Improving Golf Swing

Stance
Stance is extremely important in golf. As you may have heard before, PGA (Professional Golfer's Association) actually stands for Posture, Grip and Alignment. A stance in golf is very important because it involves two of these three keys for a successful swing and a lower score. If you've ever played golf before, you probably are aware of how important your stance is, but what you may not know is that you can actually alter your stance for specific shots.
Why would you ever do this?
Of course if you're one of those golfers who always has a perfect swing, your ball is either in the fairway or on the green at all times, so your stance would never need to be altered if you're behind a tree or in a sand trap because that never happens to you.
Yeah right.
Even the pros end up in the rough, in the water, or behind the trees. It's just the nature of the game. In fact, one could argue that being able to play perfectly round after round would make golf boring to play. Unless you're an advanced robot with a programmed, perfected swing that's perfect every time an in any condition, then that is not you.
There are several situations you may consider altering your stance, but to start we'll look at how your stance should normally be.
- Your feet should be a little wider than shoulder-width apart.
- Your knees should be slightly bent
- The ball should be aligned in the center of your stance, far enough away that you can reach it with the club comfortably.
This is the standard golfing stance.
What if you are on a steep hill? What if there is a tree between you and the green? What if you're in the sand?
If you are on a steep hill, you should alter your stance so that your feet are much closer together. Depending on how steep the hill is and how far the shot needs to go, the alignment of the ball should be outside of the feet (to the back if you're on a decline, to the front if you're on an incline). What you're trying to accomplish through altering your stance this way is that the overall swing should be very similar to what you would normally do. Improving your golf swing is just like science, you should try to isolate one variable at the time, change it and nothing else, and then proceed.
You can actually hook or slice on command by changing your stance. This will help if you have an obstacle in front of you you are trying to avoid. Of course, practice will help you get the feel for how MUCH you should alter your stance for this type of swing, but as a rule of thumb, move the ball forward in your stance for a hook and back in your stance for a slice. The point is to have the club impact the ball at an earlier or later point of the swing than normal.
An alternative to moving the balls alignment in your stance is moving your feet forward or backward. Keeping the standard stance and moving your left foot back (for right-handers) is called an open stance. This is how you can purposefully hook the ball to the left around a tree that's in your way.
Moving your right foot back (for right-handers) has the opposite effect, creating a slice. This is called a closed stance
This is also one way you can try to improve your golf swing. If your shot always hooks, try using a more closed stance, or if your shot is always a slice, try using an open stance. This doesn't work 100% of the time because there are many other variables that go into a golf swing, but it might work for you!
If you would like to learn how to shave strokes off of your average, I would recommend watching the videos The Golf Swing Secret. Golf Swing not only covers how to lower your score but it covers a lot of other issues that you run into playing golf. They are instantly downloadable videos so you can actually see what you should be doing instead of just reading about how you should be doing it.