| Golf Tips: Increase Your Power with Lateral Motion |
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Question: I've always pictured the golf swing as being a circle around a center, with the center never moving. However, when I watch the pros on TV, there seems to be quite a bit of lateral motion, both on the back swing and the down swing. Should all players make this lateral motion, or is that something that only the pros are able to do because they play and practice so much? -- A.H., Naples, Florida Answer: Swinging around the center of your body, with no lateral motion, sounds like it would promote consistency, and it may, but it would also rob you of a good bit of your power. Instead of swinging around the center, think of swinging around two axes, your right hip and your left hip. If you start with your weight 50-50, by the time you reach the top of your back swing, your weight should be about 75 percent over your right hip. There has to be a small amount of lateral movement to get into this position. You should have the feeling of "loading up" on your right side, preparing to drive your weight into the ball. In order to get from your right side to your left side, there again has to be some lateral motion. Your left hip should drive laterally toward the target. When your weight is 100 percent over your left hip, your body will spin or clear out of the way, leaving you in that good, balanced, follow-through position. Here's an image, which helps me with this motion. Imagine you're addressing a ball while standing inside a cylinder, like a barrel, which comes up to your waist. The left side of the barrel is open. On the back swing, your hips will rotate inside the barrel. On the down swing, your left hip will slide out of the barrel before it rotates. It's a turn, slide and turn. There's not an excessive amount of lateral motion in the golf swing -- just enough to get your weight moving back and through. Question: Please settle a dispute for me. Our eighteenth hole has a par of four for men and a par of five for women. In a match between a man and a woman, who wins the hole if both score par? -- A.B., Internet. Answer: The man, because par is irrelevant. The player who completes the hole in fewer strokes wins the hole. (Golf professional Jon Ebert writes for the Naples Daily News in Florida.)
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