Moving Hips

[Stuart]

Over the weekend I shot a bit of video of myself swinging a club in the garden, without a ball. I saw immediately that my hips rotated backwards with my shoulders, so that at the top of my swing my hips were literally facing the other direction away from my target. I was reading the golf digest with Luke Donald on the cover of it, and there is a piece on him and his swing. In that his swing coach talked of keeping his lower body quiet in his backswing. I have tried to incorporate this into my swing. So far the results have been that my ball striking is more consistent and my ball flight not as prone to heavy drawing. To make matters a bit trickier however I see that some pro's like Vijay have looser hips. Am I on the right track with quiet hips or is it totally subjective?

[Burg]

I would say that the more moving parts the harder it will be to have consistent timing. I would also point out that Vijay is a poor example because it is very unlikely that many mere mortals can copy his swing.

I work on keeping quiet hips with a big shoulder turn. The tension that is created by the hips staying put and the shoulders rotating is a big source of the power that I'm able to create.

[Dent]

Keeping the lower body quiet is good to do. If your hips are moving too much it alters your upper body and the club on the forward swing. If you keep them still, then unleash when your coming down, you should be fine.

[dogfood10us]

Unlike most golfers, Luke Donald and other pros are extremley flexible and too much hip turn causes them to get very long at the top. Your problem could be that you can't seperate your lower body from your upper body. Try getting into you golf posture without a club and cross your arms across your body, and just try to turn your shoulders as far as possible without turning your hips at all. If your hips turn with your shoulders, it's just a flexibility problem.

[Hogan Incarnate]

I had the same problem with my swing a couple years back. My instructor *decided* to change this right in the middle of my first High School golf season and, low and behold, I didn't play in another tournament for the rest of the season! The problem with rotating your hips is that it leads to incosistant ball striking. If your hips are behind, your club face will be open at impact and your ball will fly off to the right. If they get too out in front, the club face will be closed and the ball will trail to the left.

At first it seems like you don't get enough power into your swing but trust me, you do. Its like swinging a baseball bat. You don't need you hips to be a dancing to hit a home run.

After I switched my swing and got used to the feel of it it, my index went down from a 8 to a 6.1 (my current index).

[fusioncal]

  Stuart said:

Over the weekend I shot a bit of video of myself swinging a club in the garden, without a ball. I saw immediately that my hips rotated backwards with my shoulders, so that at the top of my swing my hips were literally facing the other direction away from my target. I was reading the golf digest with Luke Donald on the cover of it, and there is a piece on him and his swing. In that his swing coach talked of keeping his lower body quiet in his backswing. I have tried to incorporate this into my swing. So far the results have been that my ball striking is more consistent and my ball flight not as prone to heavy drawing. To make matters a bit trickier however I see that some pro's like Vijay have looser hips. Am I on the right track with quiet hips or is it totally subjective?

I'm going to answer your question in just one sentence excluding this one.

Do whatever works well for you not others.

[iacas]

  Stuart said:

Over the weekend I shot a bit of video of myself swinging a club in the garden, without a ball. I saw immediately that my hips rotated backwards with my shoulders, so that at the top of my swing my hips were literally facing the other direction away from my target. I was reading the golf digest with Luke Donald on the cover of it, and there is a piece on him and his swing. In that his swing coach talked of keeping his lower body quiet in his backswing. I have tried to incorporate this into my swing. So far the results have been that my ball striking is more consistent and my ball flight not as prone to heavy drawing. To make matters a bit trickier however I see that some pro's like Vijay have looser hips. Am I on the right track with quiet hips or is it totally subjective?

I believe two things:

1) the hips should be relatively quiet on the backswing (just enough rotation to get you to about 90 degrees of shoulder turn) 2) the hips should move an incredible amount (rotationally) on the downswing. I believe a good source of speed in the golf swing comes from the torque between upper- and lower-body. You generate the torque by coiling the upper body against a resistant lower body on the backswing, then rotating the hips and lower body aggressively through impact. The upper body will whip through and the clubface will act like the end of a "crack the whip" line.

[dlaville]

This is what happens when you try to do what the pros do. Luke Donald has a quite lower body. Vijay has a more active lower body. So if you're going to emulate the pros which one of the two since they have different lower body motions and have success with each one? What you need to do is adhere to PRINCIPLE and how YOU execute that principle is the right way for you.

Start by swinging your lead arm back across your chest. When it gets about 45 degrees it will connect with your chest and start pulling your torso back. Keep swinging it back and your torso will pull your hips back. See how much your hips have turned? This is the proper amount of backswing hip turn for YOU . What you have just done is coiled the upper part of your swing against the lower and your body parts have moved enough in compliance. You have also kept your swing in structure, you didn't take it beyond where it needed to go losing that structure.

David Laville, G.S.E.M.
The Golfing Machine Authorized Instructor

[keb]

I have been pushing shots to the right, particularly longer clubs. I was thinking it was my stance and grip ( which is probably true), but sounds from this post that I should also try minimizing hip movement in backswing. Am I understanding you correctly?

[Ringer]

I HATE the idea of restricting hip motion. Any restrictive action is tension... and tension DECREASES speed.

If you have proper DIRECTION with your hips then you have nothing to worry about.

[iacas]

  Ringer said:

I HATE the idea of restricting hip motion. Any restrictive action is tension... and tension DECREASES speed.

I disagree. Pull a rubber band or coil a spring - that's tension. Let go and you get speed. Jim McLean and his X-Factor would disagree with you as well.

This is likely a discussion worthy of its own thread.

[kurtwainwright]

Part of my slicing problem has to do with my hips rotating faster than my arms & hands on the downswing. Ideally they should meet the ball at exactly the same time to optimize energy transfer. I'm just not there yet.

Any tips from the scratch golfers on how to perfect the timing of my hip motion with my arms & hands?

Would a video help? If so, I'll wait a few days... right now it's 102 degrees in the shade here in St. Louis!

Cheers!

PS: Last week I shot a 114 at Carnoustie and a 118 at The Old Course with a 45MPH wind off the North Sea. Links Golf is TOUGH!

[nyjets2806]

if your having timing problems between your upper body and lower body then try hitting shots with your feet together. if your out of time or over swinging youll fall over. try hitting a good bit of balls like this and slowly spread out your feet to the regular width. see if that works for you.

[fusioncal]

  kurtwainwright said:

Part of my slicing problem has to do with my hips rotating faster than my arms & hands on the downswing. Ideally they should meet the ball at exactly the same time to optimize energy transfer. I'm just not there yet.

I had the same problem with my swing a few months ago. I always either pushed or push sliced my shot. The reason is because I tried to "hit" the ball as hard as I could instead of letting through and that makes my hip moved faster and the clubface was open at impact.

So what I did to fix this was that I keep my lower body still and let my shoulder and arms lead the hips throughout the down swing and follow through. That way the hips will naturally moved itself whenever both arms passed the center of your stance and during the weight transfer. Also, need not to worry about hitting the ball, because it would have already gone airborne by then.

[Stuart]

Thanks guys for all of your comments. My swing is already seeing the benefits of quieter hips. I'm striking the ball more consistently, and I'm not actually hitting it any less far. I guess the fact that I'm striking it more solidly now makes up for a shorter swing.

[beung]

Your swing probably isn't much shorter then you think it is, you just have less hip and body rotation.

A quite lower body always give me more consistant shots.

Try and imagine squeezing a ball between your knees on your backswing. If your legs move too much then the ball will fall out. Some of my friends have a flexibility problems so when they over swing their lower body gets out of position. Their right leg gets too straight and then when they go to make their down swing they have to bend it again to get back into the impact position. Too many moving thing to line up...less is more.