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Welcome to Play Smart, a regular GOLF.com game improvement column that will help you play smarter and better golf.
Your arms and hands are crucial in determining the overall success and effectiveness of your golf swing. They are to be used as conductors, to transfer power from the body to the club head.
Before we can get into the details of the best way to transfer power from the body to the arm paddle, let’s start with the stick grip.
From an anatomical perspective, how the golf club sits in our hands is critical to our success.
The lead arm versus the fairway arm in the golf swing
Starting with the forearm, when placing the racquet with our hand, you want to set the grip as straight across the palm as possible – right at the base of the fingers where the fingers meet the palm. So when you hold the club, it will be very similar to holding a purse or briefcase.
The key move that many players don’t realize is that you want to slide the pinky toe down toward the ground. This determines the anatomical features of the arm line above the fist. This is very important in helping us aim during our golf swing.
As for the placement of the fairway’s hand on the golf club, that is equally important.
We want to reflect the anatomical features of the lead arm and hand. What this allows us to do while swinging is provide opposing forces to create torque actions, which, in effect, will help align the club to optimal effect.
Now that you have your hands on the stick with intent, let’s look at the individual arms.
To gain real insight into this topic, we’ll look at objects through the lens of linear momentum.
Let’s look at the individual mass of the lower arm, humerus, and rib cage (which is much larger than the individual parts of the arms). This is valuable because it provides real insight into the relationship between sectors and how they interact with each other – whether during acceleration or deceleration.
In an ideal situation, there would be more linear momentum in the chest early in the downswing (owing to its mass). Then, at a certain point, the arms gain ground on the chest. For the golfer, precisely when and where this occurs gives interesting insight into their ability to generate speed, power and accuracy.
By incorporating these principles—and understanding how to use the drive stick versus the fairway arm in your golf swing—you can increase the transfer of power through your arms. This will help get crisper shots, and improve both distance and control.
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