The Importance of A Centered Head

Traditional golf instruction has a golfer move his head to the right in an attempt to "coil", get a bigger "X Factor" or "Y Factor" or "O". On the surface, while it seems that this is reasonable, it actually creates more faults than it cures.

At address, before the golfer does anything, he has actually matched his head position and more specifically his left shoulder with the ball position. To move the head and as corollary, the left shoulder - which is the low point of the swing, where the club bottoms out - one would then have to move the ball to maintain this synchronicity, or risk hitting it thin or fat.

What typically happens then is that the golfer will either have to sway his head and left shoulder back to the left on the downstroke or "get stuck" if he doesn't have the adequate physical capability to sway back on time.

The first option has its own pitfalls, instead of a "pure" sway that is the mirror opposite of how he moved his head to the right, Joe Hacker will utilize the right shoulder in a roundhouse fashion and cut across the correct swing plane.

Another thing that can happen is that he overcooks the sway and moves his low point way ahead of the ball and hit half tops. This of course is a better option than hitting it fat as the ball should run out to almost where it would be had it been struck properly.

The most egregious of effects produced by a moving head would be its companion, the dip as the golfer initiates the downswing. The end result of which is a fat shot, or if the golfer bends the left wrist or left elbow to prevent bottoming out before impact, weak, high powerless shots.

The next time you get to the range, watch to see if your head is moving out of position. The head should be centered between your feet, the way it would be when you are brushing your teeth.

On your backswing, the head should feel centered while your back should feel like its turning to face the target. From there, the downswing should be reflexive with plenty of lag. Hold your finish as your shot takes off with a crack like an F14 taking off into the distance.