If you are someone who is just getting started with golf and are struggling with your game right now, then you are bound to feel frustrated.
Do not get overwhelmed or let the frustration creep in.
There is a lot of information available for you to understand the basics of the game and to improve your overall game. Just keep reading the hundreds of articles on our blog and you’ll improve your score.
Understanding Your Swing
The first step is to understand the basic golf swing fundamentals. Learning what is right, what is wrong, and what is optional in the golf swing.
The better your grasp is on your swing and what you are currently doing right and wrong, the easier it will be to improve upon your swing.
When it comes to your swing basics, there are a few things that you need to focus on more than anything…
- Your grip on the club,
- Your posture,
- Your stance
- Your impact position.
These are the basics that you should be aware about before you start playing a lengthy stretch of golf.
Golf Resource: Foy Golf Academy Practice System + Practice Plans
The Grip of the Club
The golf grip plays a crucial role in the swing motion and the trajectory of the ball. But there are a lot of confusions about what the right grip is and what it actually looks and feels like. There are a few different types of grips, and understanding what grip suits you more depends a lot on your body type. The grip that would suit you best would be a combination of grip strength and grip style.
Grip Styles
There are three basic styles of golf grips – the ten-finger grip, the overlapping grip, and the interlocking grip. And each of these grip styles can be done with any level of grip strength – strong, neutral, or weak.
A good swing basic for golfers is to start with a neutral grip. It is the most recommended grip strength.
To do this you need to start standing on your toes in a relaxed and upright position and allow your arm to hang in your natural position. You need to let the club fall into your left hand and then hold your arm and the club in front of you, and then place your right hand on the grip.
One thing you need to keep in mind is that you should not hold the club in your palms, but in your fingers.
If you look at golfers playing at the professional level, you will notice that they prefer to use variety of grip combinations, but they mostly use the overlapping grip.
As said earlier, most players choose the neutral grip, but players can often benefit from using strong or weak grip. They can learn to compensate for their grip strength in the golf swing.
The Posture
Posture is one of the basics of golf swing basics that players tend to overlook. The choices you make before your before choosing your golf swing will influence how effective your swing motion will actually be.
You need to make sure that your posture is not a clumsy one. It is better to stand in an upright position and place the club across your hip bones, right below your waistline. You need to then slowly get into your golf posture.
You need to keep your back straight and push the club back into your hips as you lean forward with your upper body.
Golf Resource: Foy Golf Academy Practice System + Practice Plans
The Stance
Your stance is another important swing basic that you need to focus on. Understanding the correct posture, including spine angle, head position, upper body position, and lower body position can have an immense effect on your swing.
In order to get the correct stance, you need to be aware about the proper ball position for drivers as well as the ball position for irons.
Once you have a good grip and posture, you can get the right stance by holding the club in front of you and have your left feet staggered behind your right foot.
You also need to aware about your weight distribution. It has an impact on your momentum, rotation, rhythm, tempo and balance. When getting into your stance you will feel pressure pushing down through the bottom of your feet.
While getting into the stance, you would want to feel about sixty percent of the pressure in the front foot and the rest forty percent on the back foot. The weight distribution gives you some space to push off that front foot as you take your backswing.
You then transfer the pressure so that more of your weight is in the back foot at the top of the swing. After this shift in pressure and the downswing, the pressure shifts back towards the front foot. People often make the mistake of splitting the pressure with a 50-50 distribution.
You should set the face of the club behind the ball, keep the right foot in place and move in for the shot with the left foot, and also make sure that it is in line with your right foot. Your stance needs to be finished off by making a small step to your right with your right foot.
The Impact Position
When you have figured out your setup, you then need to shift your focus on perfecting your impact position. You can figure this out by taking your new set up position and making a shortened backswing so that your left arm is aligned with the ground and your club shaft forms a 90° angle with your arm.
Once you get into this position, swing through and stop post-impact. At this point, you should have your arms pointing straight at the target with your club shaft in alignment with the ground.
Golf Resource: Foy Golf Academy Practice System + Practice Plans
Different Swing Types
Now that you have an understanding of golf swing basics, you need to learn about the basics of a proper swing. You need to understand the backswing, the downswing and the follow-through.
The Backswing
For the backswing, you need to keep your arm close and bring the club back and around you while transferring your weight to your back foot. As the weight shifts to your back foot, you will feel your club rising at a 90° angle to the ground.
Read: Best Backswing Drills to Practice
The Downswing
For the downswing, you need to start by moving front knee across your front foot. This will naturally make you drop your arms as you keep your wrists in a hinge position. Your hips and chest will be in a rotating position then and you need to make sure that your head stays behind the ball.
The Follow-through
For the follow-through, after you have played your stroke, your right shoulder should be down and your arms should be fully extended. Your back knee should have completed the shift by moving towards your front knee, and all of your weight needs to be transferred to the heel of your front foot, and your back foot should be on your toes.
You should constantly work on improving your golf swing and even try to learn new techniques that can help you grow as a golfer.