“Covering” the ball has never been discussed in an understandable way to the golf community. We have been told that covering the ball is necessary and that it is what separates the pro from the amateur. I disagree completely with current reasoning, but let’s put that aside for now. We also know how TV personalities love to hoard secret information, but I’m just going to give it to you. I suppose it’s good that I’m not conflicted in that way.
Ladies and gentlemen, “covering the ball” means putting your body in position to deloft your club face at impact. It’s that simple. I guess the tough part is putting yourself in a position to do it. The following remarks are based on a golfer who already makes solid contact half the time. I also make the assumption that, before impact, your trailing elbow is in front of your trailing hip. Your trailing elbow creates the most important structure to carry into impact. This is an advanced tutorial.
If your leading arm currently stays against our chest well into our downswing, it’s because our instinct is to steepen impact. Our path will tend to be outside-in without a sufficient weight shift to lead the downswing. Starting our downswing with leg drive delays the opening of our body to our target. As a result, our current “covering” upper half can work to square impact.
If your leading arm does not stay against your chest before impact, it is because impact needs shallowing for some reason. Posture is nearly always compromised when trying to shallow impact. Club-path tends to be inside-out with copious leg drive. But our path changes with leg drive changes.
Keeping our leading arm against our chest deeper into our impact zone is part of our counter-balancing mechanism for our earlier post. Posting earlier is our key to a body sequence that leads to “Covering” your ball. Furthermore, our torso will eventually do what it is supposed to do to hit our ball. I’ll cover that in a later post.
The Open Stance relieves golfers of a covering motion along the target line while maintaining “Cover” along our toe line. We can cover along our toe line without doing so along our target line. Also, our club shaft may lean ahead of our ball while our leading arm moves away from our body to obey the target line. If “covered” along both reference lines, vertical shoulder rotation must occur to mitigate steep impact. Consequently, we add power and speed to our swing to counter the imbalances created.
John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy
