importance of keeping your chin up at address

I videod my swing on my phone the other day and although it felt as if my shoulders where turning through 90 degrees it was obvious they were not and I was struggling to get 3/4 of the way round on my backswing. By raising my chin quite considerably however when I videoed myself again my shoulders had gone through 90 degrees if not more and my backswing was now about the right length. You wouldnt think such a small adjustment could make such a big difference.

nail on the head

If I don't get my chin up, I actually push my shoulders into it, and pull myself off the ball.

Hey Samburk:

I wrote in a separate post about the chin and it's actual movement in the swing. Basically, after doing some research on Jack Nicklaus and viewing various video clips of him swinging the driver, it became apparent that his chin swivels significantly throughout the shot. He actually uses the swivel to the right to trigger his swing and lets it rotate back toward the target during the throughswing. Although his head swivels it does stay in position and only moves lateraly a few inches and hardly at all vertically. I then started to look closely at many other swing sequences ( I have hundreds) and found a very similar trend. Most tour pros swivel their head to some degree during the swing (more swivel with the longer clubs, less with the shorter..) almost making a mini swing of the chin along with the shoulders.

I had worked myself on keeping the chin up away from the chest as you stated and this certainly helps as it allows room for the left shoulder to pass under on the backswing and the right shoulder through on the downswing. You may want to take this one step further and use a little rotation of the chin on the backswing. I think you may be surprised how well you will be able to turn behind the ball using this key. As with most things golf related, do not overdo it but just rotate along with the pace of the left shoulder. In the swing sequences I reviewed most pros actually looked as if their eyes were pointed well beyong their right foot (for righties) at the top of the backswing instead of at the ball. My tendency was to keep the chin up but also keep it way too stationary during the backswing. This made it difficult to turn fully in the backswing and the rigid motion (or lack of motion) pulled me off the swing during the downswing in a lunging action. Using the chin swivel freed things up and allows me to stay behind the ball in a great way. Again, this move was more significant on the longer clubs and much less necessary on the short irons.

Give it a try and I hope it helps,
Tim