The Golf Swing Is a Straight Line Motion

I’m becoming convinced that a good golf swing is easier to acquire than we are being led to believe. That’s because the swing is taught in terms of arcs and angles. I believe it’s best described as a continuous straight line motion.

Imagine a piston drawing back from the ball along the intended flight path, then exploding hard into the ball in that direction. Where else could the ball go but straight? With no arc in that motion, there would be chance for the hitting surface to be misaligned at impact, nor for the direction of the strike to be other than the intended one.

It is true that we have to turn our body in one direction, and then in the reverse direction. Arcs, circles. What I would like you to do is THINK in straight lines. Even though the club is turning away from the ball, think that is going straight back from it.

That is not to say, take the club away in a straight line motion, as a swing mechanic, but to think you are taking the club away straight, even as your body does what it has to do because of the way it is designed.

When it is time to bring the club back into the ball, THINK that you are bring it straight into the ball.

Move in an arc, think in a straight line. When you do that, your body makes unconscious adjustments that bring the club back along the intended starting path with a square clubface. All you do is hang on.

There is one technical matter that must be observed at this point. You pull things more accurately than you push them. When the clubhead is coming toward the ball, it must be pulled with the right hand, not pushed with the left. You can PULL something in a straight line easier than you can PUSH something in a straight line.

That’s all I need to say on this topic. Play around with this idea at the range to figure out how to incorporate it into your swing. If your swing feels like it is changing a bit, maybe it is, but not by as much as it might feel like. The change is mostly in your head. The proof that you’re getting it is in golf balls going very straight, one after the other.

Earlier I said that the golf swing is best described as a continuous straight line motion. I’ll get to the continuous part in my next post.


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