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Lifting Your Club with Arms and Hands during the Backswing
If you try to lift your club with your arms and hands, it can lead to an upright golf swing. The upright swing could cause pulls and slices.
Also, no matter how hard or how fast you try to swing your golf club, you may feel like you are not getting much distance even though you may think your swing speed is increasing as you try to swing harder.
When players try to lift their clubs with their hands or arms, they will raise their hands higher than it should be at the top of the swing.
If you raise your hands too high at the top, there is less chance that you will hit the ball solid with the correct swing plane. So you will lose distance as a result.
How to Use your Left elbow
One of the reasons why you lift up may be in your left arm. When you try to keep your left arm too straight, you will tend to lift up.
Like we talked about in the article, Should You Keep your Left Arm Straight?, most PGA Tour players have some bend in their left arm.
But amateurs think they should keep their left arm straight and end up lifting at the top of the backswing.
If this is the case, try not to keep it too straight. You should feel like your left arm is relaxed and soft.
Turn instead of Lift up
Another way to avoid lifting your hands and arms too much during the backswing is to focus on turning your body during the backswing.
Try to turn instead of try to swing with your hands and arms.
When you try to swing your hands and arms, you end up lifting your club and not turning.
As a result, you will lose distance.
Long hitters hit it very far because they have huge turn during their backswing.
Also, when you focus on turning during the backswing, you will feel like you don't have to keep your left arm straight or force your hands and arms to swing back as far as they can go to make your backswing bigger.
So focus on turning instead of trying to swing with your arms. You will hit the ball much longer that way.
Slow Your Hands and Turn Your Chest
You can also try the drill below to avoid using too much hands and arms at the start of your takeaway.
With this drill, we won't hit the ball. Using the driver, I want you to leave your headcover on your driver and start your backswing.
By adding more weight to the driver head, you are forced to start your takeaway with slower speed.
This also promotes more of a one-piece takeaway.
Because added weight to your driver head will slow down the movement of your hands and arms, your body will have more time to turn at the start of your backswing.
When you actually hit balls with your driver or irons, try to focus on turning your chest to the right instead of trying to swing your arms or hands.