Fix Over The Top Before It Starts

Bad posture can cause a lot of compensating moves and faults in your golf swing. What I find amazing is the number of golfers who come to me for lessons that have no idea how important this basic fundamental is, nor have they been taught how to get into good posture. There are very few movements that we regular human beings can do just as well as the best in the world. They have no elite physical ability over us and say that we can't do this just as well as them. The rest of this post is going to explain and show you how to eliminate your slices and pulled shots.

The fault we are going to address in this post is "over the top". Probably one of the most common faults on the downswing for the majority of mid to high-handicap golfers. Just so we know what over the top is. It is when in the downswing the club head goes out towards the target line directed by the shoulders and arms.

There are multiple reasons why this would happen but we are going to talk about how to stop it before it starts. If you simply look at how the turn of your body directs the arms, hands, and clubhead in your backswing. We can fix over the top by just getting in good posture at setup.

What should happen in your backswing is your arms will swing around your core to direct the club head to the top of your backswing. Doing this motion with good posture will make the clubhead move in a circle on a tilted axis. What I see most golfers doing is standing too erect with not enough tilt at the waist at setup. This causes the club to be swung back on too flat of what we call a swing plane and then the club comes down by going out away from the golfer which would be too steep of an angle. The shot you will see is a pull or a slice. Our drill for this post is below and just one of the many ways I have of fixing your issue.

The Drill: Belly Swings

Part 1: take your driver and the end of the grip in your belly just below you belly button. Then move your hands down the club until your arms are straight.

Part 2: Keeping the end of the grip flat in your belly, you will tilt forward from the hips and then unlock your knees. Make sure to put an alignment stick down to represent your target line. If you are set up correctly for the drill, the driver's head will be pointing directly at the target line.

Part 3: Start the turn for your backswing keeping the end of the grip flat in your belly until the clubhead gets about knee high. You will then let the grip come out of your belly and staying in your posture, try to hinge the club up and have the end of the grip point at the target line as the clubhead points directly toward the sky. This ensures that you are making the clubhead work up the plane and you are staying in your posture.

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