All the best ball strikers turn around a centred head, but it isn’t as simple as just trying to keep your head still. In this video, PGA Professional Jack Backhouse explains how to keep your head still in the golf swing.
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Why A Steady Head Is So Important
The best ball striker of all time is not Tiger Woods, Ben Hogan, or even Moe Norman, but instead is actually a machine built to test clubs that goes by the name of iron byron.
This machine strikes the ball out of the centre of the face every time and always makes clean contact with the golf ball, so there must be some principles that we, as golfers, can learn from this sweet spot-smashing robot.
Iron Byron swings a club with a straight arm, around a fixed point, which means the club returns down to the ground in the exact same place every time, which is what us as golfers also should be trying to do.
The fixed point in our golf swing is our head. If we move our head to the right or left, or up or down in the golf swing, we have to compensate for this movement somewhere else in the golf swing, which inevitably results in poor shots and inconsistency.
Our goal in the swing should be to make as big a turn as possible whilst keeping our head as still as possible, and to do this we must understand how to tilt, extend, and turn.
Tilt, Extend, Turn
The spine in the golf swing does 3 things: tilt to the left, turn to the right, and extend. This may sound complicated but if you put your head against a wall and make a full backswing turn without scraping your forehead, then you have done all 3 of these things.
If your shoulders turn too flat (left shoulder doesn’t go down enough), then this means you are not tilting to the left enough.
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If your head moves too much to the right in the backswing then you are not extending your spine enough.
It is a good idea to practice all 3 of these moves individually so you know what they feel like and what to do more or less of depending on your swing’s appearance.
Still, Not Down!
Do not get confused between keeping your head still and keeping your head down!
Keeping your head down will result in more swing faults than you think, including chicken wings and early extension.
The head can and should rotate back to the top of the backswing and through in the downswing swing and should move up and round once contact has been made with the golf ball. Jack Nicklaus had a good amount of rotation in the head back and through so it shouldn’t be frowned upon!
Spine Angle Drills
A great way to work on this is to either:
A) swing with your head touching a wall
B) drop your trial foot back at address and swing to the top feeling like the back of your head and neck points towards the target
keeping your head centred in the backswing gets you into a position where you can hit forward on the golf ball, striking the ball before the ground and hitting the ball pin high every time.
Give these tips a try and let us know how you get on! If you want to keep up to date with Jack’s instruction you can subscribe to his YouTube Channel here, or keep watching our instruction page!
If you want to watch some more of Jack’s instruction videos, you can get to his YouTube Technique Tips playlist by clicking here. Please check out our other instruction articles if you like this video on how to keep your head still in the golf swing.
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