Welcome to Play Smart, a regular GOLF.com game-improvement column that will help you play smarter, better golf.
A swing that comes over the top is the bane of many a recreational golfer. Go to your local range and you’ll likely see dozens of players who struggle with the move. As a result, they hit weak fades or slices, and rarely have any real shot of becoming a lower handicap.
The reason the over-the-top swing is so common is because it is a result of a swing that feels correct. One of the main reasons for an over-the-top swing is that the golfer does not sequence the swing properly. With this move, you’ll see the golfer start begin the downswing with rotation rather than shift. But when you do this, you throw the clubhead outside the hands, and you have no choice but to come over the top in order to hit the ball.
When you watch a good ball striker hit the ball, the order of operations is reversed. Once they reach the top of the backswing, their first move down is a lateral shift toward the target. After that shift occurs, the rotation follows, allowing for the club to work more from the inside.
In the video below, GOLF Top 100 Teacher Greg Phillips of the Titleist Performance Institute shares an easy feel you can use to incorporate this sequencing into your swing.
How to shift then rotate
It can be tempting to get to the top of the swing and then try to unwind as quickly as possible. Your brain tells you that this is the best way to generate power, but in reality, it’s poor sequencing and largely inefficient. If you want to hit the ball like the best ball striker, you need to shift pressure into the lead side first and then allow your body to unwind.
Phillips like to teach this by putting alignment sticks on the ground that bisect the student’s stance on a diagonal from behind their trail foot out to in front of their lead foot. The goal on the downswing is to shift the pressure along that diagonal line before starting the rotation in the downswing.
“A lot of times I’ll put down alignment rods or I’ll put down clubs out here [right of the target],” Phillips says. “I want you to line up straight, but I want you to pretend like you’re going to hit it [off to the right].”
When you do this, the club will naturally work more on an in-to-out path with more natural shallowness.
“You’re twisting early,” Phillips says. “And I need you to have a little bit of lateral.”
