Steady Your Spine Angle for Better Shots

A steady spine angle is the most important stabilizing factor in the golf swing. That angle should be set at address, and kept during the swing. The key is the right knee. Most golfers straighten it too much during the backswing, which causes them to raise up out of the spine angle. The resulting body action is like a door coming off its hinges -- it has no plane of movement, so the plane of the swing also goes haywire.

Practice backswings with a mirror to your right, monitor the right knee angle and keep it stable--it can straighten only slightly, no more. [If you have trouble, make practice swings with a club wedged under the outside of your right foot, as indicated in the second illustration below.] You’ll find with practice that you can wind up powerfully and still keep the knee stable--that means a steady spine angle, the best key to consistency.

Use Tile Floor to Perfect Your Alignment

Slumps begin with bad alignment. To keep your game sharp, periodically check your clubface alignment, using a tile floor. Pick as your “target” a point on the opposite wall where one of the tile lines meets it. Try to align your clubface toward that point and on that line. Then check how the clubface snugs up to the perpendicular line in the tile -- you’ll be able to tell when your alignment is getting “off,” and make the correction. The first thing you’ll notice, if you use this technique a few times a week, is that you start to hit your irons closer to the hole.

Tips based on text from the book, Better Golf: A Skill Building Approach, by Julius Richardson and Mark Gearen. Mr. Richardson has been a Golf Magazine Top 100 instructor and is a 2006 inductee into the African American Golfers Hall of Fame. For more information visit: http://www.wardepub.com/catalog/bettergolf.html or call: 1-800-699-2733