Your Wrists In The Golf Swing – Full Details
The wrists in the golf swing. Alistair Davies golf shares with you how the wrists work during the backswing and downswing.
For most golfers it is better to avoid thinking about the technical aspects of the swing – in other words, try to avoid focusing on the mechanics of the swing during the actual game. With that said, you do need a foundation of solid technique on which to develop your game, as utilizing bad principles will always be an uphill battle.
One point to keep in mind is to carefully manage the angle in which you set your wrist in your swing.
Your wrists function like a hinge that unites your arms (and the rest of your body) to your hands and the club by extension. So, employing the wrists properly is an indispensable part of golf.
So let’s work through some of the crucial things that you need to observe as you practice your golf swing skill and attempt to enhance the manner in which your wrists behave.
Creating the Correct Grip
Without a proper grip on your club, every other thing you attempt to do with your wrists in the swing is going to be ineffective. It is important to keep your hands and wrists in a good position around the handle of the club so they will have enough freedom of movement once the swing begins.
Whether you feel that your grip is already about perfect or not, there are a few important things that you need to keep in mind to further improve your arms/grip.
Light Grip Pressure
This is a significant thing that must be done. In order for you to let your wrists hinge and unhinge freely on your downswing without producing a lot of wrist hinge- related stress, lighten up on your grip pressure throughout the swing. Despite this point being fairly simple to understand for most golfers, many amateur golfers go wrong when they start holding the club too tightly right from the beginning of the swing itself.
The best way to learn the right kind of grip pressure that you should use for chip and pitch shots is by practicing it yourself first. You will get a chance to gradually work up into bigger swings once you increase and get used to your lighter grip.
Firm Connection
You need to decide on one particular method for connecting your hands in the grip. There are two grip types that have proven to be by far the most popular ones – the interlock and the overlap.
An interlocking type of grip has the little finger of the right hand locked between the middle finger of the left hand and the third finger of the left hand. In an overlapping grip, the little finger is just allowed to simply and mildly overlap rather than being locked in between.
The choice you make is up to you, and it is just your choice, but choose one and stick with it so you can get comfortable and become skilled at it.
Hand Across the Palm
This is a fundamental that most of us often get lost in the shuffle of other topics. It has been agreed that you want to set the handle of the club running across the palm of your left hand (again, for a right-handed golfer) when you start gripping the club.
The Backswing Configuration
If you have a good understanding of the address position, it will be considerably easier for you to learn to use your wrists properly. With an already-fundamentally-sound hold, it is remarkable to some people just how much of the remainder of the swing happens naturally. Indeed, it’s not all automatic, of course, so setting your wrists during the backswing is one of the keys that need to be managed.
In the early stages of the backswing, which is also referred to as the takeaway, you will not want to be moving your wrists whatsoever. This is a time when you should turn your shoulders away while every other part of your body remains perfectly still.
One of the best things you can do for your game with the golf swing is to start the movement of the club with only the shoulders and not the arms.
However, once you initiate the shoulders-only phase of your golf swing, you will eventually have to set the club before you arrive at the top of the backswing. According to many players, this is the best time to make the move when their lead arm reaches parallel to the ground on the way back. You don’t need to do it exactly at that very moment, but use the benchmark that I provided as a general guideline. The most important part of transition to club and setting up is to feel that everything will be organized once the transition is complete and downswing has begun.
Automatic Unload
In my opinion, if you get through your backswing nicely, your wrists and the shaft of the club should naturally form roughly a 90* angle as you reach the top of your swing, right before you begin your downswing. This angle does not necessarily need to be exactly 90 degrees, and it doesn’t have to be, but it will probably be close.
From the top of the backswing, with the shaft in that steep of an angle, you’re ready to go into the downswing; and you’ll want to keep that angle going as long as possible during the downswing. Holding that angle as you are about to strike the ball will ensure that you will be able to have speed that you can unleash at some point prior to striking the ball.
The mistake many golfers make is they feel that it is necessary to think consciously about releasing the wrist angle at impact, where in fact that is where they make the mistake. Unfortunately this is not the case. Then you want to focus on the movement of your body by making it rotate. If you rotate through the shot correctly and don’t hesitate in your downswing, you should discover that the club releases normally and your wrist angles are fixed when you get to the ball.
Trying to time your release by manual timing will only make things worse for you. The downswing is moving quite quickly, which is why it is hard to determine when exactly to start straightening the wrists. Even if you did get the timing right, you’d probably lose speed because you are more worried about your wrists than you are about using the energy your body generates to turn your whole body through the shot.
Keep your hips turning through impact, and even if you do not wrist cock properly due to forces created through a rotational swing, trust that your wrists will get into position on time regardless.
I personally think that it is important that you watch your angle of the wrists in the swing from time to time because it plays a huge role in the golf swing. However, if you focus too much on this issue, you are likely to create a swing that is too mechanical in nature and lacks rhythm.
Take some time to get your wrists into the right position and then leave this behind as you focus on three simple factors that affect musicality including balance, tempo and rotation.
