Every golfer wants to hit the golf ball well and far, straight down the fairway as fas as he or she can. It’s one of the great pleasures of the game to hear the sound of solid contact between your driver and the ball and watch it sail off into the distance. To make that happen you need power behind your swing. And to make that swing work in your favor you need the right set up and the right coordination between your hips, shoulders, hands and the club.
Still, I am determined to drop 10 strokes off my game before the end of this season. Sound impossible? I don’t really think so. It’s no secret how to do it. I need to crank up my short game.
If you find you are losing power, or never had any to start with, the root of the power problem is probably in your hip/shoulder rotation movement. A few years ago I was playing on a long course here on the Cape and doing ok. My drives were going as far as ever and my chips and putts were all good. But sometime around the 11th hole things started going south. Suddenly, I couldn’t hit a fairway wood. I didn’t think anything in my stance or swing had changed, but suddenly I had no power and my hits were going left, right or straight down the grass like a bowling ball. What had happened?
After I whooshed the ball—totally missing it as I swung for the fourth time mid fairway—my playing partner finally spoke up. “You’re swaying your hips! They’re sliding back and forth. You have to turn your hips, not slide ’em.”
I thought I was turning my hips. In my mind’s eye and in my body I could have sworn I was turning my hips. But clearly I was not. Somehow, whether it was that I was suddenly tired, or distracted, I don’t know— but my body had simply quit doing any rotating and all my power was gone. I won’t tell you what my final score was that day — suffice it to say I did not do well. But I learned something about the importance of the link between hip rotation and swing power.
In the following video, Kathy Ekdahl of PersonalBestPersonalTraining, and our golf fitness guru, shows you what this connection is all about. If you are not driving the ball well, watch this video. The secret to your loss of power may very well be in your hips!
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