Question Response: How to keep your left wrist flat?

Greetings golfers. I have been working on a correspondence course that was taking up a lot of my time and then throw in some travel and suddenly a month has gone by. I want to thank Dee for picking up the slack. And I will try not to leave you wanting for so long again but hopefully this post will allow the healing process to begin.

So the question I’m answering came from a guy named Jay. He asked, “How do I keep my left wrist flat through out the swing?”

I’m glad I had a month off because there is a lot to cover in this post. There is one assumption here that I need to take care of first – the assumption is that we want to KEEP our LEAD WRIST FLAT throughout the swing. After analyzing lots of tour pro’s lead wrist graphs, I can tell you that not one that I have ever looked at keeps his left wrist flat during the swing. I will have to make a youtube video to demonstrate what they do, but I promise you that we don’t want to keep it flat. That being said, the left wrist should be flat (well, flattish) during the release so instead of being difficult I will answer the question, “how do we keep our left wrist flat throughout the release?”

There is a common pattern on tour that shows the lead wrist going through a well sequenced series of movement to maximize speed at the point of contact. This patter is the lead wrist finishes the backswing in a hinged, pronated, and slightly extended position. The first thing to change is that the left wrist goes from extended to flexed. It will basically continue flexing all the way to just past impact for most players. About halfway down, the wrist will begin to unhinge and then it will supinate hard through impact. Ok, lets put this in practical English that might help you.

If you take a normal neutral grip then it it is impossible to have your right wrist and your left wrist flat at the same time. So interestingly, if you want to make sure that your left wrist is flat, then you have to make sure that your right wrist is NEVER flat (the only exception is if you let go of your right hand at impact like Vijay…but you’re not Vijay, so hang on to the club if you can). If you scoop through impact, then your right wrist will be flat and therefore your left wrist will be cupped. So if you have your left writ flat then your clubface will be closed compared to where you started at set up. That means that your body can’t be in the same position at impact that it was at set up or else your left wrist being flat would cause a hook. So to make sure that your wrist is flat, you really have to make sure that your body has turned through impact. Imagine that you are Iron Man and you have a bright light shinning out of your chest. At impact, that light should be pointed well out in front of the golf ball. By turning your chest you will be able to have the left wrist flat, strike down on the ball, and not hit a hook.

Stay tuned for the video explaining that train of thought.

Good luck Jay, and thanks for the question!