Drills help but so will clarifying what you’re attempting to do during the swing. Most of the old instruction about golf talked about a weight shift but didn’t really make clear that there is a concurrent pressure shift in the feet as well. Shortly after you begin the backswing and weight begins to shift to the right, there’s an accompanying resistance in your right foot that helps to keep your dynamic center of gravity over the ball. This resistance continues to build during the backswing, eventually leading to the release that we know as the downswing. The old saying, “turn in a barrel,” sort of conveys this idea but not very clearly.
Understanding this concept leads to understanding how professional golfers, despite the incredible speeds they generate, almost never lose their balance. Look at Arnold Palmer’s swing. It’s not a classic swing and some might call it awkward, but he still managed to remain in balance. Also look at McIlroy’s swing. As hard as he swings, he almost always remains in firm balance, and if he doesn’t, chances are, it’s a bad shot.
By the way, balance absolutely promotes more solid ball contact. Modern performance monitors have demonstrated that most golfers see significant improvement in both accuracy and distance when the quality of ball striking improves even if swing speed remains constant.
The way some classic golf instruction is written also can be deceiving about the timing of the weight/pressure shifts. A lot of instruction advised that the golf swing moves in two directions at one time but implied this occurred in the transition. While the upper body may be continuing to swing back while the hips uncoil towards the target in the transition (thus, two directions at the same time), you can’t first think of this opposition of forces at the microsecond at the beginning of the transition. They really are set up beginning at the end of the takeaway, continuing throughout the backswing.
If not, you have only a weight shift to the right without a corresponding increase in pressure that automatically cancels out a shift of more than an inch or so. That’s swaying. When you hear modern instructors talk about “recentering,” it’s this weight/pressure shift working as it should, not a conscious thought. Without the combination of a weight/pressure shift, you’ll likely move too far right at the beginning of the backswing, making it almost impossible, without fortunate but completely unpredictable timing, to get back to the ball so that you can hit it cleanly without chunking.
That’s why I think an understanding of the “why” of a golf swing will help you when you start doing drills. To achieve the specific action a drill aims for can be accomplished with a number of moves, some which will allow you to hit the ball cleanly and some not. But understanding that a proper weight/pressure shift accomplishes two goals simultaneously–avoiding sway off the ball while enhancing balance–will help you identify bad moves more quickly, leading, let’s hope, to more good moves more quickly.
