Backswing – Right Arm / Shoulder

A drill to help you understand how your right arm moves in the backswing

Hi Robin here. If you’ve videoed your swing, you’ve seen the club crossing the line at the top, or you’ve seen that your club shaft is getting very steep coming down. You hit lots of shots of the toe of the club.  You hit pull shots, high weak cut shots to the right. You’re probably not setting your right arm in the correct position during the swing. You’re probably not rotating your right arm and keeping your arm in front of your body. Your elbow will be flying, causing the crossover. Your elbow will be coming down too much behind you with your forearm almost parallel to the ground.

That’s probably quite an easy fault to see, and when I see people with this fault, often they’re really focusing on how their elbow is working. I’ve mentioned this as well in another video about flying right elbow. But they are focused on how their elbow is working, trying to keep their elbow in front of their body. But in my lessons, and in my experience, I’ve had better success when I’ve tried to encourage people to understand what they’re feeling in their shoulder. What their shoulder is doing when they’re setting their arm into the right position.

Now, you can do that, sure,  hitting balls in practice swings, but if you’re really struggling getting the feeling, something I encourage is add a little bit of weight. Get a dumbbell. It really depends on your strength level, what kind of weight you’re going to use, but it doesn’t have to be particularly heavy. And what I want you to do is work on, first of all, I want you to feel like your shoulder is open at address. You’re pulling your shoulder back. You’re feeling like your shoulder blade’s working down and back.  You’re packing your shoulder. And then simply during the swing, I want you to keep that feeling.

So yes, your elbow will be in front of you, but you’ll feel your shoulder blade down and back. Your shoulder stays open. Rather when your elbow will fly, your shoulder will get forward – your shoulder blade would raise up. You can feel your shoulder blade down and back. It’s quite a packed feeling for me, and that little bit of weight, when I’m swinging, increases my awareness of that movement. Just a great drill you can do on the driving range, at home, in the gym, to teach you the feeling of setting your right arm into the right position. The movement of that right arm, the position of the right arm and the swing is a very crucial part to a good golf swing.

So really, once you started to sense what’s going on in the shoulder, keeping that shoulder open, keeping that shoulder blade down and back, you can put away the dumbbell, take your club, and just try to sense the same things during your swing. Now, if you can create that at the top, it’s sure to fix your club crossing over. If you can keep that same feeling coming down in the shoulder, shoulder blade think down and back, shoulder staying open, that will keep your elbow in front, and that will shallow out your swing path. So say a good drill for anyone who’s crossing over, feel like you’re getting the club steep at any point in the swing. Someone’s told you your right elbow is flying, or your right arm is not working correctly, give the dumbbell a try. Try to become aware of what’s going on in your shoulder rather than so much what’s going on in your elbow.