Are You Really Lifting Your Head?

I have been teaching golf for more than 20 years and in my experience, there is no greater fallacy than the idea that you need to keep your head down during the golf swing. So the next time someone tells you to keep your head down, tell them Mike Sullivan says “You’re not lifting your head"!

In a lesson that I had earlier in the week, I had a golf student who made less than solid contact in his swing. He told me his problem was that he lifted his head. The reason he thought he lifted his head was because the ball flight was very low, what we might call a “worm burner”. But what is actually going on in the golf swing when we keep our head down? Keeping our head down during the golf swing makes it very hard to transfer weight to our front side. The reason we need to transfer weight to our front side is because we need the low end of our swing to occur ahead of the ball, not behind the ball. When we hit the ground before the ball, we strike the ball as our club is coming back up which causes a topped shot, chunked shot, low trajectory flight (skulled shot) or extra high flight due to added loft at impact. There are many things that feed into this problem. Intuitively, most amateur golfers will grip the club weakly which encourages an open club face. Why does an open club face match up with someone topping or chunking the ball? The reason this correlation occurs is because the golfer knows instinctively and possibly subconsciously that their club face is going to be open at impact so it often makes them flip or scoop their hands through impact, letting the club face pass their hands. Setting up with a weak grip and encouraging that weight transfer early will inevitably lead to the ball going off to the right. So how do we resolve all of this? First, don’t worry about what your head is doing. You’re not lifting your head and you shouldn’t try to keep it down. Next, you should check your grip. Your lead hand (this is your left hand for a right-handed golfer) should be slightly strong. When we say “strong”, we don’t mean to grip tighter. Your lead hand should be slightly rotated on top of the club so that the V between your thumb and fore-finger is pointed toward your back shoulder (right shoulder for a right handed golfer). The palm on the trail hand should be facing the same directionas the club face. Finally, make sure that when you transfer weight during the golf swing, 100% of your weight should be on your lead foot at the end of the swing. In junior golf, we tell the young golfers, they should be able to tap their toe at the end of their swing.

The number one fundamental that we see in a beginner golfer is a weak grip. The number one concept that we see with newer golfers is this idea that they must keep their head down. Don’t fall into this trap! Strengthen your grip and transfer your weight. Pretty soon, you’ll be making better contact and have more consistency in your golf shots.