The Use Of Hip Rotation In The Golf Swing

Maybe you have read too many articles to improve your golf swing skills because you want to play the game well. However, in this article, we will talk about the importance of hip rotation in the golf swing. You may feel ridiculous and think it's none of business with the hip when you start your swing. Most contemporary golf instructors believe it is necessary to clear your hips just before the point of impact in order to get your hips out of the way of your hands. According to this theory, if you don't clear your hips, your hands and arms will be impeded and will not be able to attack the ball with power. This is sometimes used as an explanation for why an overly "vertical" stance is not a good thing. According to this line of thinking, when you stand too close to the ball your hands will not be able to make a clean pass in front of your body because on the way down your hips will get in the way.

The rotation of your hip is very important to the effectiveness of the golf swing because your hips are not in the way of your hands, rotating your hips towards the target pushes your backside out further towards your hands and puts your hips more in the way than if you did not rotate them. However, most of us are not in the habit of hitting our hips with our hands when we swing our golf clubs whether we rotate a lot or not because our hips do not get in the way of our swing and to suggest this as an explanation of the importance of hip rotation is just plain misleading.

Like the baseball, the players' arms are fully extended, hips are rotated to an open position, head is back, and the players are perfectly balanced with most of their weight now centered over their front leg and hip. In fact they have used their front leg and hip as a pivot around which their upper body has rotated. In the golf swing this connection of upper and lower body is less obvious because the golf swing is a combination of vertical and horizontal. But the principle is the same. The rotation of the hips pulls your upper torso around and gets your lead shoulder into the correct position at the point of impact. Ben Hogan described this hip movement as a matter of throwing your lead hip around and back against the wall -- one of the most useful images in all of golf instruction.

In fact the hip rotation does indeed put the club on a more powerful, more direct path to the ball coming into the point of impact. But as far as I can tell, this has very little to do with getting your hips out of the way of your hands. It will allow you to get your shoulders and arms in the optimal power position when you rotate your hips because your upper body and lower body move in a synchronized way. In the golf swing, as in most other movements involving the human body, your upper body, including your shoulders and arms, moves in harmony with and in response to the movement of your lower body -- your hips and legs.

You may feel awkward and unsynchronized if you make an all arm swing without hip rotation, and your arms will not be able to follow the momentum that wants to carry them around to a natural finish. If you have realized the principles and use it into your game, I believe that it will have a great effect on your golf swing.