Keeping your arms in front of your chest is very important when commencing your golf swing. The reason being is that the arms and the chest can feel a sense of connection and therefore be able to sequence more efficiently on the downswing. It will also allow you to create more power as the body is getting fully engaged in the swing.
Keeping your arms in front of your chest at the commencement of your takeaway requires knowledge in two areas being the swing path and how to coordinate the movement of your body. Just remember that with your swing path, you just need to ensure that the club starts around a handspan from your body and remains this distance until the club reaches parallel to the ground. You also need to make sure that when the club reaches parallel to the ground that the clubface and the hands form a straight line.
The biggest mistake that most people make is when the club head moves behind the body too early on the backswing. This creates an inside path. What then happens is that on the downswing, the body tries to compensate by moving the hands forward toward the ball and creating an 'over the top' motion. As you may know this causes 'slicing' and loss of power because the arms can't coordinate well with the body.
Therefore once the path is practiced, it is then very important to turn the body at the appropriate time. The biggest secret to this is ensure the upper half moves before the lower half when commencing the swing. What I do is start the backswing by moving the clubhead first while the lower half stays passive and then not until the clubhead reaches the instep of my fight foot, does the body start turning. Therefore there should always be slight delay before coordinating the upper and lower half together.
By the time the club reaches the first position, the hips should have turned around 15-20 degrees. The last element that I do is ensure the 'toe' of the club points roughly to the sky at the first position. This ensures that the right arm starts folding properly. Sometimes if the clubface is too closed, the right arm has a difficult time to fold and therefore unable to establish a strong connection.
The best way to describe the feeling of the arms in front of the chest is tossing a reasonably heavy exercise ball to someone on your backswing. In order to successfully toss the ball, you will have to engage your abs and chest and point your arms at the intended target during the action.
If you would like to know more about how to keep your arms in front of your chest, seek consultation from David Waters Golf.
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