Swing a golf club by taking a neutral grip, setting up with weight balanced and arms hanging underneath the shoulders, turning the chest away from the target while keeping the arms silent, initiating the downswing with the lower body, and rotating to a point where the chest faces the target. Here is the entire swing in one sentence.
It is not that new golfers lack the sixth step that makes them unable to develop their swing. They simply focus on practicing the fourth and fifth steps when the issue lies within the first step. Every problem that new golfers have with their swing is actually just a grip or set-up problem in disguise,and no amount of work on the downswing will fix it.
The whole swing in six checkpoints
Before going into detail, here is the entire motion laid out in the order you should learn it. Each one only works if the one above it is already in place.
| Step | What you are doing | What it should feel like |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Grip | Placing both hands on the club in a neutral position | Light pressure, like holding a tube of toothpaste you do not want to squeeze |
| 2. Setup | Standing to the ball with balance and good posture | Athletic and ready, with your arms hanging rather than reaching |
| 3. Takeaway | Starting the club back with chest, shoulders and arms together | One piece moving, with no early wrist roll |
| 4. Backswing | Turning your chest away from the target | A turn, not a lift, and it stops when your shoulders stop |
| 5. Transition | Starting down with your lower body before your hands | Pressure moving into your lead foot while the club is still going back |
| 6. Through | Rotating all the way to a balanced finish | Chest facing the target, almost all weight on the lead foot |
Why the order matters more than the steps
Golf swing lasts around one second, while the impact lasts half a millisecond with around 2,000 pounds of force being transferred into the ball through the clubface. This is not the moment when you are able to make any corrections, and if someone advises you to square up the face at the moment of impact, he is talking about consequences and not instructions.
The only thing that you can control is the state of your club and your body before you actually start swinging. This explains the importance of the grip and the setup. If your hands put you into an open clubface position, you will be working on compensation for the rest of your life.
The practical version of this: if you are slicing, do not start by changing your swing. Check your grip first, then your alignment, then your ball position. There is a good chance the swing was never the problem.
The grip, which almost nobody practices
This is the only part of your body that comes into contact with the club, and this is the sole factor determining the direction in which the clubface is facing. This is probably the least exciting thing to practice, and therefore most amateurs will never do so.
Get a neutral grip. At address position when looking down at your grip, you ought to see about two to three knuckles on your lead hand. Both hands’ V shapes created between the thumb and forefinger should aim roughly at the trail shoulder. Fewer knuckles will give a weak grip that causes an open face leading to a slice. More knuckles will give a strong grip that causes the closing of the face to cause a hook.
The way you grip your hands is not that important as many would think. The interlocking, overlapping and ten-finger grips all work. Choose any one that suits you best and stick to it.
The grip pressure is where most of the beginners err. Tightening your forearms by squeezing the club handle prevents the wrists’ rotation responsible for clubhead speed. Grip tightly enough that someone can easily pull the club from your hands.
The setup, which decides more than it should
Everything here is static, which means you can get it right every single time. There is no skill involved, only attention.
Here is what each part of the setup is doing and what goes wrong when it drifts.
| Part of the setup | What good looks like | What happens when it goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Stance width | Roughly shoulder-width for irons, a touch wider for driver | Too narrow and you lose balance, too wide and you cannot turn |
| Weight | Balanced, slightly toward the balls of your feet | On your heels you will fall backwards and hit it thin |
| Knees | Softly flexed, not locked and not squatting | Locked knees stop your hips turning at all |
| Posture | Bend from the hips with a reasonably straight back | Rounding your back from the shoulders makes a full turn impossible |
| Arms | Hanging naturally beneath your shoulders | Reaching for the ball pulls you off balance on the way down |
| Alignment | Feet, hips and shoulders parallel to the target line | Aiming right then swinging across it is how slices are born |
Position of the ball changes with the type of club that one is using, and it is better to know it than to guess. Short irons are placed at the center of one’s stance. Mid irons are placed a little bit forward of the center of one’s stance. Driver is placed inside the leading heel.
The backswing is a turn, not a lift
The easiest backswing to use as a novice golfer is arms up and body static. This results in a steep and armsy backswing with no power behind it.
Use the chest, shoulders, and arms in concert as they move the clubhead backwards with the head near the ground for the first step or so. Be sure not to roll the wrists early, opening the face before the swing even begins.
From there, the movement involves rotating away from the target with the chest, with the arms being along for the ride. The end of the backswing comes with the rotation of the shoulders stopping, not the arms running out of space. If you have been advised to reach parallel at the top and your body physically cannot make it, then you create this position with elbow flexing, hand raising, or hip slide, and all three hurt more than help.
To that point: keep the lead arm slightly bent but not locked at the top of the backswing. Many very good players do this, and a downswing straightens the arm automatically. Creating a locked arm makes a stiff swing that loses both distance and accuracy.
Transition and downswing: the lower body goes first
This is how the swing is made or broken, and it is also the hardest part to learn because it feels counterintuitive.
The lower body begins moving down when the club is still in the backswing position. The pressure shifts to the lead foot, the hips rotate towards the target, and the club is pulled down as a consequence. The hands do nothing in particular.
Where things go wrong is just the opposite: the hands and shoulders start rotating before everything else, moving the club away from the correct path and causing the club to be swung over the top. This results in an out-to-in swing, which is by far the most common cause of slicing among amateurs.
Regarding the weight distribution, there are no magic percentages other than the ones that can actually be used. Forget about shifting your weight and think of distributing about 55-60 percent of the body weight to the trail side during the backswing, and 95 percent or even more to the lead foot during the follow through. Golfers instructed simply to shift their weight invariably over-swing in the backswing phase and under-swing in the follow through phase.
What your ball flight is telling you
This is the section most beginner guides get wrong, and getting it right will save you more shots than any swing tip on this page.
For decades golfers were taught that the ball starts along your swing path and then curves toward wherever the clubface was aimed. Launch monitor data proved that backwards. The clubface sets the starting direction, and the relationship between the face and the path creates the curve.
Here is roughly how much of your starting direction comes from the clubface, depending on what you are swinging.
| What you are hitting | Share from the face | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Driver | Around 90 percent | Where the ball starts is almost entirely a face problem |
| Mid irons | Around 85 percent | Same story, so check face before you blame your path |
| Wedges | Closer to 55 to 70 percent | Grooves and loft give the path more influence here |
| Putter | Mid to high 90 percent | A pulled putt is a face issue, essentially always |
The principle behind everything is straightforward. The ball begins where the face points. And it moves away from the direction of the path. An open face in relation to the path causes the ball to fade or slice. A closed face in relation to the path causes it to draw or hook.
Therefore, in case the ball began to the right of the target and ended up further to the right, the face was open while the path was even more to the left than the face. It is a slice and the following passage clarifies why the standard remedy worsens it.
The slice, and why the usual advice backfires
A slice is the most common ball flight in amateur golf, and the most commonly mis-prescribed.
Here is the sequence that traps people. You slice, so the ball ends up right of target. To compensate, you aim further left. Aiming further left makes your swing path travel even more from out to in. Since your face is still open relative to that path, the gap between face and path gets bigger, and the ball curves more. You have made the slice worse by trying to accommodate it.
The actual fix runs in the opposite order from what feels sensible.
| Order | What to check | Why it comes at this point |
|---|---|---|
| First | Your grip | A weak grip leaves the face open no matter how well you swing |
| Second | Your alignment | If you are already aimed left, your path has nowhere to go but across |
| Third | Your transition | Hands firing before the lower body throws the club outward |
| Last | Your swing path | Path work only helps once the face is behaving |
Work through those in order and most slices sort themselves out in the first two. Trying to swing more from the inside while your face is still wide open just converts a slice into a push that starts right and stays there.
Five pieces of advice worth ignoring
Some of the most repeated coaching in golf is either wrong or so badly phrased that it causes the fault it is meant to cure. These are the ones to let go of.
| What you will hear | Why it causes problems | What to do instead |
|---|---|---|
| Keep your head down | You can top the ball with your head perfectly still | Get your weight onto your lead foot and keep your arms extended through impact |
| Keep your lead arm straight | A locked arm makes the swing stiff and costs distance | Keep it firm rather than rigid, and let the downswing straighten it |
| Shift your weight | Taken literally, it sends everything onto the back foot | Think 55 to 60 percent on the trail side at the top, no more |
| Swing slower | Clubhead speed is where distance comes from | Swing smoothly at around 80 percent, not timidly |
| Get the club parallel at the top | Most people lack the flexibility and fake it instead | Turn as far as your body genuinely allows and stop there |
This particular one requires some extra discussion since it happens to be the most often mentioned thing after missing the shot. Topping the ball is normally the result of standing back on the rear foot during the follow-through, coupled with the dropping of the hands, thus elevating the clubhead. This phenomenon has been illustrated by coaches who have purposely topped balls with the head fixed in its position.
How to practice so it actually sticks
Most range sessions are just balls hit in the air at nothing in particular with four swing thoughts jockeying for attention in your head. They build very little.
Take one swing thought at a time. Not two. The swing happens much too fast for your conscious mind to work through a list, and that is why “freezing” over the ball is the way it is described. Take your single point of focus, hit twenty balls, and ignore everything else.
Set up your shots with alignment rods or even a club on the ground. Everybody drifts out of alignment without knowing it and cannot feel it; they only see it. It is the most economical shot-saver in the game.
Hit every shot to a target. Shooting range balls aimlessly teaches you absolutely nothing about what direction the ball travels, which is all that matters.
And take a bit of every practice session to work on the grip and the setup. These are the two things that you can always do perfectly 100 percent of the time.
A realistic timeline
Honest expectations prevent more quitting than any tip. Here is roughly how progress tends to go for someone starting from nothing and practicing with some regularity.
| Stage | Roughly when | What usually happens |
|---|---|---|
| First sessions | Weeks one to four | Contact is inconsistent and that is completely normal |
| Getting airborne | Months one to three | Clean strikes start appearing, though not yet on demand |
| Playing golf | Months three to six | You can get around a course without losing a dozen balls |
| Shaping shots | A year and beyond | Ball flight becomes something you influence rather than observe |
Two things make this process faster than anything else does. A few sessions with an experienced coach right off the bat, as an experienced eye sees something within a minute that you will spend an entire season trying to figure out. And footage of your own swing, since the way you feel your swing and the way it actually appears are about as different as they come.
One word of advice regarding the physical aspect. If a certain stance feels bad, don’t do it. Golf requires rotation in the hips and upper body, and those who lack the flexibility to do so try to create extra range of movement in some other area that was not meant to bend. Go as far as you possibly can.
Final take
Learning how to use the golf club properly boils down to realizing that it is all about embracing the tedious stuff. Start with grip, then move to setup, then turning rather than lifting, and finally allow your lower body to take control. That is four things to learn in that order.
Apart from that, make sure that you are able to read the ball flight. This means that the face determines its starting direction while the path determines the curvature. What this means is that you will know which one is causing problems for you through these misses. It has been observed that most people waste years mastering the wrong one thanks to the model being disproved long ago by launch monitors.
Frequently asked questions
What is the correct way to swing a golf club?
Take a neutral grip, set up with balanced weight and your arms hanging under your shoulders, turn your chest away from the target rather than lifting your arms, start the downswing with your lower body, and rotate through to a balanced finish with your chest facing the target. Learn those in that order, since each one depends on the one before it.
What is the most important part of the golf swing?
The grip, by a distance. It is the only contact you have with the club and it does more than anything else to determine where the clubface points at impact. Since the face controls most of your starting direction, a faulty grip guarantees a faulty ball flight no matter how good the rest of the swing is.
Why do I slice the golf ball?
Because your clubface is open relative to your swing path at impact. Usually the cause is a weak grip, alignment aimed left of target, or the hands firing before the lower body in transition. Check those three in that order. Aiming further left to allow for the slice makes it worse, because it widens the gap between face and path.
Does the ball start on the swing path or where the face points?
Where the face points. Launch monitor data shows roughly 85 percent of a shot’s starting direction comes from the clubface, rising toward 90 percent with a driver and into the mid-90s with a putter, while wedges give the path more influence. The older teaching, that the ball starts on the path and curves toward the face, has been disproved.
Should I keep my head down when I swing?
No, and this advice causes more problems than it fixes. Topping the ball usually comes from hanging back on your trail foot while your arms collapse through impact, not from lifting your head. Forcing your head down restricts your follow-through and can make you tuck your chin into your chest. Let it move naturally as your body rotates.
How tight should I hold the golf club?
Lightly. A common comparison is holding a tube of toothpaste without squeezing anything out. Gripping hard tightens your forearms and removes the wrist hinge that creates clubhead speed, which means a tight grip costs you distance as well as feel.
Where should the ball be in my stance?
It depends on the club. Short irons sit in the middle of your stance, mid irons slightly forward of center, and the driver just inside your lead heel so you catch it slightly on the upswing. Getting ball position wrong changes your low point and produces fat and thin shots that look like swing faults.
How long does it take to learn a golf swing?
Most people make consistent contact somewhere between one and three months of regular practice, and can get around a course by three to six months. Controlling the shape of your shots usually takes a year or more. A few early lessons and filming your own swing shorten all of those timelines considerably.
Should I swing slower to hit the ball straighter?
Not slower, smoother. Clubhead speed is what produces distance, so swinging timidly costs you yards without buying accuracy. Around 80 percent effort with good balance is the usual sweet spot, since most loss of control comes from losing your posture, not from swinging fast.
Can I teach myself to swing a golf club?
Yes, but it is slower and you will build habits you later have to undo. The fastest route is a small number of lessons early to get your grip and setup checked, then self-practice with video. You cannot see your own swing, and what it feels like and what it looks like are rarely the same thing.
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