We have heard it all before. It is no secret to even the most novice player that we want to keep the left arm straight in the golf swing, but do you really know what to feel in your swing to achieve it?
In the video below, PGA Pro Jack Backhouse explains why it is important to keep the lead arm straight and exactly how to do it to improve your ball striking.
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Lead Arm Straight
Keeping the lead arm straight is right at the top of the priority list when it comes to learning to play for a new player or wanting more consistent ball striking for a more experienced player.
The lead arm (left arm for right-handed player) helps you manage the distance between the club head and the golfer’s body. If you can learn to understand that radius and how to manage it, then you will stop hitting the ball fat or hitting the ball thin.
Bending the left arm can help you swing the golf club a bit quicker and hit the golf ball further, but this is at a cost to consistency, which higher handicappers need.
Why does the Lead arm bend?
Simply trying to keep the left arm straight will not help you achieve the task, because it isnt the left arm’s fault that it is folding.
When the lead arm bends, this is because the trailing arm (right arm for the right-handed player) is folding too much.
The trail arm acts as a power generator in the golf swing so whilst we need it to fold and extend for speed, too much of this causes an inconsistent radius of the arc of the clubhead, causing poor strikes.
We don’t want the trail arm to fold ever more than 80 degrees, so It is a good idea to try and keep it 90 degrees as a good bench mark. This should allow you plenty of freedom to keep the lead arm straight as much as you can.
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Corrective feels
If you have a somewhat correct grip, the best way to correct a bent left arm is actually to not worry about the lead arm at all, but to focus on the trail arm.
Try to apply pressure to your lead hand with your trail hand and make a swing, thinking about pushing your lead hand as far away from your body as possible.
this pressure in the hands will stop you from folding your trail arm too much and keep your lead arm perfectly straight.
Other Arm Bending Faults
There are other reasons why your lead arm would bend later on in the swing, and this would usually occur as a reactive compensation to a different swing fault. Once you understand how to keep the lead arm straight in the backswing, it shouldn’t bend at all unless there is a different issue, which means the arm must bend in order to hit a functional shot.
This is the mystery and fun of fixing the golf swing! We often create faults to compensate for other faults, leading to fairly odd looking but functional golf swings. Don’t just fix things for the sake of looking better – this will often just lead to worse golf!
In this video I give a couple of drills that help you learn what a good straight arm looks like and is created by, so be sure to watch that to learn more in detail.
Give these tips a try and let us know how you get on! If you want to keep up to date with Jack’s instruction you can subscribe to his YouTube Channel here, or keep watching our instruction page!
If you want to watch some more of Jack’s instruction videos, you can get to his YouTube Technique Tips playlist by clicking here. Please check out our other instruction articles if you like this video on how to keep the lead arm straight.
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