“99 percent of amateurs get it wrong,” says the major winner. Here is his solution

A short arm swing with a full rotation backwards, says Padraig Harrington. And a short arm swing, with a full turn through.

And there is a good relationship between these body parts. Easy enough. Simple game.

So why does the three-time major winner stand in front of the video camera for more than six minutes and go over everything again?

He gives his answer in the label of the YouTube video he published this week.

“Synchronize your body and arms. (99% of amateurs get this wrong)”

It’s all worth a look, and you can and should do so here, along with the 45 (!) other video tips Harrington shared in his video Paddy’s golf tips Series. At this point we only ask a few questions. The first concerns the video title (which made this author click).

What does Harrington see wrong?

“So what we see a lot in golf,” Harrington said in the video, “people think that speed is generated by the rotation of the torso. “They think if I can spin harder, I’ll go faster. Yes, the toros provide a little more speed, but a tiny fraction of the speed, perhaps five percent of the speed, comes from the additional rotation of the upper body. What actually happens is that when most people try to spin, they lose complete control of their arms and lose speed. …

“So what we don’t want to see is that effort of turning… when I turn around and my arms go with me, there’s really no acceleration in it. So there’s a lot of people, and they turn around, and they hook, they hit a big punch, there’s not a lot of power in it. I put a lot of effort into it. My upper body – if I had a monitor measuring the speed of my upper body, I guarantee you it would probably be faster than my normal swing.”

So what should the amateurs do?

“What we really want,” Harrington said in the video, “we want to make sure everything is moving – that the order is right and we have the right amount of core and arms.” For many people, I would recommend relaxing the arms first. Make her a little floppy. So do a few punches with your arms just relaxed. …

“Okay, relax her. … We want to get back to that a little bit and not the rigid, hard swing.”

What now?

“Okay, once we get the movement where we feel like our arms are a little bit involved,” Harrington said in the video, “now we’re going to use our body again. OK, so we talked about where we were another time.” I try to grab the arm, twist it, stretch it and pull it down. But the big key is that we want more rotation relative to our arm swing in both the backswing and the downswing. So it’s not much… a big arm swing, no rotation. We prefer a full turn and shoulder height with the hands. …Okay, you’re going to do this turn by just concentrating and not being too long with your arms.

“So if someone told you, you can only swing at this height [raises right arm to shoulder level], you add, turning your shoulders. It’s just natural. You go, I’ll make as much momentum as possible here. On the other hand, someone said that you can swing up here [takes club past parallel], you tend not to put as much strain on your body. A shorter arm swing, so the feeling of a shorter arm swing, both backwards and backwards, will result in a better relationship with your body, and your body will actually rotate more to compensate for the short arm swing. So we’re talking three quarters to three quarters.”

What problems can occur?

“We don’t want to be in motion, which a lot of people have a hard time doing, to get speed and power, they do one or two things,” Harrington said in the video. “They generally either have too many arms, which we don’t want the club to fly up here on its own [takes club to his back on the follow-through]; If we give it full throttle, it will get there at full speed. We definitely don’t want the body to drift forward too much. That won’t help us.”

One more question.

What is the summary of this tip?

It’s the beginning of this story. Here Harrington says it differently.

“I try to maintain this relationship – in my head, with short arms and full implementation; A full shoulder turn with short arms in the backswing – that’s what I’m thinking about to create that relationship. I definitely don’t want to see the poor get there for any other reason. And the last thing I want to see in the downswing is the idea of ​​the body turning and being one step ahead of it. It is much better to accelerate to a short target than to rotate your body and guide the club through impact.

“That won’t help.”

Editor’s Note: To watch the full video, please click here.

Golf magazine

Subscribe to the magazine

Subscribe to

Nick Piastowski

Golf.com Publisher

Nick Piastowski is a senior editor at Golf.com and Golf Magazine. In his role, he is responsible for editing, writing and developing stories across golf. And when he’s not writing about ways to hit the golf ball farther and straighter, the Milwaukee native is probably playing the game, hitting the ball left, right and short, and drinking a cold beer to wash away his score. You can contact him about any of these topics – his stories, his playing or his beers – at nick.piastowski@golf.com.