The Suspension Point

Should your head move in the golf swing or not? Depends on who you listen to. Many commentators say it has to move, just don’t move it to certain places. Others say with almost religious fervor, Don’t move it!

I think all this talk is about not moving is about the wrong thing. It is the suspension point that does not move.

Reach behind your head and feel at the base of your neck. There is a hard lump there, a big one. That is a vertebra, the last one in the cervical (neck) spine. That is the suspension point. That is what does not move.

Paul Runyan, one of golf’s short game masters, talks about this point in his book, The Short Way to Lower Scoring. He calls it “the axis of the golf swing. The arms swing and the shoulders revolve around it.”

While he says it should not move, he allows that it is difficult to keep it still and thus it may shift minimally.

However, a few years ago at the LPGA’s Safeway Classic in Portland, Oregon, I made it a point to watch the players from behind, that is with their back facing me, to see what this point did when they swung. Much more often than not, it did not move at all. Not the tiniest bit sideways, up, or down.

Runyan goes on to say how pre-setting the position of the suspension point helps you hit different short game shots. I’ll let you get a copy of his book to find out what he says. About the full swing, he doesn’t say much.

But I think this is something you might experiment with, not to make that spot rigidly still, but to use it as the pivot point for your swing. More like, it can move, but you choose for it not to.

I like to check it every now and then to make sure I’m not getting too carried away and letting my body go all over the place.