Today's Golfer Magazine - ‘Hitting 'From The Top'

This article was created by Steve Thomas and featured in Today's Golfer magazine for their Summer 2024 August edition - Issue number 454.

The article content:

TOP 50 TEACHER Steve Thomas 

www.stevethomasgolt.com, Head of Instruction & Fellow PGA Coach

at Three Hammers Golf Academy, Wolverhampton.

PAGE 1

CRIMEWATCH

HITTING 'FROM THE TOP'

This paragraph may be an introduction to the crime of hitting from the top, but quite frankly most club golfers don't need one. That nasty itch to belt the ball into next week as soon as we reach the top of the backswing is one so many amateurs are ready to scratch... despite the generally disastrous results it delivers. Let's take a closer look at the problems hitting from the top causes, before learning a simple thought and exercise that will help you curb this damaging impulse.

In the crime of hitting from the top the guilty party is the upper body-shoulders and torso. The backswing coil loads these joints with potential power, and the urge to expend it straight away can prove too strong. When this happens, the shoulders turn too early and too horizontally (level with the ground) at the start of the downswing. The arms and club have no option but to follow and are thrown well outside the ideal plane or attack path. Often the hips join in too, and weight is held back as the entire body pivots around the trail leg. This is basically the opposite of the ideal, ground-up downswing sequence of movement... which never stands a chance.

Here is the upshot of that premature aggression. With the stored power released well before the strike, the club is often actually decelerating by the time it meets the ball, and moves weakly through impact. The poor downswing path means an out-to-in, across- the-line impact delivery, the face typically opened to compensate. That urge to hit hard translates to an extremely weak, slicing blow.

PAGE 2

1

As we've referenced, hitting from the top is essentially a fault of sequencing. To find the ideal downswing path we need to move our body in a certain order... which we can simplify to 'hips first, shoulders second. The best way to work on this is with the help of a couple of alignment sticks. Place the first through your belt loops and the second across your shoulders.

2

Before we move on to the good move, let's just see how these two segments work in the bad one. In that hitting-from-the-top action, the shoulder stick will show more rotation than the hip one.... though they will remain broadly parallel as the downswing progresses. If this move feels familiar or comfortable to you, chances are your sequencing needs work.

3

Instead, from the top of the backswing, aim to get the stick across your shoulders to lag behind the one through your belt loops. In practice, this will mean holding the shoulder stick in position as the hip stick starts rotating. As the downswing progresses, try to create as large a differential between the two as possible, with the hips' rotation pulling the shoulders into position.

4 

To get the hang of this, you will need to work both physically to train the move and mentally to overcome the hit impulse and accept a new order of motion from the top. But if you persevere, you will be rewarded with not just a much more on-line delivery, but also a far more powerful strike, as that stored power is released at impact and not before.

 Written by Fellow PGA Coach Steve Thomas

Find out more about Today's Golfer: Click here

Subscribe to Today's Golfer and Golf World: Click here