It ain't necessarily so

Watch a video or film or sequence photos of any top player and it's obvious that there is a decided shift of the hips toward the target (roughly -- there are no straight lines in human movement in 3space) takes place as the downswing starts. This is what observers, including teaching pros, have seen for decades, in person and on film and video. So the idea formed, and has become Holy Writ, that the hips -- or the lower body in general -- lead the downswing.

Well, that's true enough, but it leads to an erroneous and hard-on-your-back conclusion, that you should make that move to start the forward stroke.

In reality, what happens is this. The accomplished player -- the golfer, as opposed to the hack -- reaches the top of the backswing in very good balance. He knows intuitively that he has to move the club away from the target to get to the back, or back-inside, of the ball, and moves his hands, which hold the club, away from the target.

That movement threatens the delicate balance of the backswing. Being an athlete, the golfer keeps his balance by countering the move of his hands with a move of the hips.

That hip movement, in turn, pulls the hands toward the ball. At some point before the arms have reached a horizontal position, the golfer begins uncocking his hands, which sends the clubhead forward and around...and that movement is compensated by a rotation of the hips that, again, maintains the golfer in balance. But the thing very few people understand is that the hand move sets up the whole sequence - first the hands, then a little shift, which works on the hands again, which feeds back into the body to make it turn...

In other words, if you don't TRY to do anything more complicated than keep in balance, all you have to do is start the hands in the proper direction and then release the club EARLY ENOUGH.

Teachers talk about a late hit because they see a late hit in pictures, but when hackers try to hit late, they don't hit early enough! By the time you feel your wrists start to uncock, the ball has been struck.