Hand and Arm Action in the Golf Swing – The Red Headed Step Child

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Throughout the years, much of golf instruction has tended to primarily focus on the role of the body in the golf swing. Hand and arm action have largely been relegated to something of a subsidiary role.

The assumption is made that if the proper grip, stance, and posture are taken, and the body rotated correctly, that the hands will then be compelled to function properly without any conscious effort on the part of the player. “The hands will merely hold onto the club… “

For those few instructors and players who have lucked into having a correct hand and arm action from the moment they picked up a club, certainly this seems true in their minds. They take the hand and arm action for granted. Indeed, for them the hand and arm action may seem automatic or even unconscious. They may not be particularly aware of the hand action or it’s absolutely critical importance to the swing. And so that is what they teach.

But for those who have a faulty hand and arm action that is sabotaging their swings, which is the vast majority of the golfing population, merely rotating the body with the “hands and arms doing nothing” will severely compound their issues. Their ability and potential to play the game will be drastically compromised.

Take for example your typical average player with an over the top motion in his swing. This player takes the club up to the top of his backswing… And because he has read that the swing is “body driven” or “pivot driven” or that “the most important part of the swing is the lower body” or that “the hands and arms just go along for the ride”… he then just rotates, doing “nothing” with the hands and arms because he thinks that is correct based upon what he has learnt from body rotation focused golf instruction… His pivot then tosses his arms out across his target line. When he does come down with the club, he cuts severely across the ball right to left.

So this player, knowing his swing is fundamentally faulty, then goes about trying to correct it. He diagnoses himself with a body rotation fault, since he believes, based upon the golf instruction he has exposed himself to, that the swing is fundamentally body driven.

And because he has heard from great authority that the “most important part of the swing is the lower body,” he really starts to exaggerate his hip rotation. But instead of improving, he just keeps coming over the top, more than ever. He gets frustrated, but continues on in good faith. Exasperated, he pivots more and more aggressively. This just tosses the club across the line even more forcefully and compounds the issue. The undesirable ball flights become even more pronounced as a result.

At this point the swing is in a dire mess and needless to say it is not particularly effective. And even though the player may be quite athletic and coordinated he chalks things up to lack of talent. Some guys continue on in this golf purgatory for years or even decades. They make do with the swing they have, but know that they are not playing anywhere close to their potential.

All this really impacts the morale of the player and many simply quit. A few continue on, enjoying the game despite their poor personal play. Some develop faulty compensations in their swings which can even lead to injury. This happens to millions of players. And because people are not enjoying the game playing at such an unsatisfactory level, with no signs of any significant improvement anywhere in sight, the game of golf as a whole can really suffer.

But none of this is really the fault of the player. Hardly. He has tried to expose himself to proper instruction, he has practiced and played, according to what he was taught. The issue is the instruction he exposed himself to didn’t address his real problem which was not in the rotation of the body, but in a faulty hand and arm action. Our player didn’t need to just rotate his hips to the left or spin in a barrel or whatever to fix his issue. What he needed was a correct hand and arm action to give him leverage to strike down crisply into the ball with control, feel, and power… coupled with body rotation.

A lot of instruction out there says that the hands and arms will just operate correctly on their own as long as the player turns correctly. But for the vast majority of players we rarely find this to hold true. Instead what we do find is the opposite. Once the correct hand and arm action is implemented then the body is easily enabled to turn correctly throughout the golf swing.

Now to be sure, proper body rotation certainly does play a role in an effective golf swing. But the actions of the arms, wrists, and hands also play a role in an effective golf swing as well. What we want in the golf swing is all components working together as a whole. Like in our practice swings. We certainly do not want to neglect the role of the hands and arms in the golf swing because as shown above, their faulty action can and will completely sabotage the golf swing.

Certainly the correct hand and arm action is something that can be taught and learned by any skill level of golfer.

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