Downswing Straight Left Arm

In the downswing, it is natural to want to bend your left elbow to bring the club down if you think that your arms are doing the work. However, the real engine is what I will call the down swing chain reaction. If the chain reaction is connected to a straight left arm you get a powerful and consistent shot. If it is not, the chain reaction is destroyed.

If you wound up your body correctly on the backswing, you should have felt your back muscles coiling around your spine. In fact, the coil should also feel connected to the muscles on the inside of your left leg and to your hip. So the left side of your body should feel like one unit.

Thus, when you shift your hip and move your thighs towards the target to start down, you feel your upper body being pulled around your spine. This is what powers your shot.

Naturally, as the body rotates around the spine so do the arms. First the lower body, then the hips and back rotate, then the shoulders rock and rotate, then your arms drop. However, the arms only move as a part of the chain reaction started by the lower body. So your arms are not pulling the club down, the chain reaction is.

In fact, if you bend your elbow, all you are doing is breaking the chain reaction. When the chain reaction is broken, the coil you built up to deliver power to the ball is destroyed. Of course, this presumes that you properly built coil on your backswing to begin with.

The moral to the story is to try to feel as if you core and back muscles are pulling the club around you body on the downward swing. And power your core and back muscles with the lower body. If you can do this, it will be easy to bring the club down without feeling a need to bend your left elbow.

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