When you watch golf professionals live or on TV, what’s one thing you notice more than anything?… They’re incredibly consistent. The key to consistency is creating a repeatable and dependable golf swing.
To do this, you need to have solid fundamentals and rid your swing of unwanted faults and extra movements. One of the biggest determinants of consistency is your spine angle. With solid fundamentals and a consistent spine angle, the game becomes a lot easier.
Take a look at the picture above of a student of mine who had particular problems with his spine angle. This picture is an overlay of his address and impact positions; purple being impact, and yellow address. This variance led to a lot of mis-hits, because the club never came into impact in the same positions address. He thinned and topped many of his shots, hence the address position being lower than the impact one. You can learn a lot about your swing by studying your spine angle in these two positions. Together we worked on fixing his posture, so his spine was straighter resulting in a more consistent impact position.
In comparison, here is the same type of image with my swing; showing again, the address and impact positions. Notice the similarities? You too can have a more stable spine angle, but it all starts with proper fundamentals. Once you’re in your balanced setup, your back is straight and your arms are hanging straight down from your shoulders, the golf swing is a simple matter of rotating your trunk around your spine. The swing becomes so much simpler and easier this way. An added bonus is that this simple setup limits your ability to produce poor swings. Take this into consideration the next time you’re on the range and see if you too can stabilize your spine throughout your swing. Apart from lowering your score it will also reduce the stress and fatigue of your back and shoulder muscles. A win-win.