Head behind the ball?

[MCFung]

Hi,

So lately I have been working on improving my weight transfer and hip rotation. I've always struggled with having essentially no hip turn, and having my arms/shoulders pull my hips through the swing as opposed to vice versa. My swing trigger is now to shift my weight to the outside of my front foot followed by kicking my rear knee in to force a hip turn. Only problem is, my head is now moving forward when I shift my weight forward. I know I should be keeping my head behind the ball at impact, but if I make a conscious effort to do so, I feel like I still keep a lot of weight on my rear foot, even after doing a hip bump to get weight to the outside of my front foot. I feel like I am leaning back, and the weight builds on my rear foot.

My questions:

A) If my head continues to slide forward, what mishits will this tend to cause?

B) What drills are out there can help me shift weight while keeping my head behind the ball?

Thanks!

[ks8829]

the motion is similar to skipping rocks on the lake. This motion forces you to keep you head behind the ball.

Jack Nickalaus had someone hold his hair and if he moved it forward it would hurt.

[DaveLeeNC]

I also sometimes slide forward a bit on full swings. I was able to fix this by first focusing on staying back on short pitch shots (say 35 yards with a LW). Once I got the feel of this I found it relatively easy to map that feel to my full swing shots (and "easy" and "swing change" rarely goes in the same sentence for me).

dave

[golfdad]

A) If my head continues to slide forward, what mishits will this tend to cause?
the mid section of your body needs to move forward, to go into the hitting zone. if your head also actively moves forward, your body will be off balance, that is you will tip over toward the front (think what will happen to you if your feet are fixed and one person push you forward in the hip and another push you forward in the head). however, unless we are drunk, that does not happen because we will hold back the mid section to maintain balance. as a result of that reflexive move, the body (mid section) will not fully release forward, proper weigth shift will stop short, and the golf swing/shot will not be executed properly. what mishits with that? anything is possible.



B) What drills are out there can help me shift weight while keeping my head behind the ball?
i am sure there are many ways, but try swinging in front of a large mirror and see/feel for yourself.

ps, like the earlier analogy of the motion of skipping stones...

[jambalaya]

This is a very common problem. Depending on what your body tries to do to compensate the mishit could be either a pull or a block. I find the most common fault is a block or push.

Keeping the head back is very difficult if you have weight shift problems. Forcing your hips ahead of your head so to speak is just not going to work on a consistent basis. I know, I have tried so many ways to force a proper weight shift of the lower body that I have lost count. If you have a decent, natural weight shift you can think about keeping the head behind the ball and it will work pretty well. But, weight shift needs to be more natural and not forced. And a proper weight shift has mostly to do with a complimentary setup and backswing. You must be positioned at the top of your backswing so that weight shift mostly happens without thought then you can keep your head behind the ball. Maybe some of the other folks have some comments about that but if I were you I would study weight shift and how setup and backswing affects it.

[wachesawgolfer]

Your move encourages a too early shift in the hips resulting in a weak swing at best with all the power gone at impact. You need to get you arms down to your right hip and then turn, this keeps you behind the ball at impact with a lot of punch and leverage. A lot of players feel they lead with their left side, but if you experiment with your body, and take a full coiled take away (back fully to the target) without a club just the arms and then lower the arms, the left knee moves towards the target, as also if you move the left knee forward, the arms are pulled down. Its all connected. Find which trigger works but lowering the arms, by a distinct straightening of the right arm downwards insures the hands get to the right hip and the left arms stays on the chest for a connected downswing.