The old golf advice – Keep your head down. Is it true?
Yes. If you watch the pros on TV, you will see that they actually do keep their heads down. Not completely still, but their head is actually lower at impact than at address. Of course, it does quickly come up on the follow through. It’s very hard to see this at full swing speed, so if you have recorded a tournament, you can pause the recording at or near the moment of impact. It may take a few tries to catch it close to impact, but you will see how they do keep their head down.
They are also very good at keeping their head behind the ball (to the right, for right-handed players). In fact their head is usually slightly further behind the ball at impact than it was at address.
Many average players tend to stand up slightly during the downswing, causing them to flip the club at the ball and hitting a poor shot.
Tempo
“Tempo is the glue that sticks all the elements of the golf swing together” – Nick Faldo
Your tempo is the time it takes for you to swing the club from the address position through the backswing and downswing.
For good tempo, your backswing should take about 3 times longer than your downswing.
For instance, you could count to three during your backswing but only to one on the downswing. This is an approximate ratio and the overall swing can occur faster or slower for different players.
Be relaxed when addressing the ball and don’t swing too fast, as tension and swinging too fast can get you into the wrong positions during your swing.
Faster Improvement
If you’re trying to learn some new swing fundamentals from a lesson, a book or an article and want to ‘groove’ it into your swing so you can repeat it without thinking about it, you could spend a ton of hours at the range. But here’s a tip that can greatly speed up the process, and you can do it from home. It has been proven to be as effective as spending a lot of hours hitting balls at the range.
Practice your backswing in very slow motion, not stopping until you reach the top. Swing the club slowly through the positions you learned. Move your arms, hands, shoulders, hips and knees in the ways you have learned about. Take about half a minute to make the backswing. Then practice making the downswing also in very slow motion.
This doesn’t replace practicing at the range, but it quickly improves what we call muscle memory. Of course muscles don’t actually have memories. It’s in our brains, although it sure feels like our muscles know what to do without our thinking about it.
To complete the process and get comfortable with it at full swing speed and tempo, you’ll definitely still have to practice by hitting balls at the range, but not nearly as many. You should improve much faster.
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Go to the Golf Swing Fundamentals page for a complete summary of the fundamentals.