Golf Tips
– The Secret And Crucial Role Of Alignment In
Supercharging Your Game!
by: Ian Canaway
The alignment is an absolutely crucial and vital part to
any golfer’s game. You swing round your body, therefore
if your body is offline, your swing in turn will be off
line and out of sync, resulting in a poor swing and a
poor shot, usually ending up deep in the rough.
When setting up to the
ball, firstly ensure the clubface is square to the ‘ball
to pin line’ (the line between the ball and the pin),
and ensure that your shoulders, hips and feet are all
parallel to the ‘ball to pin line’, if these 3 are not
aligned and one is out, a good body turn is ruined with
a poor swing resulting.
When training, on the
driving range or wherever you can practice, a useful
technique for lining up is to place a club on the floor
and check that you’re your feet, hips and shoulders line
up with each other, the shoulder alignment is
particularly crucial because your body turn starts with
your shoulders.
Ideally, you should be
lining your body up slightly to the left of the target
(slightly to the right for left hand players), as
opposed to trying to line your body up with the target
itself.
On the course a simple
test to see if this is the case, is to look at the
target, if you can see your left shoulder, then you are
lined up to too far to the right (visa versa for
lefthanders), your shoulder should be just out of sight.
Poor Alignment can have
several affects, these are all negative. Aligning too
far to the left most commonly leads to the slicing of
the ball, this occurs because you are not parallel to
the line running from ball to pin. As a result the
backswing is limited so an ‘out to in’ swing results. As
a consequence the club face is slightly open on impact
which generates side spin on the ball. This leads to the
common problem which is the slice which I will explain
in another article.
If you align too far to
the right, the opposite will take place and a hook will
occur due to the ‘in to out’ swing of the club, although
quite common with beginners and inexperienced players.
Often they will
subconsciously become aware of this and try to adjust
mid-swing, over adjusting by opening up the clubface as
impact approaches. This again results in the slicing of
the ball, which is very difficult to control and usually
leads to ‘the rough’.
Alignment is an often
overlooked and crucial part to any golfer’s game and
therefore must be addressed for you to succeed at any
level of golf. For as long as you’re alignment is out,
you will never be able to consistently hit straight
accurate shots and will increasingly find yourself
hooking or slicing into the rough, turning those pars
into bogies and taking your round from a 75 to 85.
So get that alignment
sorted and go shoot some birdies.
