| WRIST ACTION:
HOW TO ‘LOAD’ THE CLUB
While the general posture and
body position provides the framework of a good swing, the hands and
wrists provide the critical hinge that essentially gets the clubhead
swinging on a good plane and with some real speed – in other words,
a good wrist action basically brings your swing to life. To touch briefly
on the techical bit, the wrists work to ‘load’ the club
on the backswing, then unload their energy in the split-second before
impact, squaring the clubface to the ball. This is why so many great
players in history put so |
much
though and emphasis on the waggle – it basically determines a
good wrist action. From the set-up, the very first move
away from the ball sees the shoulders, arms and hands work the club
away pretty much in one piece (hence the expression ‘one-piece takeaway’),
but the secret is that even as you pass through this position, the wrists
are beginning to hinge and ‘set’ the club (primed thanks to the waggle),
and that action is what gets the wings level as the club shaft reaches
a position where it is simultaneously parallel with the ground and ball-to-target
line. That’s one of the key checkpoints to look for in the process of
developing your swing. |
Look for the club to be ‘toe-up’ as the
right wrist hinges back on itself. As that wrist and forearm action
continues to combine with the turning of the body, so the club swings
up and over the right shoulder. For me, this image simplifies the whole
issue of swing plane. When you look at your swing in a mirror, this
is what you want to see: the clubshaft bisecting your right shoulder
as the club swings up. The swing cues Grant mentioned earlier are all
you need to think about: ‘right pocket back’ gets your hips turning
on a fairly level plane while ‘left shoulder across’ gets you coiled
into a good backswing position, the left shoulder pointing behind the
ball. |
