Swing Change

I have read in other posts here that it is important to keep your head down right through impact and even keep it behind the ball. Before I tried this I used to push the ball to the left (I'm left-handed) but now with keeping the head behind the ball I seem to have a draw on a lot of my shots. I guess I'm trying to understand the mechanics of the swing and why this has resulted in a different type of shot. Is there a reasonable explanation?

just a wild guess, but maybee your head down caused a dip in your shoulder that makes you come a bit more in to out maybe.....

there are better experts on this site that can maybe explain the swing better and why you are getting the results you describe........

but I think keeping the HEAD down is bad..... it causes you to dip your shoulder in the dowswing..... you want your head to be inline with your spine angle, and keep your EYES down on the ball. that way you can still see what you are hitting and have you head clear of your shoulders in the downswing.

Some of these other guys are a lot more qualified to give you a professional opinion. I can only say what I've found in my own game. I keep my eyes on the ball until my follow through forces my head to turn. The biggest thing I struggled with in the past was looking, taking my eyes off the ball and causing some terrible shots. The biggest thing IMO is keeping your eyes on the ball through impact and resist the urge to turn your head and admire your shot at least until your follow through is complete. I don't know about keeping your head behind the ball. With the way I set up, my head seems to be almost even with the ball. I started using a strong grip, putting my hands slightly forward and teeing the ball closer to the center of my stance. This seems to have put me in the position to get that perfect little draw that I've been looking for for the past couple of years. This is just what works for me and I can't explain the technical side of it, but I know some of the other members will get you up to speed on that. I'll just sit back and read what they have to say. Maybe they'll even explain the technical side of what I'm doing and why it works.

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Hi Steven I'm also no expert but I can see a difference in the swings. If you move your head forward, you will potentially put your club in a more open position. When you make the change of keeping your head still, you will be in a better position to whip the club around your body, and that would explain a more closed clubhead and hence the draw.

I will try to make this clear and precise, I hope I can do that
since the swing arc bottoms out below your left arm pit, if you allow your head to move forward, the left arm pit moves forward and with it the bottom of your swing arc moves forward. Clear?
ok
now we want to swing from the inside, to square which is impact, and then back to the inside on our swing path. well the square part of the swing is right about the bottom of the swing arc, are you still following me?

if we move our head forward we have now moved our swing arc forward so we should be striking the ball fefore the bottom of our swing arc and before the square part of our swing, so that will be an inside out angle of attack with an open club face and lead to push shots

now you are keepng your head behind the ball and therefore you are moving the ball more forward in relation to the bottom of your swing arc so your point of contact shoulde be on a squarer path with a squarer club face. which should produce a straighter shot and get you closer to drawing rather then pshing.

Now because our subconscious mind adjusts for many things when we move our head forward we may come over the top to get a square clubface, but our path will be outside in, which will produce shots off to the right.

what you describe makes perfect sense to me, hopefully what I ahve typed made sense to you

Good post simon

you want your right shoulder to dip on the down swing, bad golf instruction makes us think this is bad but ALL pros have a shoulder angle that points more towards the ball at impact, then it did at the top of the back swing, that is called dropping in the slot

I agree that your shoulder does dip, (i just explained wrong why you should not keep your head down, thanks for the correction) but do you agree that most all pros keep thier head inline with their spine and not down? having my head inline with my spine helps to remind me to have good posture, it is hard to have my head down when my posture is good, but when i slouch it makes it much easier to keep my head down (which keeping my head down may in itself not be that bad), but bad posture is always bad.

Nicklaus moved his head to the rear so he could keep it down and behind the ball, definitely not a bad thing to do.
You can accomplish the same thing by pulling the handle of the club down and through the ball to target line. This keeps your head and body down and through the shot, you can look up but its too late to do any harm.
Capice?

I think my post was a tad redundant with such excellent description from you shootin! :P

But now I'm going to bring up something which nobody likes - the hands. I know we are supposed to uncock the right wrist to generate power at impact, so how does that affect the bottom of the arc? It (uncocking of the wrist) also sounds like something which requires a lot of timing and a risk to consistency. I bring this up because you mentioned that we do alls of funny things to get good square impact even though the other parts of our swing might be wrong, and I wondered if this could be one of those things..

if the pros looked straight out their eye sockets, they would not look at the ball but rather past it, you are correct about that. At address Most all do have a slight roundness in their shoulders and their head is tilted down some, but not a whole lot

you mean uncock the left wrist?
the uncocking should not really be a thought if you pivot decently. Now if you are asking me how to make a square club face with a faulty pivot, I cant answer what compensations you do.
what are some things people do? consciously rotate the left forearm, adjust the grip, Pray, etc....
The subconscious wants to hit the ball in the center of the club face, so your set up needs to allow that to happen or you will make adjustments such as path

Wouldn't you uncock both the left and right wrist?