Tag: Connecticut golf instruction

Hip Turn vs Sway — Fixing Lateral Movement in the Golf Swing

One of the most common swing faults among amateur golfers is swaying, lateral movement away from the target during the backswing. It feels like you’re making a big turn and loading up for power, but in reality, you’re destroying the foundation of a consistent golf swing. The result is inconsistent contact, loss of distance, and a low point that moves around from shot to shot. You might hit one pure, then fat, then thin, with no clear explanation for why.

The problem is that most golfers don’t realize they’re swaying. It feels like rotation because your upper body is turning. But your lower body is sliding, not rotating. The difference between a proper hip turn and a sway is subtle when you’re making the swing, but obvious when you see it on video or in a mirror. Once you understand the distinction and learn to feel the correct movement, ball striking consistency improves immediately.

This article breaks down the difference between hip rotation and sway, explains why sway kills your swing, and provides three simple drills you can use at home or on the range to eliminate lateral movement and build a stable, powerful turn.

Hip Turn vs Sway: What’s the Difference?

A side-by-side comparison illustrating a “Hip Turn” where the lead hip rotates toward the target while staying centered, versus a “Sway” where the hips slide laterally away from the target during the backswing

Proper Hip Turn: Rotation Around a Stable Axis

A proper hip turn is rotational, not lateral. Your hips rotate around a relatively fixed center—specifically, around your trail hip (right hip for right-handed golfers). During the backswing, the trail hip rotates back and slightly deepens (moves behind you), while the lead hip rotates forward. Your spine angle stays constant, and your head position remains stable over the ball. Crucially, your center of mass does not shift significantly to the right. Weight transfers to your trail foot through pressure shift, not through lateral slide.

Think of it like a door hinge. The hinge is your trail hip, and the door (your pelvis) rotates around that fixed point. The door doesn’t slide sideways—it pivots. This is what proper hip rotation looks like.

Sway: Lateral Movement Off the Ball

Sway is when your entire lower body slides laterally away from the target during the backswing. Instead of rotating around your trail hip, your hips shift to the right (for right-handed golfers). Your head moves off the ball, your spine angle changes, and your center of mass drifts outside your trail foot. This is a translation, not a rotation. You’re sliding, not turning.

Sway often feels powerful because you’re making a big move and loading weight onto your trail side. But it’s a false sense of power. You’ve moved away from the ball, which means you now have to slide back toward it on the downswing to make contact. This requires perfect timing and creates massive inconsistency in where the club bottoms out.

Hip Turn vs Sway: Quick Comparison

Characteristic	Proper Hip Turn	Sway
Movement type	Rotation around trail hip	Lateral slide away from target
Head position	Stays over the ball	Moves laterally off the ball
Center of mass	Stays centered	Shifts outside trail foot
Spine angle	Remains constant	Changes (stands up)
Result	Consistent contact, stable low point	Inconsistent contact, variable low point

Why Sway Destroys Your Golf Swing

Swaying destroys your golf swing by shifting your center of mass laterally away from the target, making it nearly impossible to rotate around a stable axis and leading to inconsistent contact like fat or thin shots.

Inconsistent Low Point

The low point of your swing is where the clubhead reaches its lowest point in the arc. For solid iron contact, this needs to be a few inches in front of the ball (after impact). When you sway, your low point moves. If you sway right on the backswing, you have to slide back left on the downswing to return the club to the ball. If you slide too much or too little, the low point shifts. Sometimes you hit behind the ball (fat), sometimes you hit the top half (thin), and occasionally you time it perfectly and hit it pure. But there’s no consistency because the movement is too variable.

Loss of Power

Power in the golf swing comes from rotation, not translation. When you rotate your hips and torso against a stable base, you create torque—stored energy that releases explosively through impact. When you sway, you dissipate that energy into lateral movement. You’re not coiling; you’re sliding. On the downswing, instead of unwinding rotational force into the ball, you’re trying to shift your weight back and time the club’s return. This is mechanically inefficient and produces weak contact.

Poor Contact and Misses

Sway causes multiple contact issues. The most common is the ‘reverse pivot’ on the downswing, where you shift weight onto your trail foot through impact (the opposite of what should happen). This leads to blocks, pushes, and weak contact. Even when you manage to shift forward, the timing window is so small that your misses are large. Fat shots, thin shots, and topped balls are all symptoms of excessive lateral movement during the swing.

Supporting Video Resources

Fix Your Sway & Backswing Rotation FAST! (Make a Tour Level Pivot)

Forget the confusing tips like “move your hip behind you” or “straighten the leg”—we’re giving you a real fix that delivers power, consistency, and control in your golf swing.

This Hip Habit is Keeping You From a Consistent Swing

This feel will change your game especially for older golfers who resist or turn their hips too much during the swing but with a simple move on back and down swing it’s easy.

Three Drills to Eliminate Sway and Build Proper Hip Turn

Drill 1: The Chair Drill

This drill gives you an external reference point that prevents lateral movement.

Setup: Place a folding chair or similar object just outside your trail hip at address. The chair should be close enough that if you sway during the backswing, your hip will make contact with it.

Execution:

Step 1: Take your normal golf setup with a club.
Step 2: Make a slow backswing, focusing on rotating your trail hip back without letting it touch the chair.
Step 3: If your hip bumps the chair, you’re swaying. If you can complete the backswing without contact, you’re rotating properly.
Step 4: Repeat 10-15 times, gradually increasing speed until you can make a full-speed backswing without touching the chair.

What you’re feeling for: Your trail hip should feel like it’s rotating back and slightly deepening (moving behind you), but not sliding laterally away from the target. The chair provides instant feedback if you hit it, you’re swaying.

Drill 2: The Wall Drill

This drill is similar to the chair drill but uses a wall as a reference, which is useful if you practice indoors or want a more permanent setup.

Setup: Stand with your trail side about 6-8 inches from a wall. Take your normal golf address position.

Execution:

Step 1: Make a backswing. If you sway, your trail hip or shoulder will hit the wall.
Step 2: Focus on rotating around your trail hip without letting any part of your body touch the wall.
Step 3: Once you can complete a backswing without touching the wall, move slightly closer (4-6 inches away) and repeat.
Step 4: The closer you get to the wall without touching it, the more precise your rotation becomes.

What you’re feeling for: The same sensation as the chair drill, rotational movement around a fixed axis, not lateral slide. Your trail hip should feel like it’s rotating into depth (behind you) rather than sliding away from the target.

Drill 3: The Feet-Together Drill

This drill removes your ability to sway by eliminating your base of support, forcing you to rotate.

Setup: Place your feet together (heels touching or nearly touching). Hold a club and take your normal grip.

Execution:

Step 1: Make a slow backswing. With your feet together, any attempt to sway will cause you to lose balance.
Step 2: You’ll be forced to rotate your hips and torso around your center to maintain balance.
Step 3: Make 10-15 slow swings without losing balance. Then progress to hitting balls with a 7-iron or wedge.
Step 4: Hit 10-15 balls with your feet together, focusing on maintaining balance and rotating (not swaying).

What you’re feeling for: Balance and rotation. If you sway even slightly, you’ll lose your balance and fall to the side. This drill teaches you what pure rotation feels like because swaying is physically impossible when your feet are together.

Final Word

Eliminating sway is one of the fastest ways to improve ball striking consistency. The difference between rotating and sliding is small in terms of movement, but enormous in terms of results. Proper hip rotation creates a stable foundation for the swing, a consistent low point, and efficient power transfer. Sway destroys all of that.

The three drills in this article, the chair drill, wall drill, and feet-together drill, provide immediate feedback that makes the correction obvious. You don’t need a coach watching you or a launch monitor analyzing your swing. The chair or wall will tell you if you’re swaying, and the feet-together drill will force you to rotate correctly. Use these drills at home in front of a mirror, or on the range before hitting balls.

Start with the chair drill. Do 15-20 backswings without touching the chair. Then progress to slow-motion full swings, then hitting balls. Track your contact quality. If you’ve been struggling with fat and thin shots, you should see immediate improvement in consistency once you eliminate lateral movement. For more on building proper movement patterns through deliberate practice, see our article on shallowing the club in the golf swing.

Film yourself from the face-on angle and compare before-and-after footage. The visual difference will be striking, and your ball contact will confirm it. Proper hip turn isn’t just a technical detail, it’s the foundation of consistent, powerful ball striking. Once you’ve locked in those mechanics on camera, you can combine that power with perfect rhythm by learning how to use Tour Tempo ratios to optimize your driver swing on Trackman.

March 29, 2026

How to Shallow the Club in the Golf Swing

If you’ve spent any time watching golf instruction videos or working with a coach, you’ve heard the phrase ‘shallow the club.’ It’s one of the most discussed moves in modern golf instruction because it solves multiple swing problems at once: slices, thin contact, inconsistent ball flight, and loss of power. But most explanations either drown you in biomechanics jargon or offer vague advice like ‘flatten it out’ without giving you a concrete way to actually feel and execute the movement.

This article breaks down what shallowing the club actually means, why it matters for your game, the most common mistakes amateur golfers make, and most importantly, three feel-based drills that teach your body the correct movement pattern. No launch monitor required. No complex swing analysis. Just practical drills you can use on the range today to start hitting better shots.

If you’re serious about improving ball striking and eliminating your slice, understanding how to shallow the club is non-negotiable. Let’s start with the basics.

What Shallowing the Club Actually Means

Shallowing the club means transitioning from the top of the backswing into the downswing by flattening the shaft’s angle, ensuring the clubhead approaches the ball from a more horizontal, “inside” path rather than a steep, vertical one.

Shallowing the club refers to what happens during the transition from backswing to downswing. At the top of your backswing, the club shaft is on a relatively steep angle, the butt of the club points somewhere near the ball or slightly outside it. As you start the downswing, the club needs to ‘shallow out’ meaning the shaft flattens relative to the ground and the butt of the club drops to point more behind you, closer to your trail hip.

In simple terms: instead of the club coming down on the same steep path it went up, it drops into a flatter, more horizontal plane. This is often called ‘dropping the club into the slot.’

Why does this matter? Because the angle of the club shaft during the downswing determines the path of the clubhead through impact. A steep shaft angle (too vertical) creates an out-to-in swing path, the primary cause of slices and weak contact. A shallower shaft angle (more horizontal) allows the club to approach the ball from inside the target line, which promotes compression, solid contact, and a draw or straight ball flight.

Every professional golfer shallows the club. Watch slow-motion footage of Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler, or any tour player, and you’ll see the same movement: at the top of the backswing, the club is steep. By the time it reaches hip height on the downswing, it’s significantly flatter. That transition steep to shallow is one of the key differences between elite ball strikers and struggling amateurs.

Why Shallowing the Club Matters for Your Game

Better Contact and Compression

When the club approaches the ball on a shallow plane, it’s traveling more horizontally through impact. This means the clubhead stays square to the target longer and makes contact with the ball at the optimal angle. The result is compressed, solid contact where the ball compresses against the clubface before launching. This is what creates that crisp, penetrating ball flight and the satisfying feel of a well-struck iron.

Steep, over-the-top swings produce glancing contact where the clubhead cuts across the ball. You’ll often hit the top half of the ball (thin shots) or make weak contact that feels like you’re scooping rather than compressing.

More Consistent Ball Flight

A shallow club path reduces variability. The clubhead travels on a more predictable arc, which means your misses are smaller. Instead of alternating between slices and pull-hooks depending on when your hands release, you get a tighter shot pattern. Consistency improves not because you’re perfect, but because the margin for error is larger when the club is shallow.

Eliminates Slices

This is the big one. If you slice the ball, you’re coming over the top meaning your downswing path is too steep and too far left of your target line. The clubface is open relative to that path, which creates clockwise sidespin (for right-handed golfers). Shallowing the club automatically fixes the path problem. When the club drops into a shallower plane, it approaches the ball from inside the target line, which eliminates the out-to-in slice path. Even if your clubface is slightly open, an inside-out path with an open face produces a fade or straight shot, not a slice.

Common Mistakes That Prevent Shallowing

*Over-the-top movements and an aggressive “pulling” of the lead arm often cause the club shaft to remain vertical, forcing a steep, outside-in path that makes a proper shallowing motion impossible.*

Mistake 1: Starting the Downswing with Your Arms and Shoulders

The over-the-top move happens when you initiate the downswing by throwing your shoulders and arms toward the ball. This keeps the club on a steep plane because your upper body is moving first. To shallow the club, the transition must start from the ground up: hips rotate, torso follows, arms drop. If your arms fire first, the club has no chance to shallow.

Cue to fix it: Feel like your lower body starts the downswing before your hands move. The club should feel like it’s ‘lagging behind’ as your hips begin to rotate toward the target.

Mistake 2: Casting or Releasing the Club Early

Casting is when you unhinge your wrists too early in the downswing, usually right at the start of the transition. This throws the clubhead out away from your body, which steepens the shaft angle and kills any chance of shallowing. It’s the golf equivalent of throwing a punch too early, you lose all the stored energy and the movement becomes weak and disconnected.

Cue to fix it: Maintain wrist hinge (lag) as you start the downswing. The feeling should be that your hands drop toward your trail hip while the clubhead stays ‘back’ behind you, as if the club is late to the party.

Mistake 3: Not Using Trail Arm External Rotation

Your trail arm (right arm for right-handed golfers) plays a critical role in shallowing. As the club transitions from backswing to downswing, the trail elbow needs to tuck closer to your side while the forearm rotates outward (external rotation). This movement flattens the shaft plane. Many amateurs do the opposite: the elbow moves away from the body and the forearm rotates inward, which keeps the club steep.

Cue to fix it: During the transition, feel like your trail elbow drops down toward your trail hip while your palm faces more upward (supinated). This is external rotation, and it’s one of the main drivers of shallowing.

Quick Reference: Common Mistakes and Fixes

Mistake	What Happens	The Fix
Arms/shoulders start downswing first	Club stays steep, over-the-top move	Lower body starts first, feel arms lag behind
Casting (early release)	Club throws outward, steep shaft angle	Maintain wrist hinge, hands drop to trail hip
No trail arm external rotation	Elbow moves away, club can’t flatten	Elbow tucks, palm faces up (supinated)

Supporting Video Resources

The Best Way To Shallow The Club | Finally!

Learn how to shallow your golf club like the pros and eliminate steep, over-the-top swings. The tutorial addresses common mistakes and introduces a drill to exaggerate the shallow position, helping you naturally open your body and square up the face.

How To Shallow Your Golf Swing | Good Good Labs

This Good Good Labs video analyzes golf swing techniques, contrasting steep and shallow approaches. It examines the swings of professional golfers to illustrate the differences. Learn practical tips to achieve a shallower swing, improving your game.

Feel-Based Drills to Learn Shallowing

Drill 1: The Pump Drill

This is the most effective drill for ingraining the shallowing motion because it isolates the transition and removes the distraction of hitting a ball.

Setup: Take your normal address position with a club (7-iron works well).

Execution:

Step 1: Swing to the top of your backswing.
Step 2: Without swinging through, ‘pump’ the club down a few inches by dropping your hands and feeling the club shaft flatten. The butt of the club should point more behind you (toward your trail hip) rather than at the ball.
Step 3: Pause. Check the shaft angle. It should be noticeably flatter than it was at the top.
Step 4: Repeat. Swing to the top, pump down, check shaft angle. Do this 10-15 times without hitting a ball.

What you’re feeling for: The sensation that the club is ‘dropping behind you’ rather than being thrown forward. Your hands should feel like they’re moving down and slightly back toward your trail side, not out toward the ball.

Drill 2: Trail Arm External Rotation Feel

This drill trains the specific arm movement that creates shallowing.

Setup: Hold a club with just your trail hand (right hand for right-handers), thumb pointing up like you’re holding a hammer.

Execution:

Step 1: Raise the club to shoulder height in front of you.
Step 2: Rotate your forearm outward so your palm faces up toward the sky. This is external rotation.
Step 3: Now take your normal golf setup with both hands on the club. Swing to the top of your backswing.
Step 4: As you start the downswing, focus on replicating that external rotation feel in your trail arm—elbow tucks toward your side, palm rotates upward slightly.

What you’re feeling for: Your trail elbow should feel like it’s dropping down and staying close to your body, not flying away from you. The back of your trail hand (knuckles) should feel like they’re facing more toward the sky during the early downswing.

Drill 3: Drop the Club Behind You Feel

This drill emphasizes the sensation of the club ‘falling’ into the shallow plane rather than being forced there.

Setup: Make a slow-motion swing without a ball.

Execution:

Step 1: Swing to the top of your backswing.
Step 2: Pause for one full second. Feel the weight of the clubhead.
Step 3: Allow the club to drop, not swing, drop, down and behind you. The feeling should be gravity pulling the clubhead, not your arms pushing it.
Step 4: Let your hips start rotating as the club drops. The rotation of your lower body will naturally pull the club into a shallow position.

What you’re feeling for: Passive arms, active lower body. The club should feel like it’s falling behind your body as your hips rotate. You’re not trying to force it into position, you’re allowing it to drop there as a consequence of proper sequencing.

Final Word

Shallowing the club is not a minor technical adjustment, it’s one of the fundamental differences between golfers who struggle with consistency and those who strike the ball purely. If you slice the ball, hit weak fades, or frequently make thin contact, the problem is almost always a steep, over-the-top downswing. Shallowing fixes all of those issues at once.

The three drills in this article, the pump drill, trail arm external rotation, and the drop-behind feel are proven methods for teaching your body the correct movement. They work because they focus on feel rather than mechanics, which is how motor learning actually happens. You don’t think your way into shallowing the club. You feel your way into it through repetition and awareness.

Start with the pump drill. Do it without hitting balls until the movement feels natural. Then progress to slow-motion swings, then half swings, then full swings. Track your ball flight. If you’re a slicer, you should see the ball start right of target and either fly straight or curve gently left (a draw). If you’re hitting thin shots, you should start compressing the ball and taking divots after impact. These are signs the drill is working. For more on building consistent practice habits, see our article on tempo training and swing consistency.

Give it two weeks of deliberate practice. The movement will feel strange at first, most swing changes do. But once your body learns the pattern, shallowing becomes automatic. And when it does, your ball striking will improve more than it has from any swing tip you’ve tried in years. If you want to pair that improved contact with pure power, take a look at our HH Golf Swing Speed Trainer review to see how a dedicated overspeed device can push your distance even further.

March 29, 2026