Load and Fire!

Mark Oswald
General Manager
The Highlands at Dove Mountain in Marana, AZ.
Marana, AZ
oswaldpga@gmail.com

More Information

It begins at the very start of the swing. For the right-handed golfer, the backswing should begin with your left side, taking the club away from the ball. Your shoulders and hips begin turning and your weight is shifting towards your right foot. This continues as you are taking the club back towards the top of your backswing. As you are turning, you will find your shoulders will turn much more than your hips. This is where the resistance comes in. In the golf swing, this is referred to as the coil. As your upper body turns on past your lower body, you are creating a coil – resistance to the lower body. This coil is creating a large source of power.

This is the picture for power in your golf swing. The backswing loads up your body to fire into the ball on the downswing. The turning and resisting of the body during the swing, not by over-swinging the arms, creates this power load.

At the completion of the backswing, you have pressure on the right hip, knee, and foot. This is where the “fire” will come from to accelerate into the ball during the downswing.

As you begin the downswing, you will start driving out of this coiled position. Fire off your right foot, knee, and hip, propelling your lower body into the ball. This will drop the club down into the correct impact position and generate club head speed.

These “load” and “fire” positions are similar to the motion with winding a top. As you wind it up, you are loading, when you let go, it fires out.

Try this with your golf swing. Load up your backswing with a big 90-degree shoulder turn, 45-degree hip turn. As you see, the shoulder turn is greater than the hip rotation, the lower body is creating the first resistance from the position at the top, fire into the ball with the lower body. This will create greater club head speed and increase the distance of the shot.

Work on increasing your turn, loading up and firing into the ball for more distance. For more help with your golf game, contact Mark Oswald at oswaldpga@msn.com.