Top 100 Teacher: 1 key move that you can see in ‘every good golf swing’

If you’ve found yourself on GOLF.com, you’ve probably heard of the term weight shift by now. It happens in every golfer’s swing, no matter their level. Get it wrong, and it won’t just cost you power — it’ll make you more inconsistent, too.

In basic terms, golfers shift a majority of their weight to their trail foot on their backswing, and then as they swing the club through, shift their weight to their front foot on their way through. But with 3D data giving us a deeper understanding of the golf swing than we were ever capable of before, teachers have found both sides of that weight transfer during the swing happen earlier than we previously thought.

As GOLF Top 100 Teacher Shaun Webb explains in his Athletic Motion Golf video below, for professional golfers, their weight shift to their foot has been completed by the time they finish their takeaway. By the top of the backswing, their body has already re-centered, ready to move ahead of the ball on the downswing.

Higher handicaps tend to still have their weight on their trail foot by the top of the backswing, which is what causes them to hit the ball fat. Re-center earlier, and you’ll be more likely to make crisp contact.

Watch the full video below:

Luke Kerr-Dineen

Golf.com Contributor

Luke Kerr-Dineen is the Game Improvement Editor at GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com. In his role he oversees the brand’s game improvement content spanning instruction, equipment, health and fitness, across all of GOLF’s multimedia platforms.

An alumni of the International Junior Golf Academy and the University of South Carolina–Beaufort golf team, where he helped them to No. 1 in the national NAIA rankings, Luke moved to New York in 2012 to pursue his Masters degree in Journalism from Columbia University. His work has also appeared in USA Today, Golf Digest, Newsweek and The Daily Beast.