A life of early extension

[Warren]

I have just finished Chapter 2 and enjoying the programme immensely.

Being originally self-taught, I picked up all sorts of horrible habits early in my golfing days. But the biggest issue for me, by far, is habitual “early extension” in the downswing and through impact. In my case, it’s caused by:

a) an overly long backswing where I cross over at the top when seeking extra power
b) a steep downswing, where the shaft gets too vertical coming into impact
c) and that causes my hands to move away from the body and spine to lift in order to make contact

I’m a 2-handicappers so I have learned to manipulate my hand and arm action to get reasonable results. But my early extension is the root cause of my inconsistency and generally weak ball flight.

Tathata is 100% correct – surf to level, pushing rearwards into the glutes, and getting the hands closer to the body into impact will all correct my early extension, however I’m really struggling to get the right feeling through impact and just beyond. When I push down/back/left into the glutes it feels like I am going to fall rearwards because there’s too much weight going in that direction and nothing to counterbalance. Even the soccer kick drill is making me fall somewhat rearwards. It also seems that I must train myself to accept a much greater angle between wrists/forearms and the shaft coming into impact and that’s quite strange after many years of doing the wrong thing.

Any advice from anyone suffering from the same affliction would be much appreciated. 🙂

[Les]

Chapter 3 should clean that up. As you are feeling the rearward movements from the surfing movement, you are lifting the ribs and pushing down with the arms. Those counteract that falling back feeling and better help bringing the hands into the body.

Also, verify your surf to level – knees hips and shoulders all aligned. If you upper body gets too forward you are out of feeling centered and that will throw your balance off. I suffered from that for a long time as I was one who would go left too early in the swing.

[Ken]

I agree with Les. I have suffered form early extension forever as well. I have found that concentrating on my forward hip into impact is the key for me. This has been really discussed in Chapters 31-32 with the drills and I have found them to be the key. Whenever I have tried to keep my head down I end up hitting 3 inches behind the ball. The head follows the body and the posture must be felt into the glutes coming into contact. You can see this clearly in Dustin Johnson’s swing and many many other pros.

[richard]

Warren,

See my post “what to do on day 61+”. currently 7 handicap. I too suffered from early extension and started striking the ball much better after day 60. Still was not hitting the irons as good on the course as the range, so I submitted my swing video for review. Check out my post, but the bottom line is they identified that my core was not staying engaged in the backswing and downswing.