response was that they can certainly earn points starting this week, but we don’t know what will happen in the next 12 months. Any more questions? You could hear a pin drop. I was laughing at that point. I had expected this to last at least 90 minutes and maybe get a little hostile. But no. Just about nothing came of it all.”

Golfers are only able to earn Ryder Cup points at OWGR-sanctioned events, which at the moment does not include the LIV Golf League. Of course, all of this may be a non-starter anyway since most of the former Ryder Cuppers who are concerned about their future with the event are not playing good enough golf to make it anyway. It’s doubtful that Lee Westwood or Ian Poulter would have qualified, and though Garcia or Paul Casey may have gotten a captain’s pick, the former is not playing all that well and the latter has been injured quite often.

“I wouldn’t say I’ve got much of a relationship with [the Europeans who moved over to LIV Golf] at the minute,” McIlroy said. “But again, if you’re just talking about Ryder Cup, that’s not the future of the Ryder Cup team. They have played in probably a combined 25 Ryder Cups, 30 Ryder Cups, whatever it is. But the future of the Ryder Cup is the Hojgaards [Nicolai and Rasmus], Bobby Mac [Robert MacIntyre] and whoever else is coming up. They are what we should be thinking about and talking about.”

It’s a great point and one that makes most of this moot. The Euros have a new core of McIlroy, Rahm, Lowry, Viktor Hovland, Matt Fitzpatrick and Tyrrell Hatton, and they’re not looking to lean on their old lions any longer.

“I think the European Team has a core of six or seven guys that I think we all know are pretty much going to be on that team, and then it’s up to some of the younger guys to maybe step up,” added McIlroy. … But I think we were in need of a rebuild, anyway. We did well with the same guys for a very long time but again as I just said, everything comes to an end at some point. I think Whistling Straits is a good sort of demarcation, I guess.

“That’s all behind us. We have got a core group of guys but let’s build on that again, and instead of filling those three or four spots with older veterans, let’s blood some rookies and let’s get them in and build towards the future. I think that’s important.”

A hearing is set for the beginning of 2023 on whether LIV golfers can play the DP World Tour. It will be significant if they’re allowed to as it relates to players getting OWGR points so that they can qualify for majors, but as for any of them making it onto the Rome Ryder Cup team? Whether they’re granted the ability to play the DP World Tour full-time or not, it’s doubtful that it will even matter.

Source link